Kitchen Nightmare!!!!

Eyin temi bawo ni o? She wa? Lelelelelelelelele...she wa o?

Sorry. Quick display of my l'agbo-l'agbo tendencies. 

What's good folks? This week has been awesomely fast though, hasn't it? Thank God it's the weekend! I can't wait to lie spread-eagle on my couch and gorge myself on home videos. Please...please...please...don't judge me and don't jealous me. 

Speaking of home videos, I was watching "Mr & Mrs" starring Joseph Benjamin and Nse Ikpe Etim yesterday and the movie and some conversation I had in the past with someone, just stirred a righteous anger in me, necessitating this post. So for those who haven't seen the movie, this is a brief synopsis from 360nobs

"The movie tells the story of Susan Abbah (Nse Ikpe-Etim), a lawyer who is holed up in a marriage that has been engulfed with issues from differences in the social strata. Her husband, Kenneth Abbah (Joseph Benjamin), a rich son of a Senator is bent on not letting the world know of his wife’s background and decides to keep her in the kitchen where he believes she belongs.

On the other hand, is another couple Linda and Charles played by the duo of Thelma Ojiji and Paul Apel who seemingly have a perfect marriage until Linda begins to take her husband for granted because she takes care of all the bills in the home."

The characters I was most interested in were the Abbahs.

Apart from being ashamed of her, he erodes her confidence entirely, undermines her and completely takes her for granted. That is even not my biggest gripe with the man. Having confined this poor chick to the kitchen, this man demands that EVERY meal be made fresh, EVERYDAY! Soups, stew, moi-moi, rice etc. Bruh...for realsies???? All of you itchiting to type comments on how this is a movie,  metchie onu there please! I have seen homes where this is done and more recently, I have heard a couple of stories about how this is a demand in some new and young marriages. 

Source: http://imgarcade.com/1/kitchen-cooking-mess/

My parents are in their 50s. So in the grand scheme of things, they are slightly younger parents than the parents of most of my friends. So I have seen some disparities in the interplay between my folks and that of some of my friends' folks. So where my mum would address my dad by his first name, some would call their husbands "daddy" or "daddy lagbaja {insert first child or first son's name here}". Where my mother was a career woman for many years and is a successful business woman now, some are stay at home mums. Where my father understands that life is hard enough without making it harder by making unreasonable demands of your wife, some fathers see it is as their right and your privilege to wait on them hand and foot. Really, there is nothing wrong with that. It is a generational divide. My grandma and her sister wife waited on my grandpa hand and foot in his time. And they loved doing it...it was indeed his right and their privilege to serve him. But my grandpa died over a decade and a half ago at 96 and my grandma followed suit last year at 91...see where I am going with this? You cannot possibly make the same demands of your wife that my grandpa made in the 40s. Life is more complex these days. 

These guys import all their father's ways of doing things into their marriage and whether it works or not, it is how their mother did things so why is she (the wife) complaining? Let's even look at the thing critically. 

When did butter become a monkey's staple diet sef? Ehn? Answer now? All these spoilt men of nowadays. If left to your own devices, you would live off  a diet of crackers and gulder every night...and some of you actually did, especially those who didn't live at home till they got married. On a great day, you'd treat yourself to 4 packs of regular sized noodles OR 2 hungry man sized noodles and 2 eggs. All of a sudden you get married and you want the poor girl to close from GT Bank and STILL have time to cook to the point of even making fresh soup everyday. Are you a demon???

 This rubbish request...nay, demand...usually comes from guys that cannot even use boiling ring to boil water...the ones that are more useless than the left hand! A man that knows how to cook understands what the process of cooking entails and would not be so harsh and demanding. Even girls that love to cook...wait a minute, let's pause on this thought for a while...who are you bloody weirdos that love to cook????? Kini problem yin na? I knows how to cook...I know how to cook WELL...but I  absolutely DO NOT  love to cook. I have a life, ladies and gentlemen. And when I don't lead with "I love to cook" during the getting to know you portion of the date, I see the guy mentally snip away 5 yards of my wife material. All you 'love to cook' heifers need to warn yourself o. Nuff said. Back to the matter. Even girls that love to cook, would not deny that it is prep and labour intensive. It is not the most la di da of tasks. And girls that love to cook, cook and STOW AWAY for later consumption. I put it to you that they do not cook proper meals every single day.Yet one omo k'omo will come and be telling another person's child to cook daily fresh pot of soup. Again I ask, are you a demon? 

Perhaps I am spoilt because my father is the most fuss free man I know. I remember only one time since records began, that he tried to kick up a fuss and he couldn't even sustain it! We all (including him) ended up laughing at him and he threatened to report us to his mother! My dad's favourite food is "Anything". 'Dad, what will you eat?'. 'Anything'. My mother would, of course, not allow you to feed her husband anything. Her favourite thing to say is 'go and do that in your own husband's house'. My mother is the fussy one; she appraises the food with a gimlet eye, doing quality control like SON; she would complain about the dishes they were served in etc. She's the fussy one, not him and he even tells her that she stresses over these issues too much. He doesn't demand the excessive service but she likes to provide it. If you demand it, you don't deserve it. 

The blame does not lie solely with men. It is with the women too. The adage goes 'you start as you mean to finish'. When, before the two of you got married, you went to be displaying black belt in cooking...you didn't know you were creating a monster abi? The boy will want to take you to restaurant to eat, you will quickly pipe up, as a well brought up girl 'concyn', "babe, the money we will use to eat Chinese can cook two pots of soup and there will still be change. Let's just branch Sadgrouse market and buy ingredients and I will cook. Stop wasting money!" Nothing bad in this itself, but what we know of men is that they are creatures of habit and habits are learned. You wean him off fridge and freezer food, always quick to "whip up" something but you forget that you had applied for a job at some top tier law firm and the hours are not favourable to whipping stuff up. The guy doesn't understand...you always used to do it, it was never a problem for you so why is it so hard for you to make isiewu on a work night? You begin not living up to his expectations and looking like you can't cope with your family and job. You may even reach a point where you are being given ultimatums about choosing one as men don't take favourable to any interruptions with stomach infrastructure. You see yourself? Can you blame him? YOU made him this way. He didn't even know that ikokore tasted soooo good before you married him, now freshly made ikokore (there's no other option than freshly made) is now his favourite. We have to accept the part we play in these matters, women. We must give men legitimate expectations and not get caught up in tricking them to marry our cooking ways and want to begin to renege when the oruka has d'owo. Abeg!!! It is not fair. 

Anyways, I stated earlier that life is a bit more complex this days. Let me qualify that statement. We have things easy in part and more difficult in part. When most of our mothers were newly married, the attendant stress of daily life was slightly more reduced and their jobs were not as demanding or concessions were made for married women/women with children. These days, those things do not exist. In addition, it is more difficult to get around town these days doing mundane things like food shopping. This is what the weekends are for. Demanding freshly cooked food daily, is pure and unadulterated wickedness in high places. It means you do not love this woman because you are trying to reduce her life expectancy, like Nigeria doesn't already do a great job in that regard. I find that these finicky men are the type who don't eat anyone else's food but their wife's. So even if she has someone do the market runs and the prep work, she still has to cook it when probably all she wants to do is put her feet up and microwave noodles. Marriage is not slavery and it shouldn't erode your humanity.  

Ergo, idajo mi re...if you must eat fresh food everyday; if you and your wife spend 3 hours braving the island to mainland traffic together, getting home at 10:30 p.m. and you still demand that  she enter the kitchen and prepare food for you; if you don't eat anyone else's food but your wife's leading you to demand she cooks after spending the whole day wiping bottoms or being yelled at in her office and if you generally do not eat anything that comes out of the freezer...there is a special place in hell for you. Oh, I forgot to add men that only eat actual pounded yam made by pestle and mortar ALL THE TIME and would not touch poundo yam or yam pounded by a yam pounder...enter the bus on the way to that special place in hell! Au revoir!!!

What are your thoughts on this topic? Please leave your comments. Have a lovely weekend my cheries. Bisoux!