I have watched in awe and shock as women in the African polity and elsewhere are torn to shreds, by the society and even their fellow women. I cannot begin to understand why women dislike women so much and the entire society honestly and eagerly wait for women to fail, flop or flunk out of a position. It is necessary to say that women in the spotlight are on tenterhooks. I feel a lot of pity albeit reluctantly sometimes for these women.

I remember Patricia Etteh… the ex speaker of the house of reps in Nigeria, she was labeled as corrupt, maybe she was corrupt, but she apparently had no education or pedigree and was put there forcefully by the then president OBJ. well, she didn’t have an arsenal of people who could think on their toes and falsify documents in her favour, and she was found out by simply refusing to tell the difference between curtains, blinds and drapes or so the story went. I would like to state that many a man has done this in governments worldwide but because women usually have no arsenal of loyal friends and followers it’s probably harder for them to pull it off coupled with the fact that they are also not a thieving gender.

Deziani Allison-Madueke, has been sitting on a time bomb forever, women hate her and so do men, they have said all sorts of things about her, for instance that; she is the president’s girlfriend, she gave oil deals to her lover Chris Aire, and that she was sleeping with Wale Tinubu. Why in the name of Zeus does the polity involve itself in such damaging rumor mongering and character assassination?  It’s also being said that the president must send her away for oil subsidy or one of those things and that she has calmed down.

Arunma Otteh who left her seat at the ADB in Tunis to run SEC, has been blamed for wasteful spending and so on and so forth, things too many to mention, she even cried during a hearing at the senate, and accused a certain MP of corruption. I am worried for the future generations of women because apparently it is not yet Uhuru for women in Africa and most countries.

Yulia Tymoshenko has been in jail for a while now because she was the strongest opposition to the crazy Ukrainian president, the UN and Amnesty has asked the country to let her go but they have refused and are getting away with it, she has been called a whore and a corrupt person, Aung San Suu Kyi’s story is a bit different, extremely patient and understanding while subtly asking for her rights, she has been released and has subsequently won a seat in the parliament but she is still closely watched.

Okonjo Iweala is also deeply hated by the people because they believe that she is from a privileged background and that she influences the president, the entire oil subsidy brouhaha has been placed on her head, and as she was recently not appointed World Bank president, the entire nation has been laughing in her face.

Conspiracy theories emerge daily when women are in positions of authority, I wonder what Madeleine Albright, Condolezzza Rice, et al had to go through. Well, Diezani, Arunma & Stella Oduah are beautiful so I can imagine how angry stay at home mums must be, as for Ndi Okereke who has no look to attract the eyes and Ngozi  Okonjo who is plain-looking, I thought the public would be more lenient with them since they do not pose a threat to their self esteems but no way, they are equally scrutinized and ridiculed with reckless abandon. Is this due to their level of education? Evelyn Oputu of the Bank of Industry is apparently the only one who has been untouched and unscathed by the ‘brigade of war against women’. I don’t know how she does it but they have managed to leave her alone. Dora Akunyili has had her own fair share of criticisms, people labeled her as too ambitious and I learnt from the grapevine that a certain opponent told her to go home and cook for her husband and stop meddling in the affairs of men.

In Asia, they are more receptive to female leaders, Indira Gandhi, Sonia Ghandi, Mayawati, Pratibha Patil, even Pakistan a predominantly Muslim country prefers female leaders, Benazir Bhutto et al, Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lanka Chandrika Kumaratunga, Phillipines Corazon Aquino and Gloria Arroyo, Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri, Malaysia’s Wan Azizah, Thailand’s Yingluck Shinawatra et al. Will we ever get there?

I predict that there will be a female CBN governor in the near future and she better be ready. The country had better recognize that these are the best generation of women they might ever have because most of the new generation of women are only bothered about marriage, gossip, human hair, makeup and are extremely shallow and lack depth, the other percent that are really interested in the polity and are intelligent are either stuck in foreign lands with other passports while watching their country of origin as an amusement, don’t judge them.

As Ms Albright rightly stated.

There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women.

~ Ada-mezie Ezumah

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If you are a constant reader of sheilaspeaks then you should know Ada, if you don’t then check out the ‘featured post’ category to see earlier posts that she has posted on here. Anyway I would like to know what you think, Do you think women in authority will ever have the freedom to lead especially in Nigeria, can we have our own Ellen Johnson Sirleaf or Joyce Banda?

Source: thefashionrecords.com

In a cost accounting workshop while in Belgium, the very enthusiastic professor said

‘The number of years you spend with someone before you marry them is a sunk cost and should not be considered when making future marriage decisions’.

For my non-accounting readers, a sunk cost is defined as a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered while a prospective cost is a future cost that may be incurred or changed if an action is taken. In other words, the six years you spend with a partner should not be the criteria for deciding whether or not to spend six more years with him/her, what’s done is done and your decision now will affect the next couple of years in your life. Although his example was unconventional, I am pretty sure people will not forget the definition of sunk costs for the rest of their lives (Accounting made sexy…lol)

Two years ago, a friend of mine came to me with the wonderful news of marriage and in my usual inquisitive manner, I asked why she was getting married and why she chose to spend the rest of her life with her boyfriend. No I did not ask that question to play devil’s advocate or to be the ‘enemy of progress’, I wanted to know if she had thought about this life changing decision and the first thing she said was ‘Ah ah Sheila, we’ve been together for seven years na so why won’t I want to marry him?‘. You can say she replied me in the typical Nigerian manner of replying a question with a question but it was obvious that one of the reasons or the ‘main reason’ for making that decision was based on the length of time she had spent with him.

The ultimatum trick is quite popular with the women as well, young ladies give their men a time span, requiring them to propose or they walk away by a set time because they cannot afford to hang around with the hopes of getting married. Granted some men need the push and may be slow to consider marriage but is an ultimatum really necessary? It has worked for some but sometimes you end up having married men who are married because they were ‘required’ to and not because they wanted to. Maybe I am missing something here…

It is said that the average length of a relationship before a marriage proposal is one year of course all things being equal and both parties being financially prepared to take the plunge; but like all theories there are the exceptions of people who date and get married within a year or some that may have been together for as much as eleven years before  making that decision. From my observation, each time I ask couples that fall within the exception why they may or may not have worked out, the ones with the short relationships are quick to list out the positive and/or negative attributes that acted as the basis of their decision. While on the other hand, couples with longer relationships are quick to mention the length of time they had been together among other things. This ‘time’ mentioned is always used as a key criterion in their decision making process, it is mostly seen as an ‘investment’.

So I guess the question here is how long does a relationship have to be for it to be considered an investment?

Share your thoughts and let’s discuss

I am back to my life in Dublin…*sigh* and I can’t wait to travel again, not sure where I want to go to this time . I actually have some pictures from my trip to Belgium and some from Nigeria, will put them up later in the week or next week. 

Someone asked me about vlogs and if I have stopped, well No, I have not stopped, I am working on having creative ones and not just me sitting and talking to the camera in my room…so when I am done with my ‘plans’, you’ll see them. 

Also visit TheNakedConvos on Mondays and Wednesdays for some of my recent posts/topics  

Now to today’s post by Zizi on love or friendship…

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As girls we tend to have real close females who we can say are constantly there for us, if you need anything – whether it be  advice or a pink shirt to match your new pants, shopping trips, clubbing, movie trips and maybe making fun of others to our heart’s content..after all, laughter is good for the health they say. You may go out with the hopes of meeting “Mr. Right”, could work some days and some others, it could just be a good night of dancing till your feet ached in your new heels . This would be my girls and I…it would be our Girl’s Night/Day Out.
Going out with my gals was always fun, and I could count on them to keep the boredom of my single life away; they became sisters to me until the inevitable happened.

I got a boyfriend.

Suddenly, “Girls Night Out” turned into “Do You Mind If We Meet Up With “HIM” While We’re Out Night?” You see, my boyfriend and I wanted to get to know each other more, as expected. However, in the delirious excitement of having this new person in my life, I committed one of the worst dating sins a female can commit: I let my friendship with my girlfriends slip.

At first it wasn’t very noticeable to me. I still chatted and spoke on the phone with them almost every day. But the truth was, when they asked me to go out, I first considered if there was a chance I’d be doing something with “HIM” that night. As my relationship with “HIM” grew over the years, going out with friends to bars and clubs became a bit boring – I wasn’t looking for “Mr. Right” anymore. To top it off, my “Mr. Right” was not very happy at the prospect of me going to bars and clubs without him. “Clubs are dens of sin!” he half-joked one day, when I mentioned how often I used to go. “They only exist because people go there to hook up with each other, he even said only prostitutes that go there, and he made me believe my friends were not good enough because he did not like them.” So I stopped going to the dens of sin. I reduced my outing with my friends, I grew into who I wasn’t, living a life for him and not for myself

The only time I would see my friends was when he was out of town. Once, we had bought tickets to go see a new movie showing in Silverbird, just like old times I thought.  Unfortunately that thought did not last long as soon as I heard my cell phone ringing and caller Id informed me that my baby was calling…well doing his round of daily monitoring when he was away. This time he asked if I got there safely and told me to have a fun day, while trying hard to listen to the voices in the background, maybe he would pick a ‘non-female’ voice. Of course I didn’t think much of it until I looked over at my friends’ disgusted frown.

“Can’t you even go one day without talking to him?” Amy fumed. “This is OUR trip; it’s a Girl’s Day. Why does he need to call? what happened to sending a text?”

Equally annoyed, I told them that I liked when he called, that it made me feel he cared and thought of me. It was the truth – I enjoyed the fact that he thought to call when he woke up every morning and every single time. But looking back on it now, I realize Amy wasn’t angry that he’d called. She was angry that I had abandoned the girls who had been there for me even before he came into my life, forgetting that they also cared for me…I was too love struck and blind to see that.
My friends and I haven’t spoken much after that day.

As the months passed and my relationship with “HIM” grew stronger or should I say, more comfortable, I started noticing something very interesting. He had not given up any of his friends or hobbies that he had before we knew each other. He still played football every Sunday morning with his friends. He met his friends for drinks when I was busy and couldn’t make it. He made it a point to find time for them, even if it meant saying no to making plans with me once in a while and even when I complained about his bad friends ,he would make me understand that they are still his guys or it was just business.

Eventually, I thought back about how I had given up things to spend time with him. And from time to time, I threw those things in his face to make him feel guilty if he wasn’t going to take me out on a Saturday night. “I could be at my den of sin,” I’d yell at him, “but now I don’t have friends to go there with. Have fun tonight with Iyke and Yomi. I’ll just be here watching a movie or sleeping.”

Ironically, the friends I had in my life, the more fights I had with “HIM”. Why? Well there was no one to call and vent to about my problems with him or with life in general. So who heard all of my complaints? He did. And like guys do, he tried to tell me how I should solve all of my dilemmas, which annoyed me to no end. A female, like my girls, would have just listened to me, consoled me and threw a pity party while thinking of a solution.

It is very easy to blame “HIM” for giving up so many things I used to enjoy and leaving my friends but the truth is, all the blame lies on me. No one made me give anything up. I volunteered to chase the fairy tale relationship that depicts man and woman alone together against the world. I overlooked the friends that would protect them, help them, and love them.

And when the relationship came to an end, I was all alone till I summoned up the courage with my head bowed and tail between my legs, like a chastised dog, I called my girls and pleaded for another chance. And of course we had another Girl’s Day out to forget my pain.

One thing I have learnt is to never sacrifice good friends for a relationship. It is important to always have those you can run to – especially when you and your partner may have had enough of each other for one week. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder but these days we forget that and want to be stuck to the person by the hip…I am not saying abandon your relationship, all I am saying is give a little time (maybe a couple of hours) for others in your life.

This is my experience and I hope you learn from it…

Zizi

Anyway on to her story

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I met my husband, I call him Atala, on a message board in 2007. He was an anonymous commenter, just like I was. I was more open so most regular commenters knew I was from Asaba, and that I lived in Edinburgh. He was this aloof guy, very very private. I was impressed by his intelligence, and how helpful he generally was to the members of the board, old and new. With time, we began to exchange banters on the site, and I found out that he was also based in the UK. He was a volunteer on the site, and when I also joined the team, we got a chance to work together, and I was further bowled over.

I’m a firm believer in going for what I want and when I became single later that year, I reached out to him with a personal message to wish him Happy Christmas. He replied that he had recently moved to the US, and my heart sank. I didn’t believe in long distance relationships, especially with someone I hadn’t met first. So I tried to put him out of my mind and look out for other options.

I went to Nigeria for Easter, and organised a meet-up with fellow message board members. The pictures of the party were circulated on the forum, and a few days later, I got a message from Atala. He said he knew I would be deluged with admirers and just wanted to get in line. That was such a corny line, but it got me. Still, I took about a week or so to think about it. I liked him, but he still lived in the US while I was in the UK. Anyway, I told him to send in his application, and that started a witty introduction.

Our communication moved from the forum’s private messages to emails, phone calls and web cam, and it was as if we’d known each other for ever. Our conversations lasted hours, and we would speak every day, and still exchange emails. However, after three months of this, I mentioned that what we had wasn’t serious as I hadn’t met him. He pulled back then, and we decided it wouldn’t work.

I missed him like hell, but had to get back to my life, what I called real life as opposed to online life. We stopped calling each other, and kept our distance on the board. However, just over a month later, I noticed that he seemed to want another chance. He sent a message and I told him to call if he wanted to. My phone begun to ring immediately. Honestly, my heart melted then.

We spoke for longer than we ever had that night, and he said he was willing, ready and able to give a relationship with me his all. I had never stopped caring for him, but I knew I couldn’t do an LDR if we did not meet. He said he would do something about it. A week later, he sent me his itinerary for a flight he booked to visit me a month later. I was like OMG, I couldn’t believe it was happening.

It almost didn’t happen. About a couple of days to his visit, he said something that almost spoilt it all. It was an emotional night, and when we got over that, I knew for certain, he was THE ONE. Meeting him at the airport after that was so exciting, and emotional too. I was scared though, what if he didn’t like me? What if we didn’t hit it off? All my fears were unnecessary. He stayed with me for a week, and it was beautiful.

He visited two more times in the next three months, and by then, we were talking marriage. On the second visit, we picked out an engagement ring together, and I organised a party for him to meet some of my friends formally. I thought the proposal was going to be nothing special, I was expecting it after all. But he surprised me. He got down on one knee, and sang a beautiful song he’d composed specially for the occasion. Words cannot describe what I felt at that moment. We got married three months later on Valentine’s Day, Feb 14, 2009.

We’re now three years and counting and each day confirms our love. When I was much younger and single, I assumed I would never get married. I just knew I would make a terrible wife. It wasn’t because I didn’t like marriage, but as I understood it as an institution, and myself as a person, it just didn’t suit me. I feared I would make a terrible wife for some hapless man and drive him crazy. I was too quirky, and I was scared of sharing the passionate, vulnerable part of me with a stranger.

When Atala asked me to marry him, I did not say yes because I had suddenly changed, but because I had found someone I could be free to be myself with and not be defensive about it. Someone who did not demand or expect perfection from me.

And I think that’s the secret.

As a single lady, I shouldn’t have bothered about what kind of wife I would make. The focus should be on knowing who you are and being the best person possible. Of course we can make mistakes, and we may not end up with every person we think we should. However, that doesn’t mean all other men are terrible or that we’re screwed. It is just a process of becoming who you’re meant to be so when your ‘THE ONE’ comes along you’ll recognize him.

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I would like to say a huggeee thank you to Myne for sharing her story.  Please visit her blog Myne Whitman Writes and of course get her books from Amazon.

Till we meet again next week on H.E.A….Remember to leave a comment and

If you are married and would like to share your story  please email tomailsheila@gmail.com and your story could be next 

Lately I have asked myself the question if most people are losing their ‘main culture’ or they are simply modifying what already exists and the only way I could answer this question is to look at my life in the last couple of years.

If you were on a Swiss Airline Flight from Lagos to New York on the 26th of May, 2003 you would have seen a 16-year-old teenage girl staring at a school brochure, flipping pages and with a smile of content pasted on her face. Yup! That girl was me and after so many years, I was finally going to America, I had imagined the streets of New York from watching TV and I couldn’t wait to experience the American culture.

First year of college in the States....lol.. Stop laughing .__.

A month later I was asked to describe New York, and I said ‘This is Sodom and Gomorrah’…for the first time in my life, I had seen girls as young or maybe younger than I was carrying pregnancies, children being rude to parents, the dirty streets of Jamaica, Queens and smelt the foul smell which I learnt was ‘weed’. I was learning to decode a language called Ebonics, why the hell did you have present and past tense mixed together in a sentence and what is it with all the weird names?!…and I would rather say cutlery instead of ‘forks & knives’…These things would never happen in my country Nigeria!

I believed Americans were rude, there was no explanation for the so-called ‘outspokenness’, I grew up as an only child, over protected, too quiet and was in my own imaginative world of books and characters but here in America I was being forced to speak because if I didn’t I would have been treated differently besides losing 10% of my grade for lack of class participation. My professors never understood why I would not look them in the eye when they spoke to me, to them I was not interested, to me I was showing respect…as in, who born me look lecturer for eye now?! Ah ah…my mother trained me well.

Every afternoon, I would sit in the lounge and listen to young girls and boys talk about sex with their different partners. My eyes would widen at the ease of which they spoke especially when a guy named Shawn always wanted to talk about his boyfriend and what they did last night…such freedom was not acceptable, I was already having problems just saying exactly how I felt and now they expected me to talk about my sexual life too?…where I came from, no decent young lady ever spoke without reservations, some things are not for the public.

September 10, 2009, British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Lagos, a young lady in her early twenties excited at the thought of going home and finally being independent. Yup! That lady was me and after completing my Bachelors in America and now a Masters in the UK, I couldn’t wait to be home and be a Lagos big babe…I was going back to the culture I was trained with.

Last Minute shopping before heading home

My friends could not understand when I started complaining some months later, calling Lagos an ‘unbearable city’. My time in America as a teenager and a brief moment in the UK had changed me into a different person. This was no longer my December trips home, I lived here now and I couldn’t fit…I could not fit into the culture in my own country. Why didn’t people ever keep to time? Too many times I had appointments with companies for noon and the meetings would not start until 2pm…This would definitely not happen in America!

As far as I was concerned, Nigerians were insensitive; there was no explanation for what they call ‘bluntness’ or being ‘frank’. I had gotten used to accepting and respecting people’s beliefs and choices, after all I finally got to have a conversation with Shawn about his boyfriend and not feel awkward about it. So why and how, a person could be bullied in public based on appearance and beliefs was what I could not understand …I mean how you gonna call someone names just ‘cos she ain’t skinny…if this were New York, you sure as hell won’t be calling me ‘orobo’!

The topic of the day seemed to be marriage, single ladies were being treated as outcasts and you always had family members wanting to know who the man in your life was. Independence, career goals and all the things that motivate someone were only regarded as secondary in the life of a woman. I could not believe how ladies would bring themselves low; accepting domestic violence and infidelity just for the white dress, the Mrs title and the ring…where I was coming from women took charge, who cared about getting married? Every lady just wants to have fun…and oh I dare you to lay a finger on me, your behind would rot in jail!

You’re probably thinking I am a lunatic now, someone with a split personality and maybe no clear identity. I am now a mix of cultures, despite the initial shock; I learnt to accept what could be accepted, thereby shaping me into who I am today. In other words, I took bits and pieces without forgetting who I was and where I was from.

From America, I ‘learned’ to be outspoken, to stand for what I believed in and never be scared of the outcome. From my country, I ‘learnt’ respect, the consciousness of a public image and really it is possible to blame ‘Lagos traffic’ for every delay…lol

So in essence, I simply modified me

Anyway enough of me…today’s H.E.A series features Titi

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Before sharing my story, I have to say that I had almost given up on meeting anyone that I thought would make a good partner for me. It can be frustrating meeting a lot of “not right” men but when you do meet him, you almost want to scream, “Where have you been all this while?” Really! It feels that way. As you read my story, I hope you continue to believe in love. It does exist.

How I met my husband is not the typical boy meets girl story. We initially met on Facebook. I was living in a town without much life so I spent a good amount of time browsing online out of boredom. We were in the same Facebook group (a religious group) and I was bored one day browsing around when I came across his profile. I initially thought he was a DJ and he was really cute so I added him as a friend, moved on to other things with my random self, and totally forgot about him.

About two weeks later, I saw a status message on Facebook that was chastising people for adding people on Facebook and not even saying anything, lol (Guilty!!!). My mind went to DJ right away and so I decided to send him a message to say hi. We started chatting and after a few messages, he said “I don’t have much patience to type a lot so here is my number, feel free to call me”. I was like Ok! Should I call or not? Anyway, I decided to call – I thought worst case, he is an engineer like myself, we could talk about careers, lol. Our first conversation lasted 5 hours. I don’t even remember what we talked about but I know it was one of the best convos I ever had and by the end of the conversation, I felt like I was talking to a best friend. He was down to earth, funny and too honest. We had so many similarities that we started joking and calling each other Clones.

After a few discussions, I started really hoping that he was single and was super excited when I found out he was (unknown to him of course). I remember talking to my sister about him and she was like “Yeah, I give you six months and I’m sure you will be over him”. By the time we met, two months later in my small boring town, we had been talking everyday and we just decided to take it on from there and one year later on the night before our anniversary, we got engaged (cheesy, right?). I got lucky and my sister ate her own words at our wedding

Regarding advice for young ladies seeking marriage; I would suggest the following –

1)    Keep an open mind with the men you meet, the first connection may not be perfect but maybe the second will. Always give people second chances.

2)    Be outgoing and friendly. Especially in the Nigerian community, people meet each other through family and friends. You could miss out on a great guy by being snobbish/forming too much or staying indoors

3)    Draw the line clearly with the potential guy. I see people playing mind games for too long with someone they want to date. The guy gets away with what he wants and the girl just stays there hoping that he eventually gets it right. If he is not ready for a serious relationship, cut your loss and move on. It is a waste of time hanging around hoping that he sees you the way you want him too. He probably never will. You could be missing out on another great guy checking for you.

4)    Don’t be pressured into marriage. Weddings are beautiful and fun but at the end, you will live with that man for the rest of your life (hopefully). Be very attentive and enjoy the dating experience regardless of the outcome.

5)    From my personal experience, life and marriage is easier when you are married to someone that you share similarities with. My hubby and I have different personalities but also have very similar interests. We draw on each other’s strengths for our differences but have a lot of fun together because we enjoy doing the same things. I think it is important to be able to have fun with your partner. It will make up for the tough times.

6)    Finally before getting married, please know your husband’s expectations of you as his wife and your expectations of him as your husband. That will save you both some headache if you are on the same page with each other’s expectations.

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I would like to say a huge thank you to Titi for sharing her story, please visit her blog on life management and also Bidvos for buying and selling of personal items at a discount.

Remember to leave a comment and

If you are married and would like to share your story  please email tomailsheila@gmail.com and your story could be next 

I hope you enjoy the series as much as I know I will

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Here’s our first story

I don’t feel at all qualified to give any advice on how to meet or patiently wait for “the one” but I’ll share my story and what worked for me.

My husband came into my life in 2007. I say came into my life because we didn’t actually meet until 2008.

Ok I think I’ll go back and start from the very beginning. In 2006, I became internet friends with another female member of a website (www.naijaryders.com) I belonged to. From sharing fashion ideas to music recommendations, we started chatting about life and generally gisting on MSN. No, I didn’t get married to her!

Anyways, fast-forward to 2007. At the beginning of every year, I ask God for one major thing. In Jan 2007, I was twenty-two, about to finish my MBA, had accepted a job offer and had a car so the only thing needed to perfect my life (at least that’s what I thought at the time) was a serious relationship and direction for the future (I was torn between moving back to Nigeria and living in the US). I felt direction would encompass the relationship and decided to ask for just that, “Direction”.

Don’t worry, this is all going somewhere. One day during the year, I was chatting with my friend mentioned earlier and as part of normal girl gist, she asked me what I was looking for in a guy. I told her and she said “eya, my cousin sounds perfect for you but he just moved back to Naija”. In my mind, I was like “oh well, it wasn’t meant to be” and that was that.

November 1st 2007, I realized it was the 11th month of the year and I still didn’t have any sense of the direction I was seeking. In my prayer that day, I reminded God of my request and told him he had 2 months to grant me the direction I was seeking. Two weeks later, I started receiving unknown calls which I refused to answer. Then my friend calls me to say she was visiting Nigeria and had told her cousin about me. She also mentioned that he had been trying to reach me. His name was Uzochukwu which translates to “God’s direction”. Hmmm…

I had dated and talked to a few people during the year and none of them felt right but as always, I was keeping an open mind. When I saw the next unknown call, I answered and the rest as they say is history. We talked for hours and he felt like an old friend. Even though he was in Nigeria, he was calling me more than the guys that were talking to me in the US. I found myself cutting off all the other toasters and saving all my phone time for him. Our desires for the future were compatible. Our family structures were freakily similar. He was my mum’s birthday mate, we had a lot in common, we were attracted to each other and it just seemed right. I had always wanted to move back to Nigeria so his being there seemed like confirmation. Most importantly, I felt that peace that tells you you’re making the right decision and so 1 yr later, we were engaged. Here we are almost 5 years and many adventures later.

So I know that was a bit narrative but I’ll summarize what worked for me.

- I took it to the Lord in prayer! Like you can tell from the story, I took it to him and sought signs from him for every guy I met. I constantly reminded him of my heart desire and none of the other points below would be valid without this one.
- I knew what I was looking for and was be able to articulate and recognize it
- I kept an open mind and didn’t underestimate the internet. It’s nice to have a storybook romance where you locked eyes and knew he was the one, but that doesn’t work for everyone. I had never met my friend who introduced us and could have closed my mind but I didn’t. Now I have an awesome friend (who I’ve now met multiple times by the way) and a loving husband for life (by God’s grace of course)
- This might not have come across in the story but I didn’t front too much. We started talking on November 17th, his birthday was one month later and I sent him a birthday gift in Nigeria. Yep, no shame in my game! Not saying you should be cheap or easy but if you see what you want and he wants you too, no need for too much shakara (do small oh, but not too much!)
- Finally, I had fun and prepared myself while waiting. While I was single and waiting, I got closer to God, got to know myself a lot, travelled to new places, worked hard, dated and generally enjoyed myself.

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I would like to say a huge thank you to Jay  for being the first H.E.A feature on SheilaSpeaks and I absolutely love her story.

Feel free to leave a comment and

If you are married and would like to share your story  please email tomailsheila@gmail.com and your story could be next

‘Ife ayin lio chukwu ya ko ye ayin’

Meaning – what we asked from God is what he gave us (forgive my rather murderous delta-Ibo spelling). Those were the words of my paternal grandmother when she got the news of my birth. It didn’t matter to her if it was a girl or a boy that she had as her first or only grandchild from her only son, all she cared about was the health of the mother and the child. As a woman who had her first and only child at the age of 43, she knew what it meant to wait and lose hope in the name of childbearing and I must say from the stories my mother tells me about her, she was one heck of a woman who didn’t care about the world and what they thought. Before she died, she looked my mother in the eye and told her not to worry about having another child because according to her, when you have too many children, you end up with the good and the bad…she had jokes like that.

 ’Ehen, ki ta ayin ma e we ge nwa’

Meaning – Now we know you have a child (again forgive my spelling). The words of my maternal grandmother as we drove past coca-cola on Agidingbi road in 2001. I was fifteen and my brother had just been born; my grandmother held him with pride and joy because he was officially the child of the family that gave my mother a legit right to be in the family. I watched my mother scold her mother for saying those words and watched her defend herself saying I would get married at some point and eventually change my last name to that of my future husband’s but my brother would carry the name forever. At the age of fifteen, I learned that to the outside world a girl was not considered a child. My maternal grandmother was a woman with eight children, a boy as her first child and never knew what it meant to wait and pray for a child or another child.

If you have never struggled to have a child or seen someone struggle to have a child you won’t understand the pain and torture a woman waiting for the ‘fruit of the womb’ goes through. I watched my mother toil, pray and cry all in the name of having another child and specifically a male child because too many people had made fun of her and my father for having a girl as an only child. It was ok if the only child was a boy but since it was a girl, they would say things like when he dies, his name will die with him so to fight that I included his first name to my last name and made up my mind that I would have a compound last name when I did get married in future.

A certain distant relative would only call to inform my mother when his wife had given him another ‘son’ , after his third son out of five children, my father warned him never to call again. When I was thirteen, my mother’s sister looked me in the eye and said ‘God forbid I have a girl as a first child’ because even though she was having a child out of wedlock, she needed to validate her stay in her boyfriend’s (now husband’s) family…they are now separated.

Believe it or not, these archaic beliefs still exist even in 2012. It’s all about having a son that will carry the name, and I have met guys in their late twenties to their late thirties claim they could not imagine having only girls as children. I listened to a man explain how he was the first son of his home and needed another to carry the name, so he was pissed that after 3 years his wife only had one girl to show for it….he is now 40, divorced with 4 daughters from 3 different women…and the quest continues for him.

A woman, after her 3rd daughter, terminated all her pregnancies till she found out she was going to have a boy. She could not bring another ‘woman’ into her husband’s home and when she brought the boy, they all jumped for joy, celebrated, killed cows and shut down streets…the little boy died a year later due to a medical condition and she is back at it again from hospital to hospital, fertility clinics and beyond…hoping to have another boy.

I am not here to start a debate on what gender is better than the other but it amazes me that people would choose what gender is ‘best’. It is bad enough that women have to take a lot of crap from the media but being discriminated on and being deprived the best in your own home is unacceptable and ridiculous.

Through it all, there was one man I admired – my father, because regardless of what people said to him or his wife, he was fine with having a child…male or female made no difference to him.  It was never about having an heir, or his mother who warned him not to take another wife, or his friends that claimed he spent too much on his only child- a girl, he was just happy that he had a family and he walked about with my mother and I with so much pride. At the age of 41, my brother was born and boy! was he happy because finally he had a boy to gist with while my mother and I went around in our female gossip, talking about shoes, clothes and hairstyles….he finally had someone to watch football with or play matching suits every Sunday. Now he has my 10 year old brother (almost 11) keeping tabs on me and my social life because he knows my mother won’t tell him a thing…lol

I digress..back to the topic at hand

People please appreciate your children, and never make your daughters feel less important.  A child is a child, doesn’t matter the gender and when you do grow old, pray that your child remembers to take care of you and show you love…but if you’ve discriminated all your life, how do you expect them to come running into your hands when they know they were never good enough for you.

]]> http://sheilaspeaks.com/2012/03/28/the_heir_and_a_throne/feed/ 6 thescomiss The Heir & A Throne http://sheilaspeaks.com/2012/03/17/cover-to-cover-welcome-bamz/ http://sheilaspeaks.com/2012/03/17/cover-to-cover-welcome-bamz/#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2012 09:10:44 +0000 SheilaSpeaks http://sheilaspeaks.com/?p=897 Continue reading →]]> It’s a quiet saturday for me while I get ready for projects and finals in a couple of weeks…

I’m a chronic ‘youtuber’ (if there is a word like that ..lol), I go to youtube for anything and everything but right now it’s my love for beautifully done covers that sometimes brings me to tears. Yes I am a sucker for music, not any type but beautifully done music, so today I am sharing my favourite covers at the moment…

and because I love them so much….

and yet another

I woke up to news of the arrival of my first god-daughter….unfortunately I am not by her side in New York but Aunty Sheila is so happy …congrats to my boo Shubby and welcome Bamz…we love you!

what a beauty she is....:)