EKAETTE - THE LAST FUFU BENDER

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Imagine a world created from the most vivid of imaginations; a place where anything and everything is possible, now in that world imagine a fierce and beautiful young woman; an Efik/Ibibio warrior princess. If your mind's eye is anywhere as good as mine then I trust you have a vision of the shapely silhouette of a ‘smoking hot’ young model, early twenties and looking like Obra (@obra_manuel), against the backdrop of blinding white light, wearing nothing but the essential traditional two-piece (of course you can’t see much detail, it’s just a silhouette so please, remember to sensor Obra’s essentials). 

Now imagine this warrior of a princess ‘bending’ a slightly off-white pseudo-elastic solid mass, melding and crafting it so flawlessly mid-air; her stance one from crouching tiger hidden dragon, the entire scene graceful, she looks absolutely divine. This is the last great bender, the mass she mysteriously controls is fufu and her name is Ekaete! Iya (Efik/Ibbio exclamation)! [If your imagination is not so great then find and watch Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Air Bender]. Ekaete is a duchess and a fighter, a greatly attractive irony but a reality nonetheless in her world, she chooses her own destiny and that is why she stands tall as she subdues your imagination!

The world generally still seems to have this predefined role for women; cook, have babies, clean then repeat (sounds more like ‘live, die, repeat’ to me). Most men and even some females believe that women are only here to please their male counterparts and nothing more. ‘Fortunate’ to have been born a man, I ought not to be concerned about this status quo, these traditions if you will (I should actually be happy about them) but after seeing the struggle that many women go through and after hearing the tales of even more female suffering, I am compelled to distance myself from this please-the-man mentality and even kick against it. Some people may now be thinking “Gender inequality, that doesn’t really still exist, does it?” and to them I dedicate the rest of this paragraph.  In some parts of the world today, women are NOT allowed to drive cars, in other parts women have NO say what happens in their lives; they are simply given off once they are ripe or even when they are still unripe (as long a male customer is willing to take), in other places young girls are refused the same opportunities that young boys are afforded; education being the worst of these in my opinion (Ask Malala Yousafzai, the 18 year old Pakistani who was shot by the Taliban for promoting female learning rights). So the answer to your pondering, “Does gender inequality still exist?” is yes, yes it does.

Let me be the first to confess that the predefined roles that many women today are confined to may have existed in the past for certain reasons but I will also be the first to doubt that all of those reasons still exist today. There is a need for us to unshackle ourselves from the fetters of mental slavery and chains of blind acceptance and warmly embrace the freedom of open-minded curiosity so that we may dare to question and truly understand the raisons d’étre - the reasons why things are the way they are. 

I was privileged to have attended a Catholic secondary boarding school where at one point in time we had Rev. Fr. John (SJ) as principle; one day Fr. John told us a story and I will share that story with you; but first... 

Stepping into our own backyard, Nigeria that is, I still hear stories in this 2015, Year of Change, of women with toddlers and suckling infants that are most unfortunate to have become widows and who are now being accused of ‘killing’ their husbands with dark magic - a widower is never accused of killing his wife. These already grieving widows are left with nothing but the burden of raising their children alone while the departed man’s entire extended family descends like a kettle of vultures to squabble for the carcass that is their brother’s property and God forbid that the woman wants to remarry; all hell will break loose! If the reverse were the case, however, a generous widower would probably wait a year or so to mourn before zooming off to the chapel again, the not so generous widower would probably just bring his side-chick into the main house; abi I dey lie?

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I shall take this opportunity to digress slightly as I believe this is the best piece in which to address a certain issue. I tend to hear a lot of things through the grapevine (you know say my connection na wireless) and the most recent ‘hearings’ sent shock and disgust through my system. You remember that song “Ekaette by Maye Hunta”, the lyrics go “Na who give Ekaette belle …” yes I am sure you do. The song is telling us about a man having an affair (consensual insensuals) with his maid. What the grapevine has however fed me, is Ekaetta+; the molestation of young female house-helps (little girls aged 12 to 16) by Senior Bros and Uncus (old men)! What kind of evil spirit is disturbing some people, eh!? These men are surely not younger than 35, they need to be castrated by rubber-band! There is Allen Avenue in Ikeja to quench thirst, bros biko (men please) leave small girls alone! What sickens me the most is when a little girl summons the courage to report her ordeal and she is gruffly reprimanded and cast away with words like “Ashawo, no destroy my husband house for me oo! (Prostitute, don’t destroy my marriage!)”. There is a general willingness to believe whatever a man says while completely disregarding a woman’s testimony, in fact the girl may even be accused of attempting to seduce the man when in fact she was abused; the man always wins. The effects of this kind of trauma can last a life time but if you doubt me just read H by Iammstagram.

[So The Story] A man had a wife who used to cook; she liked cooking for him not that she had to or any chauvinistic situation like that. After a while, he noticed that his wife would buy a large piece of meat from the market and always cut out a particular part and dispose of it. Now, because awon oko wa (our husband) has no culinary skills (typical guy and the real reason we all want to force women to cook) he did not know why his wife was throwing some juicy looking piece of meat away. He summoned courage one day, asked his wife and she answered “That’s what my mother does”. First child is born, mother-in-law comes to visit, husband asks and the new grandma says “That’s what my mother does”. Thankfully, great-grandma is still alive, it is a Yoruba couple, and you know how my owambe people (party people) like to marry early. Great grandma’s 90th birthday is here, they visit, man asks super-grandma and she answers “We did not have freezers in my day so that piece of meat would still end up spoiling so I would just throw it away”. Man turns to his wife and mother-in-law, their expression….flabbagasted! 

The moral of the story is to not follow tradition blindly, is to not continue a custom without at least understanding the basis on which the practice stands or stood if it should now be obsolete (Imagine the quantity of meat that has been wasted through the years, chai see potential suya!). Women were once relegated to the kitchen and menial chores because, in my opinion, men are naturally more built for physical work and so while they were away hunting and cutting trees, their ladies would set to the house but today we have washing machines, vacuum cleaners and chain saws, so we ought to have surpassed the natural bias of nature.

Women are capable of anything and can do more than just subdue our imaginations; they can also subdue reality just as well as any man (sorry I won’t say better, I am still a man). The Disney movie ‘Frozen’ shocked me a bit at its ending, I am sure a lot of people (like myself) were expecting that 'Big brave Prince Charming saves the helpless Princess' ending but boy were we wrong. Disney decided to spice things up, ‘Sister Sister’ saved the day this time. It was like a breath of fresh air to me, something different, a departure from the idea that women need saving and always from men. It seems change has also reached Walt Disney (we should ask Buhari and the APC if they have a hand in this). Anything and everything is possible in our world today, women can be both fierce and beautiful and they ought to be able to do whatever they want. Effik, Ibibio, Kalabari, Nigerian, African or wherever in the world they come from, we must no longer limit women to the traditional role of bending fufu for us men to eat.

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[P.S.] I know this may have looked like a mouthwatering piece to some and others only opened this piece because they thought it was food related so let me refer you to Iya Obra's kitchen (before you swear for me). Also, I remember seeing a handle on twitter, ‘the last Fanta Bender’ or was it just ‘Fanta Bender’ I can’t remember exactly but what I can say for certain is that this name stuck with me and I knew one day it would be useful so this is a shout out to the real Fanta Bender for inspiring my imagination.

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