Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My Interview with TELL Magazine



I did an interview with TELL magazine earlier in the year, and I was really honoured to be featured in the edition for last week! You can read the attachment, or go HERE to read the full magazine from the TELL website.

Special thanks to Tundun Adeyemo, who did the interview.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Poem - All That She Is

When you marry a woman
You marry the little girl she used to be
The girl with a sense of fun
The girl with a penchant for mischief
The little girl who had dreams of Prince Charming
The little girl who had no restrictions in her imagination
The girl whose love was pure and innocent
The girl whose eyes sparkled like stars
The girl who played with her mum’s make up and trinkets
The girl who couldn’t wait to grow older
Whose cute dimples, belied the confidence beneath the exterior

When you marry a woman
You marry the teenager she used to be
The one who was curious about life and everything
The one who formed her opinions, and changed them again
The one who wrestled with expectations and priorities
The one who tested the boundaries
The one who struggled and started making mistakes
As she started discovering who she really was
Physically, mentally, emotionally and socially
While trying to balance what others expected her to be.

When you marry a woman
You marry her in the prime of her youth
When her beauty is radiant
When her curves are supple and appealing
And she bears your children
You marry a woman with strengths and weaknesses
You marry a friend who has your back
You marry someone who will build with you
With her strength and courage
You marry someone who is increasingly confident about her abilities
Even as she worries whether she is doing a good job
Being a wife, mother, daughter and friend

When you marry a woman
You marry the person she will become
In her later years, her lessons learnt
Even though her outward beauty will fade
But her inner spirit remains radiant
Maturing everyday like fine wine
She has gathered experience over the years
She has learnt to temper her words with wisdom
She has learnt to take the thorns with the roses
She has learnt to pick her battles
And she has rearranged her priorities

When you marry a woman
You discover more about her everyday
Because she is always evolving
Time passes, and the seasons change
But you will always learn something new about her
She will never stop amazing you
She is woman

(c) Tolulope Popoola

Published on Femme Lounge

On Life: Domestic Staff

I've been thinking about the way the vast majority of middle and upper class Nigerians treat their domestic staff - people like housemaids, gatemen,/security men, drivers, gardeners and so on. The other day, I was discussing the issue with some friends and we all agreed that, in general, they were treated in an appalling way.

From what I've observed, they are treated like second-class citizens in the homes where they work. They often don't share the same living quarters with the rest of the family. Or they are given the worst spaces possible. They use a different set of utensils to eat, for some reason. They are given cast-offs of the children's clothes to wear.

Then they are spoken to in awful ways. Sometimes I would visit a friend and she would be speaking with me nicely and politely, and then turn around to use a harsh and intimidating tone on her housemaid, and call her abusive names. I don't understand it. Sure you can use a firm tone when you are giving instructions to an employee but is there a need for the constant stream of abuse? Would any of us take that kind of attitude from our managers at the office?

Which brings me to my next point. Domestic staff have little or no employment rights. They don't have regular working hours, due to the nature of their work. They also don't have any benefits. They don't have holidays, they don't get days off, they don't have anything called a social life. They don't get sick days off or sick pay. Sometimes they don't go to school and can't learn any skill while they are working for their masters. I'm sure none of us professional ladies would ever imagine working for a company that didn't give us any time off or holidays, or allow us any social life. We would protest, but we give the same treatment to our own employees. I have even heard women complaining bitterly when it's Christmas time, and their maid wants to take a couple of weeks off to go and visit her family. It's almost like, she's not human and she doesn't need time off to go and see her family. Never mind that madam has time off from her own job so that she can enjoy her Christmas holiday.

Furthermore, the physical violence towards them is just horrible. Women who won't raise a hand to strike their own children seem to see no qualms in beating their maids to a pulp at the slightest offence. For some reason, the maid always deserves a beating whenever she makes a mistakes, whereas their children do worse things, but they don't get beaten. Why? What makes it different? Would any of us tolerate physical abuse at work? Why do we think it is okay to hit our domestic staff?

The funny thing is that these mistreatments are not limited to any type of woman. I have witnessed women from all spheres of life mistreating their domestic staff. Even women who should know better, like pastor's wives, lawyers or human right's activists. We can speak out against so many injustices in the world, but for some reason, we turn a blind eye to the ones we do right under our nose.

We can argue that we can't trust them, they are rogues, thieves and what not. But for the amount of money they are paid, and the useful service they provide to us, most of our domestic staff don't get treated well. So of course, they don't have much of an incentive to behave properly. Domestic staff do a very difficult job around the house. They allow many professional women the ability to have a career and a social life. Yet we don't appreciate what they do and the assistance they provide.

Has anyone tried to put themselves in their maid's shoes? Think about it for a moment. You are a young girl who should be in school. But you're taken away from your family and sent to the city to work for a strange family. You could be scared, lonely and homesick, but you have to put all those emotions aside and get on with it. You have to endure working from sunrise to sunset every single day of the week. You must be at the beck and call of your employer at all times. If you are really lucky you will end up working for a nice family that will treat you well. But the majority are treated harshly by everyone in the family - from the madam, to the oga, to the children. And you dare not complain. In fact, who will you complain to? Who will believe you, if you say your madam is mistreating you, or your oga is making sexual advances towards you? The best you can do is to run away. But where does that leave you? Out of a job, broke and lost in a big city. Or worse.

I hope we can all start making some small changes to the way we treat our maids. It may just be a small change we make everyday, but it would make a whole world of difference to someone. I would like to imagine a world where housemaids can point to the time they spent with their madams and say that those years were one of the best times of their lives.

Food for thought.