African model mother picture painting
Happy Monday!!! It’s the first day of the week and I hope that we are all ready to grab the bull by the horns today. Speaking of grabbing the bull by the horns, I found an extremely well written article and wanted to share it with all of you. This article speaks to understanding and taking control of our lives. Read more…
By China Okasi, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: China Okasi, an entrepreneur and frequent commentator on various TV networks, is the founder of the Daily Mocha and executive director of Women of Media.
Moms everywhere like to ask their unmarried daughters dreaded questions like: Why are you still single? Are you married yet? Anyone catch your eye? Especially around Valentine’s Day.
Sure, we’ve seen Carrie Bradshaw agonize over the issue, watched Bridget Jones’ awkwardness around it, heard Amelie’s lamentations au Francais, and we’ve even heard from the lovable Mindy Kaling vis-a-vis her Indian-American perspective. But, we haven’t heard the modern African woman’s story.
Being an unmarried African woman in her childbearing years is like being a manicurist with a hand tremor: very odd and rather tricky. She is expected to marry early and marry well.
African mothers, then, are in a deep crisis. They immigrated to the United States with the hopes that their daughters would get a good education and fulfill the American Dream. But they never considered that, along with having all that modernity, their daughters would, like the rest of America’s young, empowered women, be so “late” in marriage.
Granted, African moms are not alone in their hopes. But still, some of them seem particularly affected. What shall they do?
And she has likely spent a fair amount of time in London via Lagos, a common lifestyle practice for those of formerly colonized African countries. If she has lived down South, say in Texas, for some time, she has likely acquired a George Bush twang for survival sake. If she has taken up a neuroscience residency in Boston (which, of course, she must, if she is African), she might now sound like Matt Damon’s sister. And the minute she wins an accolade in some not-so-diverse department (which, of course, she must, being African), she’ll be labeled the “first African-American” to have done so.
In short, she is global. If she is living in a melting pot like New York, she is global on steroids. Naturally, global girls outgrow such local traditions as arranged marriages, dowry and bride price, which have not been exclusive to African tradition (see the English period drama, “Downton Abbey”) but have certainly lingered longer in homes of African descent.
African moms need to accept that globalism has allowed their daughters to know the world better, and as a result, seek partnerships more wisely. This process of self-determination takes a tad longer to form than setting up an arranged marriage.
Thankfully, my mom, educated in America, a New Yorker and rather global, has not been as insistent on marriage with me. But it seems like only yesterday her older sister, my aunt, warned about the dangers of waiting too long, or being too educated, to be married.
Really, if you’ve watched Maggie Smith’s blunt character, Lady Violet Crawley, in “Downton Abbey,” you have watched my aunt. Despite being an accomplished woman who acquired a Ph.D. later in life, she praised my graceful exit from my doctoral program. I’d just turned 21 when I’d chosen a rather eccentric doctoral study. In her words: “What man would marry a 20-something-year-old Ph.D.-holder?” It would be too intimidating to men.
“I’d do better to tone it down a bit,” she suggested. Which brings me to my second plea to African moms. If you want your daughter to be as happy or happier than you have been in marriage, it makes no sense that she should dumb down the colorfulness of her character, the boldness of her spirit and the fire that made her the “first African-American” this or that in order to appease those who are potentially intimidated by her.
If you’d never match a conservative Christian with a flagrant porn star, it’s not clear why today’s educated woman should edit herself in hopes of attracting a feeble idiot. Yes, she’d be married, but then she’d live only to repress herself for someone else’s ego — and what kind of message would that be for the children?
You see, dear African moms, global girls need global boys. Not intimidated ones.
We can sit and try to make sense of why one kind of match would work or not work for a global girl, but we must concede that love is messy and unpredictable. Love is not like your daughter’s medical career with a blueprint to follow, or like a GPS map that can calculate the distance between Addis and Accra.
Yesterday’s woman wanted marriage. Today’s woman wants love — and marriage, if it turns out that way. Olivia Pope’s character in the TV series “Scandal” spoke quite unapologetically for today’s woman when she said: “I could probably give all this up, and live in a country house and have babies and be normal. I could. But I don’t want to. I’m not built for it. I don’t want normal and easy…and simple. I want…painful, difficult…devastating…life-changing…extraordinary love.”
Extraordinary love? Sometimes, dear African moms, that process is just a little more complicated than marrying your cousin like in the 18th century. So, you’ll just have to be patient.
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From CNN.com
Goalkeepers: Vincent Enyeama (Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israel); Austin Ejide (Hapoel Be’er Sheba, Israel); Chigozie Agbim (Enugu Rangers, Nigeria)
I just saw online that an oil tanker exploded in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, yesterday. Port arcourt is one of Nigerias leading oil producing regions.
A passenger on board a Lagos bound Aero aircraft suspected to be of a strange character caused a bomb scare at the Port Harcourt International Airport on Friday, after he attempted to disembark from the plane which was at the point of taking off. The passenger’s action rose the suspicion of others on board who thought he had planted a bomb in the plane, a reason he had to struggle to disembark before the plane could take off.
Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency says 363 people died over months of flooding across the West African nation and 2.1 million others were displaced.
At the rate at which Nigerian students and indeed Nigerian youth are being killed, the life expectancy is going to sharply drop. This is nuts!! An attack that killed 25 people, mostly students, at a Nigerian school Monday night appeared to be “an inside job” in which the gunmen called out the names of their targets.
Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) — Two weeks ago I visited the Africa Village at London’s Kensington Gardens, to appear on a radio show being broadcast from there. After the interview, I lingered, wandering around the national stands, savoring the Nigerian hip-hop that blared from the speakers. I stood in line to receive an inscription — carefully traced out on paper by a cheerful, elderly man wielding a quill pen — of my name in English and Arabic.
Tragedy struck at 8, Amosu Street, Ijegun, Lagos, on Sunday as a woman identified simply as Iya Anu, allegedly beat her foster son, Seubow, to death for allegedly stealing N50.
Approximately sixteen people were killed this evening when gun men opened fire on a congregation of worshippers in the commercial city of Okene in kogi State. Eye witnesses reported that the the incident happened at the Deeper Life church in the town along the Abuja Lokoja Okene road very close to the State College of Education.
Heavy rains in central Nigeria triggered a flood that washed away houses and killed at least 21 people, government officials said Monday.
A few days ago, a person was recharging his mobile phone at home. … Just at that time a call came in and he answered it with the charging Instrument still connected to the outlet. After a few seconds electricity flowed into the cell phone unrestrained and the young man was thrown to the floor with a heavy thud. As you can see, the phone actually exploded. His parents rushed to the room only to find him unconscious, with a weak heartbeat and burnt fingers.
While the original report of Mr. Viswajith’s death may be true, details about the incident are quite vague, and I could find no subsequent reports that confirm the actual cause of death. The pictures of the hand injury look fishy to me. The hand is placed on the same sheet as the one at the house where the cell phone exploded. Also, in one of the pictures of the hand, you can see material from the upholstery of a sofa. How was this picture? It looks like these pictures were taken at a home, but the report says that the man did in the hospital.
Nigerian will make their Olympic basketball debut in London after beating the Dominican Republic 88-73 in the decisive qualifier on Sunday.
Bomb blasts, gun attacks, airline crashes, kidnappings, industrial-scale oil theft, armed robberies and fraud costing billions of dollars.
Residents of Lagos State were, yesterday, enveloped by flood following heavy downpour that started Wednesday night.
areas in Mafoluku, Oshodi.
The bridge linking Lagos and Ogun states at Ayobo, in Ayobo/Ipaja Local Council Development Area, was submerged.
water from their living rooms.
houses were said to have been flooded.
Tragedy struck at the Apata market in Ibadan yesterday when seven persons, including a pregnant woman and a nursing mother, were instantly killed when a live high tension power cable of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) suddenly cut off and fell on traders at the ever busy market.
