Wake up beauty, time to hustle

I have had one of those weeks where I do not know whether to cry or laugh. First off, I did not know grown men still send call back messages to women. Please just stop it. Even my 14-year-old son looks for chores to do round the house so he can be paid and manage his airtime needs. Is it some one else's grown son who will send me “please call me thank you?”

As a single woman, you are always a perceived threat to people’s marriages. So you must be managed. You keep hearing stupid comments thinly veiled as encouragement . “God will give you your own man!” (As if you wanted someone’s man) “Just be calm, your husband will come back!” (were you not calm? Come back from what and to what?)

Then the best is all those articles why you should not date a married man. Recently someone forwarded me one. And the writer went on and on about how you would do things alone. That the married man would invest in his wife and not you. I have been married before. So while it is best case scenario that the man would invest in you as his wife, the number of succession cases would tell a different story. But wait, let me tell you another hectic story.

A married woman is minding her own business trying to be the best wife she can be. She gets an email from her husband. Strange. Why didn’t he just call? The email says she needs to get out of his house. He had left in the morning, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing could have prepared her for the shock. She had done everything “right”. Invested in nothing, waited for the bugger to give direction. Now, a number of children later, no savings and boom, no house either.

This is my point. Let us tell each other the truth, let us teach our girls different. While marriage may have been made in heaven, many times we live in hell. Do not get me wrong, I also like the idea of marriage, I really do. But do not make it out to be something it is not. A reward for being a ‘good’ woman. And that being single is some sort of punishment.

We now have married women who own nothing. They are not ambitious at all. Then we have single women whose sole purpose in life is to be a Mrs to anything that walks upright. All of these activities lead to poverty.

My grandma used to say that a woman must own something. Especially a married woman. I add, especially a woman with children. Married or not. Work and have something that belongs to only you on the side. A man is supposed to provide for his family and whoever else he brings on board, but do not just sit there like a mango, have your own kitty somewhere in private (secret).

As a woman, when you know you can feed yourself and your children, you are less likely to stay in abusive situations. When you know whatever the case, you will not sleep outside, you have a certain confidence. Do not be content to be Mrs someone, that now somehow, life will be kinder.

And it is not just because the man can abuse you or leave you, sometimes men make decisions that send the family finances down the drain. How do you bounce back good and faithful wife? Your enemy is not the mpangos or the single women. The enemy is your lack of ambition. Your inability to think ahead. Your trust in a human being that is not you.

Women ought to hustle. Have your things. Quietly.

Stop wasting productive hours in churches praying for men to come back, for husbands to marry you or for mpangos to die. Stop looking for a saviour. You are god (know ye not that ye are gods?). Your number one husband who will never leave you is your money and all the other things that you want will be added unto you. Let those who have ears, hear.

[email protected]