Hey, how are you feeling tonight? 

Are you fine? Is your skincare routine yielding? How's the diet going? Do you still run, until you feel like your heart is skittering away from you? How are your selfies coming out these days? 

Are you done reading that book? Will you finish that story? Have you gotten that mail, or has your heart gotten numb to the pang of rejection letters?

Have you applied for that scholarship? Have you sent that CV? How's the deadline going? Do you still love your job, or have you learnt to assimilate to the things you can't change? 

Have you forgiven yourself, for the things you didn't do differently, or do you still live and die being crushed under the weight of regrets? Are the scars healing? Are you in therapy, or at least talking to someone?

Have you told him that he needs to be more accessible? Do you now demand for the love you deserve? Have you stopped stalking people who broke your heart? Have you healed? Will you get yourself up and go for that date? 

Do you still take your medications? Do you still pray? Are you drinking less? Are you coping better with the pressure, and dealing appropriately with your substance abuse?

Above all, do you still hope?

The boys were superior by default – not because they had earned it, but because the power had been given to them by what invisible powers that were. And the girls? They were obviously taught to submit to the boys, no matter what. The girls couldn’t do boy things because they were girls. ‘They had to be girls’. One time, my illiterate aunt almost had a heart attack because my sister didn’t sit like a girl. It was almost as if she had broken the woman code.

Don’t even get me started on the religious studies we had back then. I’m a Christian by the way. While we celebrated a lot of the inspiring male characters in the bible, many of the bravest women in the bible like Esther, Ruth, etc. weren’t really hyped as much. The men were everyone’s role models – they were the ones we revered and spoke about.

In secondary school, we had more male ‘Senior Prefects’ than females. Scratch that, let me rephrase, we had no female “Senior Prefects” in all my six years in secondary school. It seemed that no matter how smart you were, you just had to be a boy to qualify. No one really thought about it. It was what it was. It was… default. Even in the university, course representatives and Student Union Government presidents were male. Whoever made the rules surely made sure everyone followed it to the latter. Women could only aspire to contest for the lower ranks, or ‘as high as’ assistants. ‘It was their place’.

Who gave this power to ‘The Man’? That is one question no one knows the answers to. Well, maybe ‘time’ did. Think about it: all through the years, men have claimed spaces over and over again, so much so that it seems like every bit of space belonged to them. It sort of made it ‘theirs’ to give. Then again, you can only give what truly belongs to you. Now, imagine my entitled African self, walking on eggshells in this fast-changing world. How do I unlearn what I already know?

One time, I went to have breakfast with a female friend of mine who drove and paid for me. While we sat at our table, a male waiter walked up to me and asked if I parked the car outside paying no heed to the lady with me. For all he knew, ‘The Man’ brought the lady to eat. That’s all we know on this continent. The Man’s continent. How do you unlearn that?

It surely is a challenge to adapt to this new world but it wouldn’t be so tasking to teach younger boys a new lesson about a woman’s place. The ‘rules’ may have been written a while back, but we exist to rewrite them.

The African Man must know that a woman’s place exists exactly where his place does.