Some Nigerians still think boys should not cook (READ)

 Many years ago, people thought that boys and men shouldn’t be cooking or working in the kitchen. Today, many conservative people still think this way.

In the movie Half of a Yellow Sun, set in 1966, Mama Odenigbo visits her son in Nsukka and finds his male steward cooking in the kitchen. She tells him, “I know you try, but you’re only a boy. What does a boy know about real cooking? Does a boy belong in the kitchen? A boy does not belong in the kitchen.”

Tina says about this issue, “I don’t require my husband to cook in the home. But I let him do it when he wants to. I think there’s nothing wrong with having your man in the kitchen to give you a hand. Besides, some men are fine cooks and they don’t mind at all.

“I feel that your man cooking for both of you shows that he loves you and cares about you, that he’s considerate. Sometimes, I go to the shop and my husband gets home before me in the evening and asks me what we’re eating today. I tell him honestly that I’m very tired and don’t have the strength to cook anything.

He understands and goes to the kitchen to help himself. Some other men would be yelling at me for that.”

“Having your man in the kitchen should not be a requirement. It’s good for men to assist their wife or fiancée in the kitchen”

Bimpe is quite conservative about this. She says, “Having your man in the kitchen should not be a requirement. It’s good for men to assist their wife or fiancée in the kitchen. But we don’t need to actually split the kitchen work with them. Men can assist, but it should be only if they want to. It sounds somehow to ask a man to cook. Imagine if his friends or family come around and meet him in the kitchen when you, his wife or fiancée, are around. Would it be alright? I don’t think so.”

Damilola thinks so. She says, “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s here in Nigeria that it’s a big deal because of the culture. It should be the norm. If a woman does the cooking, why can’t a man also do it? If my husband wants to cook any time, it’s fine. There’s no big deal about a couple sharing the domestic work. That’s how it should be.”

Apparently, some women don’t like men who’re not very useful in the house. Eniola is one of them. She says, “I don’t like men who don’t want to lift a finger to do anything in the house and want their woman to do everything. I once dated a guy. He was so lazy, he needed me to wait on him hand and foot. He couldn’t cook or even light a cooker. If I made him food, he would eat and leave the plates there. He wouldn’t wash his plates or even warm his food. When I go there few days later, the house would be a mess. I just got fed up and quit. But he was a caring person.”

“I have a friend whose husband would bring her a load of gifts and spend a lot of money on her,” says Mercy, “but his idea is that she’s his cook. Even if she’s sick and obviously shivering, he would just say, ‘Sorry, but now I need to eat. So please go to the kitchen and cook me some food.”

Conversely, there are some men who know how to cook and want to cook, but their woman doesn’t think it’s appropriate for their man to cook for them.

“I have a very liberal view about this cooking thing,” Elisha says. “I can cook, and I think it’s completely alright to cook for myself and my lady. But the girl I last dated didn’t think it was alright. She didn’t want me in the kitchen. But I don’t see anything wrong with a man cooking regularly in a relationship or marriage. I think it’s very appropriate.”

George chips in, “When I newly married my wife, I used to get home from work before her. So I’d make the food, and whenever she came back and saw that food was ready, she’d just look at me like — what kind of man is this? But really that was how I was brought up.

“My mother went to stay with her elder brother in the UK at the onset of the civil war. There, she saw that her brother couldn’t cook anything and that each time there was a quarrel, the wife would refuse to cook and then the man would go hungry. This was in those days when there were no eateries everywhere, even in the UK. So my mother determined that all her future sons would know how to cook and would not have to depend on a woman for their cooking. So that’s how she trained me.”

But what do relatives think about men cooking?
Tina says, “When I was pregnant with my first son, my husband would clean the house and cook the meals. I didn’t tell him to. He just did.

“But when my mother found out, she was incensed. Immediately she called my husband and asked him to stop spoiling me because I’m pregnant and let me do my work. So he stopped.”

“I’m very cautious about cooking for my wife,” explains Uche. “The reason is that if you give a woman an inch, they’ll take the whole kilometre. I know some men whose wives would call them at home and say, ‘Dear, I’ll be home late today. So please do eba for us. There’s some soup in the freezer.’

“I cannot take that, because I know if I do that today, it won’t be very long before my wife starts sending me to the market to buy foodstuff.”