FOURTH ANNUAL
CONFERENCE AND MEETING
London, England
October 31 - November 2, 2003
WOMEN
AND LEADERSHIP IN
URHOBOLAND:
THE
LANGUAGE DIMENSION
By Dr. (Mrs.) Rose Oro Aziza
Department
of Languages and Linguistics
e-mail: roaziza12@yahoo.com
Being paper read at the Fourth Annual Conference and Meeting of Urhobo Historical Society held at Goldsmiths College of London University, New Cross, London Se14 6nw., Oct. 31- Nov.2, 2003.
PREAMBLE
First,
I would
like to thank the Editorial and Management Committee of the Urhobo
Historical
Society for inviting me to this august occasion. I am particularly
grateful to
Prof. Peter Ekeh for the efforts he made to ensure that I came. I also
want to
thank immensely our amiable Executive Governor of
As a
Linguist, I
intend in this paper to look at women and leadership in Urhoboland not
from a
socio-political or economic perspective but I will instead focus on how
we can
exploit the potentialities of language to forge leadership in
Urhoboland and how
women can play a leading role in this regard. I am capitalizing on the
fact
that leadership is multi-dimensional and so, as we try to move forward
in other
spheres of life, we should not lose sight of the importance of our
language.
I
Who is a woman? She can be described as an adult female human being
distinguished from a girl, man or boy. She may be married or unmarried,
may or
may not have children of her own and, in the Nigerian context, the 21st
birthday
marks the beginning of adulthood.
The
woman is
endowed with qualities which make her physically, biologically and
psychologically different from the man. She is soft and gentle,
radiates peace
and love, is tolerant, straight forward and objective in her
judgements, and
shows a great amount of courage even in the face of obvious
difficulties. She
is a helper to the man and complements his efforts as he tries to forge
ahead
in life. She is the mother of society who sees to the proper upbringing
of her
children and thus assures discipline and orderliness of society.
In
virtually every
culture, the woman is regarded as special. In the Christian culture,
the woman
was CREATED by God using one of man’s ribs after the man was FORMED
from dust
and God Himself brought her to Adam to emphasize her tenderness. This
may be
why the man looks rugged and strong while the woman looks gentle and
soft. In
the Muslim religion, she is so delicate that she is not allowed to
stress
herself with any form of exerting duties including shopping. In
Traditional
Africa culture, the woman is spared difficult jobs such as felling of
trees or
climbing trees, e.g. to cut palm fruit from palm trees, etc. Such
jobs
are reserved for the man while the woman busies herself with the less
strenuous
concerns of daily life and living.
However,
although
the woman is supposed to complement the man and together they represent
the
totality of God’s creation, traditional societies the world over are
dominated
by men. The men are the decision makers and the definers of roles in
society,
and of course, they define the roles in their favour. The birth of a
son is
often heralded with pomp and pageantry and from the first day of his
life he is
treated as special. On the contrary, many homes have either been broken
or
become polygamous because the woman is accused of bringing forth only
girls.
In
traditional
Urhobo society, one cannot even place the position of the girl-child
and woman.
As a girl child, she does not enjoy equal opportunities as her brothers
in
terms of education, self assertion and psychological development. In
the face
of scarce resources, the parents would prefer that the boy goes to
school
instead of the girl, even if she is the more intelligent one. Even if
her
father can afford to send her to school, one may hear comments like
“too much
book will drive the men away from her”. As a married woman, she is
considered
to be “another man’s child” by members of her husband’s family and the
larger
society. The father of Urhobo music, Chief Omokomoko Osokpa, once sang “Aye komo
rohwofa me mrere vughe” meaning “I have realized that a woman is
someone else’s
child.” She is not party to major decision, some of which may
affect
her as an individual; she is not entitled to any form of inheritance
from her
husband’s asserts at his demise even if she contributed to their
acquisition,
and even while he is alive, his brothers and sisters have more right
over his
property than his wife. Her major responsibility is to manage the
home and
bring up her children as best she can and, when they are successful,
the man
gets the credit but if they are not, he is absorbed of any contribution
towards
their failure and the discredit goes to the woman. Moreover, the level
of
success and status of the man determines the woman’s level of
acceptance: if he
is successful, she becomes a good woman although he takes the credit
for hardwork;
if, however,, he is not successful, the woman is accused of knowing the
source
of his problem including being accused of witchcraft. Up till recently,
a woman
who tried to assert herself in traditional Urhobo society, be it in
business,
politics, education, or any other field of human endevour was
considered by the
man as being confrontational, too vocal, a woman to be avoided by any
sane
woman, etc. Thus, traditional Urhobo society presented a culture
that
could be considered by any modern woman as repressive, one which did
not allow
the woman to grow and attain her God given potentials to any reasonable
degree.
Gladly, times have
changed and are still changing worldwide and our Urhobo society is not
being
left behind. The Federal Government of Nigeria is a signatory to
various International
Conventions which deal with the emancipation of the girl-child and the
woman. The heightened awareness on the gender equity issue has
largely
resulted from the advocacy and the work of a growing number of NGOs
lead mainly
by professional women and human rights groups. Many of these NGOs
have
branches in Urhoboland which help sponsor projects and programmes aimed
at
improving the educational standards and the quality of life of the
girl-child
and the woman in the society. The Delta Manna Foundation, a pet
project
of the State Governor’s wife, Chief (Mrs.) Nkoyo Ibori has touched the
lives of
very many women and girls. Many individuals and associations have set
up
cooperative societies and small scale businesses to help women grow
economically, socially and psychologically. Although a lot still needs
to be
done, Urhobo women today have excelled and are still excelling in
business,
politics, government, medicine, law, academics, etc. In politics, of
the three
female state commissioners recently appointed into the Delta State
Executive
Council, two are Urhobo. Urhobo women hold the following positions in
Government among others: the Head of Delta State Civil Service, the
Accountant-General of the State and the Chief Justice of the State, the
Chief
Judge of the Delta State Customary Court of Appeal. In the organized
private
sector, Chief (Mrs.) Cecilia Ibru is the Managing Director of Oceanic
Bank Plc,
the first bank to introduce on-line banking in Nigeria, she was also
rewarded
with an honorary Doctorate Degree of Science only last week by the
Delta State
University. In academics, Urhobo has female professors who walk
shoulder to
shoulder with their male counterparts anywhere in the world. We can go
on and
on. As a result of these successes, many parents and husbands now
encourage their daughters and wives to forge ahead in life and delve
into
fields that hitherto were reserved for men. Johnson Adjan one of our
popular
musicians in one of his songs captured the situation aptly thus:
Oke rawanre ru me yere wan e
– e
Eshare da wan nu eya me kekako
e – e
Oroke nana ru me yeri vwa e –
e
Eya doda me ayen ji. Dineme e
– e
Oshare rerhi me mi kese ruona
re e
This
tells us that
in the days of old, the men bought the cutlass and cleared the bush
while the
women planted the crops and worked for their men, but that in modern
times, the
women are buying both the cutlass and the file to sharpen it, an
indication that
they can now both clear the bush and plant the crops. i.e., work for
themselves
and so decide their fate because they are no longer ready to continue
with past
practices. They are no longer the docile sex symbols of the past but
are now
part of the decision making process. How and why they got to this stage
is not
relevant; what is relevant is that parents now have cause to be proud
of their
daughters as they are of their sons.
II
Having
considered
who the woman is, I wish now to turn my attention to the issue of
leadership
and how women can contribute to purposeful leadership in Urhoboland.
Several
scholars have examined the problem of central leadership and
identified
factors such as ancestral history and our republican personality as
some of the
causes of lack of central leadership in Urhoboland and they have
suggested ways
by which the problems can be alleviated. Otite (1993) gives eight
qualities of an Urhobo leader among which are that he must be a full
blooded
Urhobo with both parents being Urhobo, must be non-sectional in terms
of
sub-ethnic or territorial interest, a shrewd manager of diverse
personalities
as human resources, an initiator of development projects and must be a
democrat
who is tolerant of a variety of opposing opinion. It is clear that he
assumes
that an Urhobo leader must be a man. However, he suggests that
in the light of our
democratic and republican character and home grown personalities, as
well as
the reality of various mutually reinforcing key areas of life and
experience in
contemporary
III
This is where the
women come in to contribute their quota not only to be part of this
pool but to
also produce men and women who will make up this pool.
Leadership
is
multidimensional and it is an environmental phenomenon which cannot be
achieved
in isolation of the people and society for which it is meant. For there
to be any effective leadership,
communication is paramount and both the leaders and the lead must be
able to
speak the same language and articulate their thought processes and the
key to
any effective communication is a common language.
Let us
now examine
some of the functions of language in human society. Language is an
invaluable
instrument for human communication, the chief means by which humans
express
their thoughts and ideas to others and through which they share
in the
mental process of their fellowmen. It is the custodian of a people’s
culture
and tradition, i.e., an inalienable part, through which they are able
to
identify themselves and transmit their culture from one generation to
another. Language is both a component of culture and the central
network
through which the other components are expressed.
Language
is an
environmental experience, i.e., the language of given society is an
embodiment
of the experiences of the people of that society and since no two
societies
share exactly the same experience, they are bound to have different
words to
express different experiences. This explains why the Eskimos have words
for
different kinds of snow which the English do not have; the English have
words
for different types of motor vehicles which the Urhobo do not have, and
the
Urhobo have words for different categories of wives, avwebo, ayeruku, avwirovwe,
(corresponding to favourite wife, inherited wife, unfavoured wife,
respectively) which the English do not have. Consider the Yoruba who
have a
variety of greetings corresponding to virtually every kind of activity
a person
may be engaged in whereas the English culture stresses that each person
minds
his/her business. Although every culture, tradition and religion
recognizes the
need for respect for elders, the African culture demands it. In the
Urhobo
culture, for instance, when a child gives a glass of water to an older
person,
he is expected to kneel and say ‘miguo’ whereas in the English culture,
it is
the older person that says ‘thank you’ to the younger person. A
person’s
culture, imparted to him through his language gives him the distinctive
characteristic that makes him an Urhobo, English or French.
However,
a child’s
knowledge of his language as well as the culture that goes with it is
directly
related to the degree of his integration into that culture. Since
language is the chief medium of cultural transmission, if a child grows
up with
little or no knowledge of his supposed mother tongue, he may be able to
communicate quite fluently for everyday purposes in a lingua franca,
but he
will be at a loss for knowledge of the deep culture of his
people. In
Urhoboland, useful as Pidgin is, it does not carry a culture into which
an
Urhobo child can enter deeper with the passing years. The Urhobo
language
does and anyone who has studied Urhobo culture in some depth will agree
that we
have a culture that is rich, subtle and interesting. To express
elements
of a people’s culture through the medium of another language always
produces
disastrous results. The close relationship between language and
culture
is aptly captured in this statement by Sapir (1923) cited by Polome
(1987:462):
Language
is also the
chief medium of education and linguists agree that a child learns
fastest and
best when taught in his mother tongue. The Ife Primary Education
Research
Project (1970 – 1978) showed clearly that when a child is taught in his
mother
tongue (assuming that the mother tongue is also the language of the
home), he
proceeds from the known – a familiar language – to the unknown –
reading,
writing and all the other skills that he learns at school, but if he is
faced
with both an unfamiliar language and the new skills, his progress is
both
slower and restricted to rote learning rather than to reason and real
absorption of knowledge and its application to practical and
intellectual
problems. As evidenced in the International African Institute (IAI)
statement
of policy as cited by Essien (1993:4) thus:
A child’s native language is
called his mother tongue’ not for want of adequate vocabulary but to
bring to
the fore the role of the mother in helping the child express ideas
about
himself and the world around him and in carving out an identify for
himself in
his native language. Science tells us that from about sixteen
weeks of
gestation, the foetus hears and reacts to voices and which voice is the
likely
to hear more than that of his mother?. After birth, and
particularly
during the formative years, the child interacts most with his
mother.
Therefore, the mother tongue is supposed to be the child’s first
language, the
language that shapes his entire personality, his ways of thinking,
acting,
understanding, reasoning, expressing himself, and later, when he is
expected to
contribute to the development of his community or nation, he does so
only to
the extent that his language directs him. Thus, a child develops
his
language and his personality right from the cradle.
How
can leadership
be enhanced through language? Language can be used to create
relationships as
well as break them, to lead and mislead people and it is the chief
ingredient
for uniting people. The story of the
Let us
now examine
some of the effects of English and Pidgin on modern day Urhobo language
and culture.
Linguistically,
rather than Urhobo interfering with English and Pidgin in the speech
patterns
of most Urhobo youths, the reverse is the case. A number of
Urhobo sounds
are being dropped and replaced by those of English and Pidgin.
For
instance, Urhobo has the following sounds which do not exist in Pidgin
or in
English.
a)
The voiceless palatal plosive spelt as ‘ch’
as in Ochuko
‘personal name’
b)
The voiced palatal plosive spelt as ‘dj’
as in Odje
‘personal name’
c)
The voiced velar fricative spelt as ‘gh
as in Aghogho
‘personal name’
d)
The
voiced labio-dental approximant spelt as ‘vw’ as in Rukevwe ‘personal
name’
In the
speech
patterns of may youths, since they cannot produce the sounds mentioned
above
because they do not exist in Pidgin or English, i.e., the languages
they are
more familiar with, they tend to substitute them with other sounds and
so one
commonly hears:
*Oshuko
instead of ‘Ochuko’
*Oje
instead of ‘Odje’
*Agogo
instead of ‘Aghogho’
*Rukewe
instead
of ‘Rukevwe’. (Note
that ‘Rukewe
means ‘blessed you’ while ‘Rukevwe’ means ‘blessed me’. The other
renditions
are meaningless)
In fact, Prof. Kay Williamson
(personal communication) reports a similar experience with some of her
Ijo
students. The Abua dialect of Ijo has ten vowels and operates a
vowel
harmony system but many of her Abua students can only produce the seven
vowels
found in Pidgin thereby gradually reducing a ten-vowel system to a
seven-vowel
one.
Moreover, Urhobo, like most Nigerian languages, but unlike Pidgin and English, is a tone language. Tone plays both lexical and grammatical functions. It is similar in function to the consonant and vowel sounds such that a change in tone can result in a change in the meaning of words, for example:
a)
ùkpè ‘year’
˜ úkpè ‘bed/bedroom’
b)
ènì ‘elephant’ ˜
èní ‘headpad’
c)
Ògó ‘bottle’
˜ Ógō ‘in-law relationship’
In terms of grammar, tone is used to signal tense, e.g.,
a)
ò
dámè
‘he drank
water’
(past)
b)
ŏ
dàmè
‘he drinking
water’
(present)
c)
ô
dámè
‘he must/should drink water’ (future)
Tone
is used to
mark aspect and the intonation of an utterance is superimposed on its
tones,
e.g.,
a)
ò dámè
‘he drank
water’
(statement)
b)
ò dámè
‘did he drink
water?’
(question)
c)
ò dámèé
‘he didn’t drink
water’
(negative)
d)
ò dámèè
‘didn’t he drink
water?’
(negative question)
Besides,
tone can
be used to differentiate whole sentences. With due respect to
our
dear Governor, his middle name can mean any of the following:
a)
ònànèfè
‘This is wealth’
b)
ònànéfè
‘This is more than wealth’
b)
ònànèfè
‘Is this wealth?’
d)
ònànèfè
‘Is this more than wealth?’
Such
subtle
distinctions would however be available only to the users of the
language and
failure to recognize them could create ambiguity which could lead to
misunderstanding.
In
addition to
linguistic elements, a lot of our literature is being lost Urhobo is
well
endowed with all sorts literary resources such as poems, plays,
proverbs
folktales, etc that are being left to rot away because of lack of
use.
There are praise songs and dance drama which extol excellence and
hardwork and
songs which chastise laziness and bad behaviour. There are
satires,
comedies, tragedies, which not only teach about our history but also
help to
check behaviour in civil society. Nowadays, a public occasion is
not
complete without the Urhobo orator who comes to perform and display his
prowess
in the language to the admiration and entertainment of the audience.
We
submit here
that it is the parents that must help the children acquire their
language and
this should begin early in life. Every one of us here who can
speak
Urhobo acquired it from his/her parents as the language of the home. It
is
interesting to note that many well educated Urhobo middle aged men or
women
today who are making their mark in every field of human endeavour can
speak
Urhobo well even though many of them grew up outside Urhoboland, in
Ukane
country, where the people of the land were non-Urhobo. These
people
acquired Urhobo from their parents and siblings because it was the
language of
the home and the settlements in which they lived. However, the
acquisition of Urhobo early in life did not in any way affect their
education
in English and, as mentioned earlier, the Ife Primary Education Project
(1970 -
1978) has demonstrated that a child is better for it if he is well
acquainted
with his mother tongue before proceeding to school. How many of us tell
stories
that we heard from our parents to our children? Such folktales, apart
from
entertaining, teach morals necessary for the proper upbringing of the
child and
above all help to develop communication skillsin the language. Such
stories are
more relevant to children growing up in Urhoboland than the adventures
of Tom
and Jerry. I have personally observed (and this has been confirmed by
Prof.
G.G. Darah (personal communication)) that in the courses dealing with
Urhobo
language and culture which are mounted in the Department of Languages
and
Linguistics, Delta State University, Abraka, the Igbo speaking students
are
doing relatively better than the Urhobo students and this may not be
unconnected with the fact that most of the Ibo students can speak Igbo
fluently
and so when faced with another Kwa language like Urhobo, there are a
lot of
similarities which can be transferred from one to the other. This is
not so
with English or Pidgin where the differences are much wider. It is
naive to
think that because a child has to learn in English at school, it is
necessarily
better to expose him to English right from birth. Many of us
forget that
no matter the amount of English we can speak, we are not native
speakers and so
not the real models our children need. It is like the case of the
blind
leading the blind.
On the
social
side, as has been commonly reported in the literature, many Africans
have a
poor image of their languages and cultures and regard European
languages and
cultures as being more useful and prestigious (see, for example,
Bamgbose 2000
and Tadadjeu 2002) and the Urhobo, particularly the youths, are no
exceptions. Studies have shown that in many of our towns and
cities,
e.g., Warri and Sapele, most youths cannot speak Urhobo beyond the
basic
greetings and they do not display any appreciable keenness in
identifying with
elements of their culture. True, a mastery of English will give us
access to
the world but this does not require us that we dump our language in the
process. The trend in modern times is for youths to take over
leadership but
that leadership cannot be effective of the leaders and the lead speak
different
languages and have different thought processes. A people’s
language is an
embodiment of their culture and all that makes them unique. The
obvious
poor attitude of our youths towards our language manifest in their
disregard
for aspects of our culture. Take culture out of a group of people
and you
take away their identify.
IV
The Way Forward
Ekeh (2001) has pointed out
to us that before the British arrived in our land, our people engaged
in
politics by deciding on how to govern themselves and they also engaged
in the
administration of the policies and decisions arrived at by the
political
community. This means that it was not the British that taught us
about
politics and administration; these were already in place before they
came.
There were defined roles for adults as well as for youths, for men as
well as
for women. There was direct participation of everyone in village and
clan
assemblies where vital policy and administrative decisions were taken
and those
who absented themselves from such gatherings without serious reasons
were
usually sanctioned and lost social esteem. The youths thus had ample
opportunity to learn the tenets of the society from the elders and of
course
such assemblies were conducted in the Urhobo language. I am not a
historian but
from the stories told to me by my parents and grandparents, I believe
that that
was when Urhoboland enjoyed the greatest amount of unity of purpose in
community life.
Leadership,
as
earlier mentioned, is an environmental phenomenon which cannot be
achieved
without language and language develops as part of the maturational
process of
the child. The child belongs first to a home before he is seen as
a
member of society. Scripture tells us in the Book of Proverbs to
train up
the child in the way that he should go and when he grows old, he will
not
depart from it. Women are the mothers of society, the
agents of
discipline and good upbringing and so they have a role to play in
ensuring that
Urhobo produces good leaders who are brought up right from the cradle
to know
that the progress and development of the Urhobo nation rests on their
shoulders.
Nowadays, in an attempt to clear the bush and plant the crops, they
have less
time for the home and so the amount of interaction between mother and
children
is greatly reduced when compared to the times of old. The stories
that
our mothers used to tell us, the songs and dances they used to teach
us, etc,
are now alien practices. We must try to revive them so that the
children
and youths will be able to appreciate early enough the tenets of the
society
for which they would be future leaders.
The
future of
Urhobo is in our hands, especially those of us who are literate and
formally
educated in the western oriented civilization. This millenium is
full of
challenges, prospects and problems for small languages like
Urhobo. It
has been predicted that more than 60% of languages worldwide would die
before
the end of this millenium. Are we ready to count Urhobo among
those
languages that would die? The answer, I guess, is No. Therefore,
we must
all join hands to uplift the status of Urhobo and this means taking
some
important steps such as the following:
1. Women must
help
the young ones to learn to respect, tolerate and take pride in
identifying with
the Urhobo language, literature and culture. There is nothing
linguistically or culturally wrong with Urhobo; the problem is with the
uninformed attitude of our people towards their language and
culture. If
we persist in this unhealthy attitude, we will continue to suffer from
what
Prof. Essien has termed ‘linguistic under-nourishment’, a condition in
which
our people know neither the English language nor their own native
language
well. This does not in any way mean that we should not take the
acquisition of
world languages, literatures and cultures seriously as we go about our
daily
lives and living as members of the global village known as the modern
world in
which bilingualism and multlingualism remain a great asset. As
times
change, irrelevant practices in our culture would fade away while
others would
be modified to reflect the needs of society. Let us not forget
that
English, once regarded as a vulgar and uncultured tongue during the
Norman conquest
is today one of the most prestigious world languages.
3. Women
organisations
can help by organizing holiday camps where Urhobo language and culture
can be
taught to the children, youths and adults who want to learn. This
will
not only keep our children out of trouble, bad company and irrelevant
satellite
programmes but will enable them become more acquainted with their own
language
and culture. Such holiday programmes should teach all the communication
skills
of listening, speaking, reading and writing and, in addition, be
accompanied by
interesting cultural displays and drama to catch the attention of the
learners.
They can also be taught aspects of Urhobo technology and medicare.
Participation in such programmes will go a long way in making our
children
become more functional literates.
4. Although it
is
being encouraged here that women should take the lead in developing our
leaders
through the use of language, it is also true that much success cannot
be
achieved without the support of our men. In a survey I conducted
in Warri
and its environs recently, I found out that in homes where Urhobo is
the medium
of communication between parents and their children, it is because the
fathers
encourage it. Where the mother uses Urhobo and the father English
(although both parents are Urhobo), the children are able to understand
utterances in Urhobo but prefer to respond in English. Yes, the
native
language of the child is called his mother tongue because the mother
spends
more time with the child than the father but the father still sets the
pace for
the child to follow. If he shows a keen interest in his language
and
culture, the children will follow suit. There is no point trying
to wish
away the Urhobo culture: it is far better to accept it and look for the
creative possibilities it has which can be developed to help move the
Urhobo
nation forward. The fate of the Urhobo language and the culture
that it
carries lies in the hands of every Urhobo man and woman. If we
wish it to
grow and develop, we must take steps not only to use it ourselves but
to ensure
that our children are adequately exposed to it and retain it as the
language of
the home to pass it on to the next generation. If parents neglect
to use
of the language with their children, the children will have little or
no
knowledge of their own language and culture and in a few generations,
the
language and the culture it carries will die out. We believe that
when
children are well equipped with the hopes and aspiration of their
people,
embodied in their language and culture, they are better prepared to
perform the
leadership roles expected of them. There is so much literature,
so much
science, so much technology, all that can make the Urhobo nation the
envy of
all waiting to be tapped and exploited for the general good of all and
the key
that can open the door is the language. Before we cry out that
Government
has done or has not done this or that, let us try to put our house in
order
first. United we stand, divided we fall and the key to our unity is in
the
language.
Allow
me to end this
talk by forwarding to our women a letter from God to women. It
was
forwarded to me by my sister, Mrs. Ese Green, who is based on the
When I created the heavens
and the earth, I spoke them into being.
When I created man, I formed
him and breathed life into this nostrils.
But you, woman, I fashioned
after I breathed the breath of life into man because your nostrils are
too
delicate.
I allowed a deep sleep to
come over him so I could patiently and perfectly fashion you.
Man was put to sleep so that
he could not interfere with the creativity.
From one bone, I fashioned
you.
I chose the bone that
protects man’s life.
I chose the rib, which
protects his heart and lungs
and supports him, as you are
meant to do.
Around this one bone, I
shaped you….I modeled you.
I created you perfectly and
beautifully,
Your characteristics are as
the rib, strong yet delicate and fragile
You provide protection for
the most delicate organ in man, his heart.
His heart is the center of
his being, his lungs hold the breath of life.
The rib cage will allow
itself to be broken before it will allow damage to the heart.
Support man as the rib cage
supports the body.
You were not taken from his
feet, to be under him, nor were you taken
from his head, to be above
him.
You were taken from his side,
to stand beside him and be held close to his side.
You are my perfect angel……
You are my beautiful little
girl.
You have grown to be a
splendid woman of excellence, and my eyes fill when I see the virtues
in
your heart.
Your eyes…… don’t change them.
Your lips – how lovely when
they part in prayer.
Your nose, so perfect in form.
Your hands so gentle to touch.
I’ve caressed your face in
your deepest sleep.
I’ve held your heart close to
mine.
Of all that lives and
breathes, you are most like me.
Adam walked with me in the
cool of the day, yet he was lonely.
He could not see me or touch
me.
He could only feel me.
So everything I wanted Adam
to share and experience with me, I fashioned in you; my protection and
support.
You are special because you
are an extension of me.
Man represents my image,
woman my emotions.
Together, you represent the
totality of God.
So man….treat woman well.
Love her, respect her, for
she is fragile.
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Fafunwa,
Aliu Babs,
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Onoge,
Omafume.
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E.C. 1987.
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