Stories

Shaped by Women and Advocate for Women: Odili Linus Chukwunweike

My name is Odili Linus Chukwunweike, from Anambra state, the Eastern region of Nigeria. I was born into a polygamous family, and when I say polygamous, I didn’t mean two, I mean a family of three women married to a single man who happens to be my father, and my 13 siblings.

My first stepmom, my father’s first wife, gave birth to 7 daughters; I didn’t grow up to know her very well; all that I had known were hearsay. My mom gave birth to 5, only my kid sister and I are alive. My other stepmom, father’s third wife, whom I call a superwoman, gave birth to healthy five children. Among 14, I was child number 7 and the first “SON” Probably the reason my dad would marry my mother and later my other stepmom, he needed sons.

I grew up in a society that emphasizes the male child more than it would do to the girl child. In this society, boys and girls are not raised and nurtured equally. Rather than teaching us to be a kind human, in our community, boys grew to become traditional men; Girls grew to become traditional women. The girls are nurtured to understand that they would become domestic instruments; hence they are taught household chores. While boys were raised to engage the larger society, and fearless, they must be a man. Girls taught to be loving, neat, apologetic, accepting, submissive, emotional, and forgiving. Boys lack those life fundamentals to becoming human beings, never allowed to cry, to get tired, to apologize, etc. They were to be men. Girls were taught to follow while boys were taught to lead. Girls were taught to aspire to marriage first, while boys were taught to aspire to greatness first. In this society, the male child’s care and training are more important than the girl child. The girls are considered domestic objects and would need no much exposure other than the circumstances of the kitchen.

Twenty years ago, in 2000, my dad passed. And in our culture, being the first son meant numerous responsibilities so much that people would find it difficult to exit from it. The first daughter would have a lesser responsibility, only thought to be fragile and has not much to do. I was between 5-7, we don’t usually have a birth certificate, so my date of birth was linked to the event. In our culture, if a husband dies, another male relative would have to take control of the wife or wives, it is believed that the woman/women alone cannot fend for themselves and their children. And, in that situation, I was expected to take control. Fortunately, my moms, the superwomen, blatantly refused it. And I was saved from what would have been a shame to me to have my uncle been the biological father of my siblings. We come from a farmer’s family. Nearly after four months of my father’s demise, I realized the injustice that was prevalent to my mothers and women in my family. We were deprived of more than half of my father’s land. My Big uncle wasn’t nearby, and when he would later learn about it, we would relocate to another area.

I had a nickname when I was little younger, and it was actually in the form of mockery, Omeka NWANYI, which means Tomgirl, and that was because others thought me as fragile and weak and would always act in a way seen as Girlish manner. I was never comfortable with some of those ascription on what a girl or a boy should be. I used to cry a lot; I apologized, I would love both human and nature, I loved to cook, to sweep, to fetch water from the stream and so many other things which I had thought would make me human. I was not so conscious about all these, and it’s meaning until I grew a bit older. I had experience in primary school that brings tears to my eyes even today. We were to elect a class monitor. A girl was among the selected contestants based on academic performance. I wasn’t the best. A girl was, and she also won the election. But my class teacher would announce to be the leader while she would be the assistant. She was demoralized, and she is no longer alive. I would have apologized if I had known she would die a few months later.

Later, when I had gained much knowledge based on personal experience and learning from women I understand that I am a feminist, I had to, at least I would lead some debates on the importance of women education in my secondary school. To speak more about what I felt is an injustice to society, I and a few other like minds founded a community development organization called “ANAM TRANSFORMATION MOVEMENT.” We run the series of programs: VALUE REORIENTATION, WOMEN EMPOWERMENT, and GIRL CHILD EDUCATION. I have represented female issues on many platforms and visited secondary schools teaching female students the importance of discovering their potentials. To support my message and make it a global, I aim to develop a website, a femme blog where I would write on sensitive issues and motivational writings. My first published eBook on Amazon titled “A WOMAN OF PRIDE; THE GIRL WHO REDEFINED WOMANHOOD” was my little effort to correcting some of these anomalies.

I engage people daily, discussing some of these issues. Despite these efforts, the injustice to female is still prevalent. My dream is to see a society that is free from gender biases. I believe in change; if we don’t change some of the hideous circumstances in our environment, our environment would someday make a change that would either break us or consume us. My role model was my stepmom, she is a superwoman, she never gave in to intimidation. And I thank Chimanda Ngozi Adichie for believing that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was living the life I was born to live. Life of a feminist. Her writings helped me a lot.
And to welcome Womanhood, it’s nice to be here. I feel at home.