Advertisement

African man in the kitchen? Quick, call the fire brigade

Sunday July 03 2011
elsie

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report.

Dear social entrepreneur, there is an opportunity or three out there looking for a savvy consultant. Consider this potentially lucrative idea: “Practical skills for a gender-neutral era.”

In the interminable struggle for gender equity, practical day-to-day advice can be hard to come by. It was only when I stumbled on a recent social media discussion about whether or not African men should embrace cooking that I realised that this gap in information is a business-idea-in-waiting.

The scenario: African man, middle-aged family guy, decides to out himself online as not only being a good cook, but enjoying the opportunities it gives him to spoil his family. That, my friends, is someone who is obviously secure in his masculinity because, let me tell you, the African man who admits to cooking is as difficult to find as the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The string of responses to said man’s confession were more revealing than the post itself, as social media works very well as an informal polling tool for social information.

Of course, the feminists were delighted — though maybe not for the reasons that immediately come to mind. Cooking in and of itself is a matter of personal preference — like an ear for music or a handiness for carpentry, it is a gender-neutral skill. Girl children are not born with a genetic desire to master various heat source techniques and investigate the relationship between coriander and cilantro. In its purest form, the love of the kitchen is as arbitrary as any other creative interest and does not discriminate by sex. So, every time a man claims his home cooking skills in public, feminists of all genders rejoice to see an individual liberate himself from his narrow conservative gender box.

Which means, naturally, that on the opposite end of the spectrum the forces of African conservative fundamentalism are horrified by this creeping trend: A man, a self-respecting African man, in the kitchen? Good grief. What will these insufferable liberals ask for next! Equal opportunities and basic human rights for all? The world is going straight to hell in a kikapu. They are right to be scared, I am afraid. The world as we have known it for generations is going to hell in a finely handcrafted vessel made of sustainable organic local materials. And I, for one, am happily waving it on its journey to oblivion.

Advertisement

The fight against domestic gender parity is not worth joining: Social change doesn’t come with a set of brakes. The minute we African women got suffrage along with our male counterparts, the kitchen door was kicked open.

The universal right to education then proceeded to rip that gateway to traditional gender distinction off its hinges. Not only are you putting little boys and girls in school together and essentially tasking them with mastering the same set of skills, now they have to find a way to rub along together as they compete or collaborate for jobs and resources.

Of course, we are nowhere close to gender parity yet. Half a century of Independence is making a difference. But we need a bit more time to figure out how to balance our rich traditional cultures with the realities of our contemporary circumstances.

Feminists, or womanists, have some useful philosophies about how these kinds of challenges can be worked on, plus some nifty skills. Sadly in Tanzania, and by the looks of it the EAC countries, gender parity is thought to be a synonym of feminism and dismissed as something that men need not concern themselves with.

This is patently untrue. As more and more women join the workforce, we have less and less time to be paragons of domestic virtue. And frankly, there will come the day when domestic labour will be too expensive to be the easy option that it is now.

For the upcoming generation, it won’t be enough for a guy to have money and a car and a house to impress the ladies. The successful candidates will probably also be a touch metrosexual, and skilled in the domestic arts.

Which is where the business idea comes in handy. Of course, the conservative fundamentalists are entitled to their opinions, and to the (peaceful) preservation of the values they hold dear. But for the rest of us who choose to move towards the light, help could be on its way.

Just as women in professions can often access “women in leadership” type support and skills development, perhaps someone could make a little money offering training on how men can master the skills of the successful 21st century man. And they can start with this course: “Infallible mojo: How to cook your way into your woman’s heart.”

Advertisement