I am Mother - Documentary Photographer

I am Mother ( 0ngoing )

I am a Nigerian. My mother is the strongest yet most fragile woman I have ever known. She is a mother to me and my siblings and also plays the same role to her husband, my father. Marriage, to my mother is a school that no one graduates from. One moment she is happy, another moment she is sad. My mother's happy moments are many, sad moments are many too. I have seen her happy like the day she gave birth to a male child, my only brother, and sad when my father refused to eat her food because she came home late from work, which happened most of the time and when my father sent her packing to her father's house for questioning his authority.

She was raised by her parents to be a good house wife, so the kids can be well raised and her husband can be properly attended to. Mother cares for everyone including my father. Our culture and society demands that she continues to give herself even when there’s nothing else to give. She must find a way to make things work, and she never gives up. Society expect it of her.

The union between my father and mother is centered around my father. As a girl, I am continually reminded by everyone that I must learn all household chores to prepare me to meet the needs of my husband to be. The woman is prepared all her life to be everything a man wants, she is taught how to cook, clean, bring up kids, how to take care of her husband, how to please him in some ways which my mum told me I was too young to know.

My mother must look beautiful all the time. Father comes home to a loving, beautiful and caring wife, who will always make him feel good about himself.

My father gives my mother corrective beating ones in a while and neighbours don't see any reason why they should interfere when a man is teaching his disrespectful wife a lesson or two. If they interfere at all, she would be told to kneel down and beg for his forgiveness

Tradition teaches that husbands are lord over wives. My mother's right is the one allowed by my father, her husband.

In my life time, father have sent my mother packing to her father's house three times, twice for questioning his authority

Wives like my mother must posses some qualities to remain in marriage. Some of them are, never fall sick, complain or get tired.

Gender equality is unnatural in our home. My uncle ones told my mother, " you are a woman, with all your education, you will still end up in the kitchen".

My father always call my mother a feminist anytime she ask him to assist her do some house chores

My father constantly reminds my mother that she became his possession the day he paid her marriage bride price.

Emeke Obanor