Odiere_desk

My niece just turned 2 years old and last weekend, my mom was talking about shaving her hair.   The reason? " She has come of age, and her hair is getting harder to comb.” My mom proposed that shaving her hair now would make it grow back thick.   And it made me wonder... how?   What if the hair doesn’t grow thick?   My niece basically has virgin hair right now because we haven’t started using artificial products to soften it. So why rush to shave it? That one conversation sent me down a rabbit hole. Because it wasn’t just about hair. It was about how we learn, what we believe, and who we trust for answers now.   For generations, Nigerian children didn’t learn about life from Google or YouTube. They learned from grandparents under the moonlight, from parents at the dinner table, and from community elders during gatherings.   Stories, warnings, and advice passed down through oral tradition shaped how young people unde...

 Last Saturday, I attended a wedding with my mom. It was her friend's daughter who was getting married, and the occasion was going smoothly until the bride and groom went to the registry to sign their marriage certificate. The bride refused to give up her father's name, to the point that the wedding was almost called off. It wasn’t until her mother and siblings convinced her not to overthink the matter that she finally agreed to sign using her husband's name. There was a time when a woman transitioned almost seamlessly from her parents’ home straight to her husband’s, usually in her early twenties. In that era, changing your last name felt like a natural rite of passage—a symbolic passing of the baton from one household to the next. But look around today, and the timeline of womanhood looks entirely different. Women are marrying much later in life. We are taking our time, chasing our ambitions, and building our own foundations first. By the time a modern woman s...

Ten years ago, I visited a friend's home. Her family had about nine girls, each older than the next by just a year. The family was not well-to-do, and I began to question their decision to have so many children in this challenging Nigerian economy. It was not until last year, when they were finally blessed with a male child, that I understood everything. Gender dictation is one of the many problems some couples face, and this is because childbirth is ultimately a genetic lottery. The Genetic Lottery Childbirth is a genetic lottery where females carry two X chromosomes (XX) . Therefore, every egg a woman produces carries only an X chromosome. The deciding factor, however, lies with the male, who carries both an X and a Y chromosome (XY) . A man's sperm is the only variable in determining biological sex; it either carries an X ( resulting in a girl ) or a Y ( resulting in a boy ). Biologically, a woman is a passive participant in gender determination. If a couple has ...

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of sexual assault and trauma. My neighbor has been married for 10 years, and they recently got a divorce. The reason given was that his wife cheated on him. At first, I felt deep sympathy for the man, knowing how heartbroken and betrayed he must feel. That was until I heard the other side of the story from his wife. She had been neglected and cheated on by him many times throughout their marriage, and finally, she decided to cheat back. It’s ironic how some people believe she should have remained faithful and prayed for her husband to change, while others believe she did the right thing because her husband had a toxic habit. Harsh judgment is almost always passed on a woman when she cheats or has a high " body count ," but rarely on a man. When a woman chooses to cheat back, she is intentionally reclaiming her sexuality, taking it out of his exclusive possession and putting it back on the market. For the husband, ...

It’s a Saturday morning. You just woke up, and you neatly make your bed, tucking in the bedsheets and straightening the pillows. You take out a broom, you begin sweeping your room, then move on to the living room—tidying up and sweeping the entire space. Next, you head to the kitchen, sorting through the dishes, tossing last night's leftovers into the trash, and stacking the plates in the sink. Once the dishes are washed and the kitchen is clean, only one task remains: mopping the whole house. But you would rather eat breakfast first. As you take some ingredients out of the fridge to whip up a nice meal, a voice in your head hits you with a brilliant idea: You should sell your lifestyle and hobbies! In today's world, everyday activities like cooking, painting, and cleaning have transformed into profitable digital side-hustles. As a result, the percentage of people relying solely on traditional 9-to-5 jobs decreases every day. Creators are leveraging their passions t...