When her wedding day is in the horizon she is made to be 'taught' about womanhood and how to 'look after a man', yet most of the alangizis (traditional councillors) that I have met from my relative's kitchen parties are women who either have broken marriages or have never been married before.....yet for the sake of keeping traditions alive we are made to heed to everything they 'teach'. And to me it seems that the so called training and initiations are one-sided, which I think greatly undermines the roles men can play in society, because as a result many men in Zambia lack initiative, have no respect for their wives and cheat on them like their lives depended on it, and keep entrenched stereotypical gender roles that make them believe they cannot do the dishes, cook a meal for their families or baby sit the baby. In essence, they appear to be taught that women are simply there to serve them (at your service). In such situations, women are actually taking on the majority of a relational burden and if they become  the breadwinners of the family, and then they get criticised for being "disrespectful" and "not behaving like a woman" when they challenge a man's incompetence.

Chanda Buumba