A council of grey-haired wise men once said that “whatever doesn’t slay man makes him stronger!”
In my community, whenever a boy is born, the first duty of the midwife is to let him taste a drop of honey,
The baby whirls his tongue through his tiny mouth licking every drop of it, then a piece of red pepper is introduced thereafter!
Then everyone stares at him as he struggles to drain soup from the wrong honey comb, the clamorous cry lasts for more than an hour!

The drop of wild honey that is first introduced to him, signifies the beauty, and splendour of his youthful days, the span between his birth and the eighteenth mark,
This is the period where the child freely swings under the neck of her lactating mother and everyone is okay with it,
Now the grace period comes to an abrupt stop immediately when he clicks eighteen, a new era of incessant pepper commences!
At this particular point no one cares about you, whether you slept hungry or not, it’s none of your mother’s business,

The clan expects you to be productive as fast as lightning, to build your own hut and leave your parents compound in peace,
You’re now expected to toil through thick and thin to invest on cattle, for your masculine days are fast escaping,
These are the cows, goats and rams that you shall use to pay for your legal wife in due time,
The superiority of a man in Africa is measured by the number of flock he owns, the size of his Boma,

That’s the only way you can be given a green light to marry as many beautiful wives as possible, even past the concubines of king Solomon,
If you won’t make it to accumulate a vast amount of wealth at this age, you might end up in distress or even die a bachelor!
All daughters of men will evade you like a poisoned arrow, things get more tougher when the pockets are dry,
From losing your fore skin to finding a place to rest your burning heels at old age, surely, it’s not easy to be a man!