LABOUR

There is something staggering about women that won’t cease to amaze me, the United Nations argues that about 830 women die daily (globally) from pregnancy or childbirth related causes. This is said to be equivalent to about one woman every two minutes. Although the rise in modern medicine and advancements in science has reduced maternal death rate, women still have complications. The joy and stunner of the whole statistic is that; 

WOMEN WONT STOP GETTING PREGNANT! 

Wow! There have been rumors of women screaming during labour, cursing their husbands and saying they’ll never do it again, but almost a year down the line, they are back with their backs in the theater beds pushing out the baby (ies). The truth is, regardless of the pains, risks and complications associated with pregnancy and childbirth, our women are more than willing to go to labour. Why? Because when they are going through the thrusts of sex, they ultimately do their best to look beyond the labour, they tune their ears, not to their cry but the cry of their baby, not to their pains but the joy of having a child they can call their own. There is a lesson in this.  

As the global treads of hunger and poverty, collapse of currencies, inadequacies of government, increase in corruption, intolerances of people and citizens continue, our attentions are quickly drawn to the increasing need to labour all the more. As a child I bought a bottle of coke for #2, then #5, but that same bottle of coke costs about #70 now. Sweets that used to be sold in kobos now costs about five strained pieces for #20. What #100 could afford about a year ago, it can no longer boast of.

My late father once told me not to expect anything in form of a will from him, he said, ‘my father was a farmer and didn’t own a bicycle, if I trusted in his inheritance, all I’ll have are cutlasses, hoes and a farm.’ That said, it becomes striking in our age that increasingly, young men and women are becoming lazier, they want the rollercoaster kind of life, they want cheap and free things; pizzas and salads, trips to Dubai, shopping in the US, riding a 2015 model car and more. That’s why you hear very silly statements like ‘If someone can just dash me a million dollars.’ uttered with such seriousness. We all want to be made without going through the process of making.

In the Book of Lamentations Chapter 3 verse 27, New King James Version (NKJV), the writer says:  

“It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.”

While many young men and women are refusing to labour in the days of their youth, they ultimately cannot see ahead to the labour, yoke they are automatically endangering their old age to. Another passage of the Holy Bible says in Proverbs, ‘The glory of young men is their strength.’ Strength as we know is for work, and work equals force times distance (that’s labour.)

If we are to attain a great future, to realize our dreams and be able to afford all that we desire on earth, it is imperative that we learn from the women to labour now for the joy of what we desire to birth in our lives.

-          Melchizedek, son of Michael   

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