As our mothers shaped our lives daily, interacting with us closely as we worked side by side, our fathers were the ultimate force that had the final word. It was a male dominated world without a doubt. And dominating they did.
Our fathers generation is the one that drove out the British colonists, giving us a free country to inherit. They suffered great consequences for their resistance, majority of them paying the ultimate price of dying for the cause. We are forever indebted to their sacrifice and we honor them and the families they left behind.
Fathers like mine went to political detention for seven years because the colonists understood the threat such great fighters posed. These were men who were ready to die for their cause. They knew the dangers of fighting such a powerful enemy, yet they were ready to try or die trying. But they had to work together.
I can only imagine how tough it must have been with no means of communication. No telephones for the natives to communicate with the next village, town or district. Not many automobiles on the road back then, for them to travel from one location to another. Yet they did it somehow. They did it inspite of their colonial masters restricting their movements and reducing them to asking for a passbook to move from one location to another. That was the equivalent of the note you give to your child to take to their teacher explaining their absence from school.
That is how low the colonial masters brought our parents, to their knees, controlling and humiliating them in their own country.
