With my greatest strength coming from God who was introduced in my life by my parents and later got to experience Him for myself in adulthood, I also drew a lot of strength from my siblings. I had my much older siblings whom I learnt to look up to as my role models. They blazed the trail in many fields especially education, raising the bar for us to reach higher.
I also had my five brothers to grow up with, being the only girl in their midst. It was a challenge navigating their varied personalities while developing my own identity as the woman God purposed for me to be. I watched and learnt how they performed difficult tasks with ease. I learnt to be their friend and fought to be acknowledged when I felt they were ignoring me or taking me for granted. That toughened me up to face the world with confidence. I learnt to stand my ground and to hold strong even when I was afraid. I learnt so many things from them, I could perform any task regardless of whether society labelled it a mans job or a woman’s job. Case in point: from our handling of our fathers pick up truck over the years, I learnt to change a car tyre almost as fast as my brothers could. I learnt to measure and add pressure in tyres, something that a lot of women never learn.
When I met my husband and he saw me do such things effortlessly, at first it rattled him, wondering whether I was trying to challenge him. That was before he bought a dart board hoping to teach me so we could play for pastime. As he went easy on me, thinking he was introducing me to the game, I hit bullseye a few times and knocked him out of the game, leaving him wondering what just happened. Good thing I married a man who is secure in his masculinity otherwise there would have been trouble.
What I am describing above are qualities of majority of Nyandarua women. Whatever we do, we do it wholeheartedly. Work or play, we give it everything we got. We grew up doing whatever task needed to be done and we had our very capable parents leading us by example. We never shied away from any work and it became second nature to us even in our adulthood.
For any man who marries a Nyandarua girl, they should not feel threatened when they see her take the lead in getting things done. That is just how we are wired. We are our mothers’ daughters.
