The Igbo people have a saying that a child who is carried on the back does not realize that walking is a painful activity - Nwando Achebe

Because I wanted to see myself in writing the history of the African woman. I started off as a Theatre major in my first degree. (Theatre, Music and dance) and after that, I decided to do documentary and film making. I wanted to do the kind of documentary that tells our story and in order to do that, I felt that I needed to do history, although I didn’t like history. I didn’t have a good history teacher, but when I went to University of California, where I did my Masters and PhD, I met a professor who later became my mentor who turned me around. He told history as a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. A story that I could relate to and I remember. I looked at him and said this is exactly what I want to do.

Sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction that Igbo women have when they want to punish a man. For example: if a man continues to ill-treat a woman, the women groups Otu Umu Ada, Otu Ndi ama Ala, the title societies, the market women, the woman can go to one of these groups to report him and there, they will decide which punishment to mete out on him. They can decide to boycott their matrimonial duties or sit on the man. In one village, the women asked the men to clear the path to a stream and the men refused. The women got together and declared a boycott. They boycotted cooking, so, men could not eat for few days. They went to their mothers’ houses and their mothers told them they were not cooking, the same with their wives. Again, sitting on a man is the most extreme sanction; it only happened if other sanctions have failed.

In Igboland, there is a proverb that says: Igbo enwe eze which means Igbo have no king. We do not believe in kings. If you want to be a king, you can be in your mother’s backyard; don’t think you can lord it over us.