The room with the shifting chairs
The room was filled with chatter, the kind of polite noise that carries weight but no warmth. At the head of the table sat legacy, and around it, placeholders disguised as allies. She took her seat, not out of entitlement but because she had earned it.
By the next meeting, her chair had moved.
“Sorry, we had to make space for the committee head,” someone mumbled, eyes avoiding hers.
Next time, it was pushed further back.
And the next? Not in the room at all.She asked questions. “Why am I not on the list? Why was I moved?”
They chuckled. “It’s not personal. It’s just how things are.”
But she knew chairs did not move themselves. Power does not rearrange out of boredom. It rearranges to remind.
So, she stopped asking and started dragging her own chair in every time.
Wooden. Heavy. Stubborn. Just like her resolve.They stopped chuckling.
The room with the low ceiling
It was beautiful at first glance: the high windows, the velvet blinds, the scented air. But once she began to speak, the ceiling dropped.
It was not metaphor. It was emotional architecture.
Speak boldly, and the walls closed in.
Speak too softly, and you become invisible.She had facts. She had graphs. She had truth in her voice. But truth, when spoken by a woman, often arrives with too much bass for the room to bear.
“Calm down,” they said. “You’re being emotional.”
“Don’t be dramatic. We’re on your side.”But her voice was not trembling. Her heart was just beating where no one expected to hear it.
Eventually, she stopped trying to find a safe pitch.
She let her voice rise and rise until the ceiling cracked.The plaster is still falling. And she no longer ducks.
The room full of mirrors
She walked into the room knowing her portfolio inside out. She could quote figures from memory, recite policies backwards, and predict counter-arguments with eerie precision.
But the mirrors in the room had only one job: to reflect her image, not her intellect.
“You look tired,” one said. “Or is that just a new hairdo?”
Another leaned in. “You don’t need to be so aggressive. You’re too pretty to frown like that.”
Her lipstick was red that day, a choice she had made without fanfare. But somehow, it became the focus.
Not her numbers. Not her policies. Not the 53-page proposal she had stayed up rewriting.
Just the lipstick, and the hips it perched above.So, the next day, she wore the same shade. She added heels, a sharper suit, and a louder voice.
Let them look. But now, they would have to listen.
The room with no corners
There was no place to hide.
When the jokes came, the lingering hands and the stares that lasted too long, there was nowhere to retreat. Every inch of the space was visible, every silence weaponised.
She once tried not to laugh. It was a test.
Someone had made a lewd remark. The others chuckled. She didn’t.
And suddenly, she was the problem.
“Don’t be uptight.”
“Where’s your sense of humour?”
“You should be flattered.”So, she tried the smile. The tight-lipped, kill-me-now smile. It bought her a few seconds of peace.
But at night, the silence screamed louder than the laughter ever had.
She stopped smiling. She started naming.
Not always aloud. But in her mind, she kept a ledger.
And when the time came, she didn’t write a complaint. She wrote a new code of conduct.
They didn’t see it coming. But they signed it anyway.
The room where they forgot her name
She had won, against the odds, the whispers and the well-funded obstacles. Her name was on the ballot. On the certificate. On the lips of young girls watching from the margins.
But in meetings, she was “madam”.
In corridors, she was “the lady from Kogi”.
In reports, she was “the female senator”.Her name, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, was too complex for lazy tongues and too inconvenient for minds conditioned to remember only those they respect.
So, she repeated it. Over and over.
“My name is Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.”
At events. In interviews. On placards and press statements.
Until one day, a little girl in school uniform was asked to name a leader she admired.
She didn’t blink.
“Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan,” she said.
She didn’t forget.
The room with echoes
The room was never empty. Even when the chairs were vacant, the air held voices.
“You’re too loud.”
“Too bold.”
“Too difficult.”
“You’ll ruin your chances if you keep talking like that.”She had heard them all. Some whispered. Some tweeted. Some printed in bold on the front pages of newspapers.
But she had also heard something else.
Women calling. Quietly at first. Then louder. From Kenya. From Ghana. From South Africa. From offices, courtrooms and factory floors.
“I know what you’re going through.”
“I’ve been there.”
“You’re not alone.”They were echoes at first. Faint, but growing.
Now, they sound like a chorus.
The room she refused to leave
They pushed her with petitions, procedures and accusations.
They painted her as disruptive. As ungrateful. As angry.But she stayed. She stayed through the noise and through the attempts to unseat her, not just literally but in spirit.
She stayed, not because it was easy or because it was safe.
She stayed because leaving would have meant agreeing. And agreeing would have meant disappearing.So, she stayed.
And each time she showed up, another crack appeared in the walls of that old, tired building.
The one designed to keep women just close enough to take notes, but never to lead.
Coda: The room yet to be built
She dreams now of a room that does not exist yet.
A room where women’s voices do not echo. They resonate.
Where chairs do not shift when they speak.
Where lipstick is just lipstick, and work is just work.
Where girls do not have to wonder how many humiliations success will cost.She dreams of that room. But until it is built, she will keep dragging her chair into the old one.
Floor scratching. Heels firm. Voice ready.Because until every woman can enter with her name, her dignity and her purpose intact, none of us are free.
