Year: 2013

Culture, patriarchy and the Shona woman’s curtsey

Dating back four generations it has been customary for Shona women in Zimbabwe to get down on their knees or at the very least curtsey when serving their husbands a meal. This custom is prevalent in Shona households. Kneeling is a sign of humility and respect. Some women in my family embraced this practice from the early 70s – they still do.  However, the more educated and westernised women do not follow this custom, which has patriarchal overtones linked to the subjection of women.

Shona women are forced into submission by patriarchs in many Shona families where the man is regarded as the head of the household.  When I was ten years old my paternal grandmother warned me: “You better learn how to cook and clean because if you get married and can’t perform your duties as a wife, you’ll be brought back to the family.” To be returned to your family for not being submissive, for not kneeling, for having a voice, would heap disgrace on them.  Worse, when a girl is returned/divorced, her mother is often blamed for not raising her properly.

I have an African male friend who’s been living in New York for 15 years. He still believes it’s important for his wife to kneel when handing him his food. “It’s being respectful and following her culture,” he said. I was shocked. How do the sexes evolve with such hindrances? One would think a highly educated man who has been living in a western society would adapt to his environment.

I recently interviewed Shona women for research on my upcoming book that documents the lives of women in Harare. Many of them spoke frankly about their marital problems, problems that sprouted from subjection, a lack of independence and their husbands’ refusal to accept them as equals in their marriage.

One woman had divorced a Shona man after living in Canada with him for ten years. He expected her to cook after a ten-hour work day. When she suggested getting a housekeeper, her husband accused her of being “indoctrinated” by western culture. He threatened to “get” another woman from Zimbabwe. A few months later she discovered he was making plans to acquire an obedient wife from home.

Rudo, who got married fresh out of high school, had big dreams about her career but her husband didn’t share them. “I wanted to become a pharmacist or a doctor. My rich husband kept promising to send me to university. It’s been eight years and nothing. I am not a doctor, I’m just a housewife. All I can do is dream, raise my two children and regret marrying this man.”

Angie, a newly married woman from an impoverished background, goes down on her knees for her husband but feels bad because this is something she would only like to do while praying. “There is nothing I can do. In our culture the man is like God, I guess. If I don’t kneel while serving him then that makes me a disobedient and rude wife.”

Helen is the owner of a high-end clothing boutique. She and her husband are well off, but “miserably married”.

“I make my own money and my husband is into mining gold. He pays all the bills and even gives me a healthy allowance but he openly has a mistress. He’ll send me a text saying he is not spending the night at home,” she confided. “I can’t leave because I’d be an embarrassment to my family.When I took my complaints to my mother, she told me to be a good subservient wife and not speak up because his father was the same way. She added that when these Shona men reach a certain age they’ll start respecting you as a woman.”

This kind of advice from women to other women, although shocking, is not unusual. I got some myself when I was dating a 27-year-old Shona man last year. A successful businesswoman in her 30s told me to never air my views and opinions to a man because he will feel disrespected and challenged. “A good African woman knows her place and keeps quiet no matter how much anguish she may be festering,” she said. I did try to take her advice but I couldn’t sell my soul to the devil known as the “subjection of women”. I believe in mutual respect and communication.

I ended my relationship with him because he thought it was normal to subject me to societal norms I had not been accustomed to. When I opposed his views he called me “an uncultured disrespectful woman”. According to him, a woman should never say what she really thinks if it opposes her man’s views. “Do as I say without questioning me,” he would often tell me.

I was born in Europe, grew up in Africa but left for North America just after my eighteenth birthday. Kneeling for a man is part of my culture, but I refuse to. I could certainly kneel for the patriarchs in my family but not for a partner. Respect comes in many forms but kneeling for a partner takes away from the emancipation of women.

The act of kneeling when serving a man food is symbolic of respect but it also symbolises putting down a gender. If a woman decides to kneel and curtsey for her partner out of her own volition then I commend her because that’s her choice. I support actions that are based on love/choice because they have more sincerity than culturally set norms.

I’d like nothing more than for African men and women to be on an equal footing. As the generations pass, there will be a cultural evolution but I doubt I will live to see the day a Shona man kneels for his wife while serving her food.

Mandy Nembs is a writer who enjoys exploring her African heritage. She was born in England, grew up in Zimbabwe and lived in Canada for nine years where she attained a BA from Concordia University. She is currently based in New York.

Sudanese fashion: The Darfur Sartorialist

When I came to Darfur in 2009 to work with a United Nations agency that supports internally displaced people (IDPs), I spent a long time in IDP camps. There I grew increasingly intrigued by the incredible variety of colours and patterns of women’s clothes. Like many westerners, I had a preconceived idea of Darfur and Muslim women in general, and was amazed at how different reality turned out to be. I started photographing their fashion to show my friends back home. Eventually, it became apparent that this was a story waiting to be told from an angle the media rarely shows, and so I created The Darfur Sartorialist.

In Sudan, men’s fashion mostly consists of a white jalabiya (arab tunic) with or without a turban, and white or sometimes leopard-patterned shoes. Urban Sudanese men will often wear westernised outfits with pressed trousers and un-tucked shirts in soft colours.

Women’s clothing is much more diverse (as is often the case!). There is a mix of the traditional abaya (arab tunic), the toub (many metres of colourful cloth wrapped around the body and head), and western-influenced fashion such as long dresses with tight shirts underneath to cover the skin, or denim jackets and skirts to match the headscarves. You often see cheap versions of designer clothes, even in IDP camps, like this fake Chanel belt on a young woman.

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Most of the photos I take are of either internally displaced people living in IDP camps, or Darfuris working with humanitarian agencies to assist them. It’s not always easy to distinguish between the two. I know most of the people in the photos, either because they were working with me or because I spent a long time in the camps and became friends with some of the residents.

Culture plays a big role in the expected behaviour from women, so if you ask someone you don’t know directly for a photograph, their natural reaction is to refuse. Curiously, if I photograph children, it’s the mothers that come and ask enthusiastically to be photographed as well! For the most part, though, I have not encountered any problems – people are often flattered that a foreigner wants to photograph their clothes. It’s true that government is often suspicious of foreigners, and I was indeed questioned a couple of times for taking photos. However, most of my photos were taken in the camps where I worked side-by-side with security officials who were fine with it.

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I did not expect The Darfur Sartorialist to be a success. I thought it would be a short-lived curiosity; people would see it and then move on to the next novelty. The fact that there has been constant media interest since its inception in June 2012 has come as quite a surprise. I’d say the highlights of the project so far have been the four-metre-tall exhibits of my photos at the Sines World Music Festival in Portugal in 2012, and a recent feature in the Guardian.

The fact is that my photos do not fit at all with the image most of us have of Darfuri African Muslims. I hope this will launch a discussion within us about whether the reality most media convey about the world is correct or complete. I hope the project gets people to question the reality they know. When we assimilate entire countries to one single idea (of Sudan, of Afghanistan, of Africa), we lose a lot of the complexity and paradoxes that exist in those societies. We forget that Burkina Faso, a poor country, has a thriving cultural scene with some of the best jazz and film festivals in Africa, or that Somalia and South Sudan have produced world-class rap musicians.

Click on the first image below to view the gallery. Pics: Pedro Matos

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Rwanda’s electropop icon

If you love electropop and alternative beats, then you’ll surely love Rwandan artist Iyadede, aka That Girl from Africa. I particularly like The Love Mantra, a track from her digital album The Demo. Iyadede’s voice is strong, warm and versatile – MTV Iggy describes it best: “Drawing on vintage sounds from Rwanda, and the unfettered creativity of post-punk, she refreshes the smooth Afropean tradition of Sade and spikes it with the Day-Glo groove of Deee-Lite and Neh Neh Cherry. She sometimes touches on the gravity of Lauryn Hill or Nneka too — and, like them, she can drop a rap verse like it was a handkerchief.”

 

African debut novelists to watch out for

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo and Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi are two highly anticipated books by debut novelists. Bulawayo won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Hitting Budapest” about a group of children navigating life in a Zimbabwe shanty town. Read it here. She turned it into a full-length novel, which I was fortunate to get an advanced reader copy of. The book is scheduled to be released on May 21.

I first encountered Taiye Selasi on a radio interview. She shared her experience of meeting renowned author Toni Morrison who encouraged her to write after she shared her love for the craft with her.  Her first short story “The Sex Lives of African Girls” was published in Granta in 2011 and featured in The Best American Short Stories of 2012. Ghana Must Go has generated a lot of hype in the literary world thanks to rave reviews by Morrison and Salman Rushdie.

A common thread in Bulawayo’s and Selasi’s novels is the issue of home. Where in the world do the characters fit in; where do they call home? Both writers show how immigrants fit in (with mixed results) when they move to America, and how they relate to the folks they left the longer they stay away.

We Need New Names

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The story is told from the point of view of 10-year-old protagonist, Darling. We first meet her and her friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina as they cross a forbidden road which takes them from their shanty into a nice suburb called Budapest. She describes Budapest as having big houses, with satellite dishes on the roofs, neat gravelled yards, tall fences and huge trees heavy with fruit. And for this group of hungry children, it’s the fruit they’re after – guavas. Though they know not to overindulge due to the resulting constipation, they still do because the guavas are the only way to kill the hunger.

As each day passes every one of them shares their dream of leaving for a better place. Times are tough in Zimbabwe; economic and political instability have rocked the foundation of many people’s lives. Jobs and money are scarce, and those with means (or sheer courage) have fled, often leaving behind the elderly and the very young. Darling’s dream is to go to America, to be with her Aunt Fostalina. Her friends mock her, saying this will never happen but she hangs onto it against all odds. They each hang on to the promise of a better future, elsewhere.

Darling eventually gets her chance to move to America but not before bearing witness to some pretty grim happenings that could have been pulled from the front page of Zimbabwean news dailies. These would otherwise be painful encounters to describe but Darling’s naïveté and innocence take away some of the ugliness.

In the second half of the book, Darling is now in America living with Aunt Fostalina and her family. She bears the bitter cold winters and homesickness with a shocking level of maturity for someone her age. She reasons that she can deal with the snow and the absence of her closest friends because at least she has food, lots of it, and all kinds of it. Here, she doesn’t go hungry.

Though she struggles to make friends due to the typical, idiotic behaviour of school children, who make fun of others for looking and sounding different, she remains focused and adjusts quite admirably to her new life.

As time passes, the more she adjusts to America, the further she drifts from Zimbabwe and the people she left behind. This guilt eats away at her, and she becomes exiled in a sense.

Overall, this is an enjoyable book. Bulawayo does a good job of illustrating the effects of poverty on a nation’s psyche, the alienation felt by those who make the difficult decision to leave home, and their longing for home.

I had some minor quibbles. There are some areas of the book, particularly in the second half, that I felt could’ve been touched on better and perhaps even tied up a little neater for better flow. It felt a little disconnected at times and took away some of my enjoyment.

However, if this book and its writer has been on your radar, definitely give it a try.

Ghana Must Go

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 “Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs. At the moment he is on the threshold between the sunroom and garden and considering whether to go back to get them. He won’t.”

These are the opening lines that introduce us to Kweku Sai, “a renowned surgeon and failed husband”. It is through his dying that we learn about him and the family he leaves behind.  In this three-part story, Selasi goes back and forth in time unravelling the tale of the Sai family.

As a young man, Kweku leaves Ghana on a scholarship to attend medical school in the US. In New England, he meets and marries Folasadé (Fola), a young Nigerian émigré. Fola abandons her dream of attending law school with the understanding that supporting Kweku’s dream is enough. Together they have four children – Olu, Taiwo, Kehinde and Sadé (Sadie).

Their story is typical of most immigrant families in the country: both parents working extremely hard to make ends meet while demanding academic excellence from their children so as to escape the traps of poverty with which they are all too familiar. Kweku loves his children but he struggles to understand and relate to them. His duty is that of a provider, not a friend or confidant. When the eldest three children are in their teens, an unfortunate situation spirals out of control and Kweku leaves. Fola must regroup, pick up the fragments and forge ahead.

The second part of the novel focuses on how Fola and her children, now adults, react to Kweku’s death. Each of them carries painful personal secrets. These secrets, like boils, are painful and need to be lanced and drained before healing can begin.

In the third part of the book they all agree to travel to Ghana (where Fola is now living) for Kweku’s funeral. Though not easy, their time there allows them to finally deal with the emotional fallout of events that have held them back for so long.  This time is fraught with incredible pain, confusion and mistrust but ultimately they emerge better from it. Kweku’s second and final departure brings his family together again in every sense, in contrast to his earlier exit which fractured familial bonds and sent them all reeling.

Selasi’s writing is enjoyable, poetic and quite dense, but at times the writing gets in the way of telling the story. Since the story unfolds through flashbacks, it’s often hard to follow who the speakers are and what exactly is happening. This is true especially for the first part of the book, which I found to be slower and difficult to read due to the amount of detail the reader has to wade through.

With the added psychological dimensions given to each character, it’s hard not to be affected by their pain and anger. My heart grieved for this family.

Ghana Must Go is definitely worth the read. I look forward to seeing how Selasi’s writing evolves during her career. There is strength in it that begs for more stories.

Bwalya Chileya was born in the early 80s and raised in Malawi and Zambia. She holds a masters in business administration and works as a project manager. She reads and writes stories in her free time. Connect with her on Twitter.