Year: 2014

The tragedy we found in Tuesday’s trash

It’s another pretty day in Ngong with clear skies and chirping birds. Jackie, the newest member of my circle of parenthood help, has just returned home from fetching my son Shaka, who is three months away from turning five. As I open the gate, she says to me: “Mama Shaka, kitu kimefanyika!” Something has happened.

Tuesday is rubbish collection day in our town, which is located in the Great Rift Valley near Nairobi. My family has lived in Ngong for over 20 years, and no municipal or county rubbish removal initiatives have existed during this time. So local entrepreneurs came up with their own trash collection initiative, a service that we use at the moment. On this warm, summer’s day we put our trash out as usual for the truck to collect.

Jackie lives about 50 metres from my childhood home, and just 10 meters from the pile of trash at the end of our street. At 30 she is no shrinking violet, but she doesn’t say much. Today, however, she is more excited than usual. She tells me that a little baby boy has been found on top of the pile of rubbish. I don’t understand. Where is the child’s family, I ask? How do you tell a child to sit on a pile of rubbish? Jackie says she doesn’t know. No one knows. All they know is that the little baby was wrapped in a curtain and left there. A curtain. Now it makes sense. The little baby was aborted and dumped along with Tuesday’s trash.

While rummaging through the rubbish, a street child had found the aborted baby. It was a baby, not a foetus, because this abortion was carried out very late into the pregnancy. Jackie tells me that the child had all its parts – all it had to do was grow. She reckons it was five months or older. She laughs as she relates this to me, but her laughter is not out of malice or insensitivity. Like many others, she just didn’t know what else to say or do.

I ask Jackie why no one called the police. She says someone has to go to the police station and write a statement before they would come and collect the body. I want to do this – but with the law enforcement system here, there’s a chance that I would be questioned, and even suspected of the backstreet abortion. I’m a single mother, with no important surnames that can offer me any kind of protection, and no husband to come vouch for my moral worthiness. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong police officer would get me into trouble.

I go to cover the body. It is placed at the side of the road where children pass by on their way home from school. They do not need to see that. Worse still, they do not need to hear the conversations vilifying the woman or girl that had aborted the baby, and shaming the faceless and nameless doer of this ‘evil’. Someone ventures that they know whose curtain the baby is wrapped in – but fortunately a witch-hunt is not called for. In places like Ngong with slow justice systems and even slower delivery of public services like police protection, the people’s thirst for due process comes fast and furiously.

Abortions in Kenya
Kenya has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. Over 460 000 abortions were carried out in 2012 alone, according to research by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC). The majority of these were due to unwanted pregnancies. Another survey revealed that more than 2 500 Kenyan women die annually from complications arising from unsafe abortions carried out by unqualified medical practitioners. Kenya relaxed its abortion laws in the new Constitution that passed in 2010. Before this, abortion was illegal unless except to save a woman’s life – and in this case, three doctors would have to approve a woman’s request for one. The new Constitution gives healthcare practitioners more latitude to determine when an abortion can be carried out. But as you can imagine, if the decision to grant a woman or girl an abortion lies in the hands of a healthcare professional, this leaves a lot to chance. Many Kenyans are still largely conservative when it comes to discourses on abortion, and chances that a nurse in a rural village will grant a 15-year-old with an unplanned pregnancy a requested abortion are very slim. Commenting on the APHRC report, researcher Dr Elizabeth Kimani said that there is still a lot of stigma in Kenya around access to abortion as a reproductive health right for women. The government is dragging its feet in upgrading not only the facilities to carry out abortions, but also initiatives to sensitise health care professionals on why there’s a critical need for conversations about abortion in the country.

(Pic: Flickr / Damien du Toit)

Ten years ago, when I was in high school, I was subjected to a mandatory pregnancy test after what the school authorities found what they suspected was an aborted foetus in one of the dormitory bathrooms. The test was not a pee-on-a-stick type test. The school nurse carried out a vaginal exam, pressed down on my abdomen, and squeezed my nipples – to check for milk production, I guess. It was humiliating to say the least, and all the girls – nearly 1000 of us – had to undergo this. I could not imagine how or with what a fellow student could have carried out that suspected abortion. According to 2012 report by Kenya’s human rights commission, women take overdoses of anti-malaria medication or insert sharp objects like knitting needles and sticks into their bodies.

Back in Ngong, I dared to think about the woman that had just aborted this baby. She wasn’t a statistic in a report far away – she lived in my neighbourhood, she was close enough for me to have maybe met her or even spoken to her. Was she okay? Was she alone? Did she have help? Was she slowly bleeding to death in a little flat somewhere? Had she been raped? Was it an unplanned pregnancy? Maybe it was a case of incest, or maybe it wasn’t. To attempt a backstreet abortion this far into a pregnancy was an act of despair and desperation. The young woman or girl who did this really had no other choice. She didn’t. The people gathered by the side of the road did not ask these questions – all they saw was an aborted child, dumped on top of Tuesday’s trash.

I am unapologetically pro-choice. Restrictive laws and harsh social systems leave women and girls with such few options and virtually no bodily autonomy. And this goes beyond just the right to have safe abortions – it begins with a woman’s or a girl’s right to decide what happens to her body. A lot of underage sex is coerced and transactional. Many unplanned pregnancies are unwanted, even in marriage and in situations of perceived social stability. There’s no safety anywhere as far as women’s and girl’s bodies are concerned.

While society, religious organisations and indeed governments attempt to put their best moral foot forward, the reproductive and health rights of women and girls continue to suffer. And this suffering is not left to the women and girls alone – society suffers too. Women, men and children had to see an aborted child dumped on the side of the road, and the traumatic effects that witnessing such a sight can have on them goes ignored. As a passionate advocate for the right of women to choose, it was a humbling moment when I realised that these ‘issues’ are not happening ‘out there’ – they are happening right outside my front door, right on top of Tuesday’s trash.

*This post was edited to correct the number of abortions carried out in Kenya in 2012.

Sheena Gimase is a Kenyan-born and Africa-raised critical feminist writer, blogger, researcher and thought provocateur. She’s lived and loved in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. Sheena strongly believes in the power of the written word to transform people, cultures and communities. Read her blog and connect with her on Twitter.

11 years ago

Transmedia doccie explores reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda

This week marks 20 years since the beginning of the Rwandan genocide in which at least 800 000 people were killed.

It will also signal the beginning of Love Radio: Episodes of Love & Hate, a new transmedia documentary by Anoek Steketee and Eefje Blankevoort that aims to explore the subject of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda.

Love Radio trailer from Prospektor on Vimeo.

Consisting of a web documentary, mobile tap stories for smartphone users and an exhibition in Amsterdam’s FOAM Museum (from July 11 July to September 7), Love Radio straddles the thin line between fact and fiction. At first glance it tells a linear, almost fairy-tale narrative, based around the radio soap Musekeweya (New Dawn). But a closer look reveals the complex reality. While in the soap happy endings predominate, reconciliation in real life is rather more intransigent. After the gruesome killings, how can perpetrators and victims live with and love each other?

Love Radio tells the story of the soap’s creators, its actors and audience through film, photography and text. It is a story of the impact of mass media and the thin line between fact and fiction, violence and reconciliation, guilt and innocence.

Dynamic Africa is a curated multimedia blog focused on all facets of African cultures, African history, and the lives and experiences of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora – past and present. Visit the blog and connect with the curator, Funke Makinwa, on Twitter.

11 years ago

Westerners head to Gabon for drug-fuelled ‘spiritual’ tourism

Some in Gabon believe the bitter iboga root comes from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Others elsewhere have derided it as a dangerous drug.

Today a growing number of Westerners are travelling to the central African country to sample it themselves as part of an ancestral rite called Bwiti, one of Gabon’s official religions.

Among them is Remy Causse, who at 45 made the long journey from France in hopes that the ritual would help him to “see more clearly”.

Bwiti combines worship of ancient forest spirits with elements of Christianity. It is practiced regularly and involves ingesting the powerful psychoactive root, iboga, which has effects similar to LSD, mescaline or amphetamines.

“Iboga cleans the insides,” says Tatayo, a French-Gabonese spiritual guide who receives many of the Western “bandzi”, or candidates for initiation.

“The bandzi empties himself of everything bad that is buried inside before coming face to face with himself.”

European women rest in a temple after taking iboga during an initiation to the Bwiti rite in September 2005, in Libreville. (Pic: AFP)

But the deaths, deemed accidental, of two Western initiates saw the practice come under sharp scrutiny, notably in former colonial power France where health officials warned it was “hallucinogenic and highly toxic”.

A report by the Mission of Vigilance against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes) from 2007 called Bwiti a form of cult ritual that is dangerous “both physically and mentally”.

Tatayo himself concedes that “you must be closely watched when you ingest iboga”.

Benefits and dangers
But Bwiti shamans like Tatayo believe that when they eat iboga, they are granted the power to see the future, heal the sick and speak with the dead.

Users say it helps them to break away from negative habits, and an extract from the root is now being used in Western medicine to treat drug addicts and alcoholics.

Like many foreigners before him, Causse turned to “Tatayo”, who is originally from southwest France, at his beachside concession next to the president’s quarters in Gabon’s capital Libreville.

Under the light of the torches, initiates, their faces painted white, intone traditional chants over the music of the Ngombi, a form of sacred harp, or the Mogongo, an instrument made of a chord strung across an arc that the musician strums with a pulsating rhythm.

Causse starts to eat the iboga, crushed into powder, which Tatayo feeds him by the spoonful until he is overcome by visions amid the deafening noise of singing and dancing by “escorts”. Lying on a mat, he seems to be sleeping as his spirit “roams”.

Ingested in high doses, iboga causes anxiety, extreme apprehension and hallucinations, which are enhanced by the darkness and music. Sometimes Causse rouses and begins to vomit.

The visions last all night, and it’s not until the early hours of the morning that Causse wakes up. Still groggy from the experience, he is unable to walk for several hours.

Despite being “a bit scared”, he said he was happy two days after shaking off the lethargy caused by the iboga root. After this he will bear the name “Moukoukou”, which means “spirits”.

“The ritual has given me an understanding that cannot be explained in words; it has answered many of my questions,” he says.

Few people in Gabon doubt the effectiveness of the iboga root, which is considered an important part of the country’s national heritage. The country’s first president was an initiate.

Outside the country, a dozen or so deaths have been reported in the United States and Europe among people who experimented with iboga, though the exact circumstances have not been clarified. Medical reports said the victims’ nervous systems and hearts appear to have been affected and the deaths generally occurred more than 20 hours after taking the root.

In Gabon, neither the French embassy nor the Gabonese health ministry would comment on the bwiti ritual, given that it involves a recognised religious practice and use of a product authorised in the country.

Yet despite the dangers and the high price that Westerners must pay for their new experiences – Causse paid $3 800 for his three-week journey – more and more are coming.

Tatayo says that he now receives around 20 to 25 new foreign initiates – mainly Europeans – a year.

Tiphaine Saint-Criq for AFP

11 years ago

The idiot’s guide to misogyny: East and South African edition

Every two years – during the Africa Cup of Nations and the soccer World Cup, to be precise – I change my citizenship to my four self-assigned West African citizenships: Ghanaian, Nigerian, Malian and Ivorian. If you are a soccer fan, you will understand the necessity of this symbolic migration. East and Southern Africa have many things going for them. Soccer is not one of them, save for occasional flashes of hope from the Angolans. But in March this year, I found it necessary to symbolically emigrate from East and South Africa, for less sporty reasons: I could not handle the toxic gender politics in these two regions, in March. In an inadvertent collaboration, East and South Africa embodied the idiot’s guide to misogyny in March and, as they say, I just couldn’t deal.

On March 24, Kenyans received an apology from Dr Susan Mboya-Kidero, the wife of the Governor of Nairobi County. You see, her husband, Dr Evans Kudero, had been spotted in public wearing a torn sock. A local daily had found this so newsworthy that they published the governor’s foot with the torn sock. This photo apparently prompted the good senator’s wife to apologise to Kenyans for this ‘lapse’ in her responsibilities as a wife, and promise all offended Kenyans that she will “put stricter measures in place” to ensure this doesn’t happen again in future.

Eight years ago, another prominent politician’s wife apologised to Kenyans for a similar ‘lapse’ in vigilance over her husband’s feet. Apparently Kenyans take serious offence to these lapses in wifely duty by their politicians’ spouses. These wives’ failures in managing their husbands’ wardrobes have serious implications for service delivery in the city of Nairobi, the commercial engine of East and Central Africa.

So, Dr Mboya-Kidero told Kenyans she “takes full responsibility for this serious mistake” in her husband’s dressing. In her defence, she cited the notorious Nairobi traffic, which forces him to leave home at 5.30am, before she has a chance to ‘approve’ his dressing. Of course the good Nairobians will accept her apology, and will in fact forgive the little fact that the person who should be speaking to them is the good governor himself; and not about his torn socks, but about his plans to unblock Nairobi’s legendary traffic jams. In fact, they might also forgive the not-so-small fact that this same governor of torn socks allegedly slapped a woman politician in a public altercation a few months ago, sparking public uproar, a court case, and finally a court order that they reconcile.

But I digress. One of the beautiful things about South Africa for feminists is that you get to mark women’s month twice: in March, along with International Women’s Day, and in August, the national women’s month. March holds a special spot in my heart as the month when I formally encountered the language of feminist thought as a young undergraduate student, thanks to a group of politicised friends in university. Together, the four of us started marking International Women’s Day with themed public lectures and feminist marches on campus, much to the amusement of fellow students and some university staff members. But this March was a hard one to be a politicised woman tuned into East and South African public discourse.

Reflecting on it, I can’t help but note the ways in which women’s bodies occupied centre space in March in East and South Africa in very troubling ways. Of course women wrote brilliant books this month (the fantastic South Africa scholar and novelist, Zoe Wicomb, launched her new novel October); they won Oscars (Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o); and countless other ordinary women engaged in various acts of excellence, heroism, generosity and courage. But how were women figured in public discourse?

Reeva Steenkamp and Thuli Madonsela
During this month, two South African women dominated the public space, for very different reasons, with different responses: the murdered South African model Reeva Steenkamp occupied centre stage as her boyfriend and killer, Oscar Pistorius, stood trial to prove his case – that he didn’t kill her in moment of rage, but actually mistook her for ‘an intruder’, whom he presumably intended to kill. That this high-profile case’s defence essentially hangs on the assumed appropriateness of pumping bullets into an intruder – code for young black criminal – is a whole other conversation.

The second woman to occupy South African public discourse is Public Protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela, who delivered her report on the so-called Nkandlagate scandal relating to the opulent expenditure on the president’s security, which included a state-of-the-art chicken run.

What was curious for me was the spectrum of responses these two women attracted: distress over Reeva Steenkamp’s killing, with murmurs of a possible case of an abusive relationship; and the mixture of celebration and vilification of Advocate Thuli Madonsela for her findings on Nkandla. Significantly, despite attempts to frame these two cases differently – blue collar and white collar crime in South Africa – ultimately, the two women’s gender continued to haunt them; in the shape of a possibly emotionally abusive relationship that spilled over into tragic violence; and an equally tragic attack on the public protector’s person and looks, for daring to speak out against massive misuse of public funds.

Meantime, on the side strips of these high profile cases, two other largely unrelated stories unfolded: a man in Limpopo province offered to launch a series of awards to reward young girls for maintaining their virginity. He neglected to offer men a similar incentive. Apparently there is no premium on male virginity, nor for that matter is it necessary to incentivise them not to pressure young girls into sex.

Back in East Africa a few weeks earlier, the Museveni government arrived at the ‘scientific’ conclusion that homosexuality was a lifestyle choice, and therefore, decided to formally legislate against it. If we remember the ways in which homosexual men are often feminised in public discourse and how the abhorrent phenomenon of ‘corrective rape’ targeted at lesbian women has become a plague in South Africa, it is not hard to see that the common denominator in these two moments is anxieties about policing the female body and female sexuality. This push for female virginity is just one face of patriarchy via female sexual purity. The other face patriarchy wears is homophobia, precisely because same-sex love makes lesbian women symbolically unavailable to male sexual pleasure, hence the need to ‘correct’ them through rape. Gay men on the other hand sabotage patriarchy by deviating from the script of heterosexual consumption of women’s bodies and through their feminisation, which further threatens the ‘approved’ template of manhood by blurring the assumed rigid boundaries between masculinity and femininity.

It has been a long month, March. So, I mentally exiled myself to West Africa. But I know my other countries will disappoint at one point or another. In the meantime, I’ll hope for a better April. Being my birthday month, my biggest wish is a misogyny-free month for all women. Hopefully the universe and my ancestors are both listening.

Grace A. Musila is a Kenyan who studied in South Africa.

11 years ago

CT Jazz Fest: Where were the other African artists?

“Africa’s grandest gathering” was the tagline for the 15^th annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF) held last week. Having attended it, I can see why. The magnitude of the event was awe-inspiring, bringing in people from around the world. The streets were packed, there was not a spare hotel room in the city and the cab drivers made a killing.

(Pic: Jonas Gwangwa)

However, despite the grand nature of the event I have to question its lack of an African focus. There were only three African countries represented at the event. We had Moh Dediouf from Senegal, Frank Paco Art Ensemble and Jaco Maria from Mozambique, and a slew of South African artists.

The rest were from a host of western countries including the Netherlands. I am not completely sure when the Netherlands became titans in jazz, but there they were.

The question is: Why is it that in order to make things ‘grand’ and more prominent in Africa we need to add the ‘international element’ and constantly overlook our own African talent?

Although I understand the commercial need for an international heavyweight (Erykah Badu as the headliner brought in the crowds), the festival seems to rarely engage with other African acts – a fact that was mentioned during the preceding workshops and talks held before the actual event. This means that festival organisers sometimes play hard and loose with what can be considered ‘jazz’. Case in point: the presence of English rock band Level 42. Talk about an effective way of clearing out an auditorium. Jazz lovers poured out of the main stage area and filled the outside streets. The first night of the jazz festival was officially done when the rock chords were hit.

Acts from the USA and the UK dominated the numbers. With some of the South African acts, there were repeat offenders who had appeared as recently as the previous year. The organisers could have at least waited for them to produce a new album before putting them back on the stage.

Furthermore, anyone who knows the South African music scene (especially the Afro Jazz scene) knows that there are more than enough Afro Jazz musicians with fresh acts every year. Allowing old acts meant there was less space for other African acts, both from within South Africa and beyond. The legendary Simphiwe Dana or even up-and-coming young talent such as Ugandan saxophonist Brian Mugenyi could have been worthy additions to the line-up.

Why was there a need to reload old acts while filling in other slots with miscellaneous acts from the Netherlands and Australia, with artists many have never heard of? I am all for redefining the meaning of jazz and growing one’s repertoire of music but sometimes there is a fine line between being eclectic and being out of place.

If the CTIJF wanted to promote new jazz acts, there is certainly no lack of regional and local acts that could fill the slots whilst also pushing the boundaries.

You only need to look at the host of events popping up around the continent to know there is a minefield of talent. At the Safaricom Jazz Festival in Kenya in February, Richard Bona from Cameroon headlined. The beautiful thing about this concert was that all of the acts were from Africa. The Zanzibar Music Festival (Sauti za Basura) along with the fringe events in Basura Xtra is held each year as a celebration of East African music, showing that there is an abundance of talent on the continent that needs to be tapped into.

The Cape Town Jazz Fest is truly one of Africa’s biggest music festivals but I don’t believe it has showcased enough musicians from the continent, which is sad as the array of musical talent remain largely untapped at this point.

To acknowledge the depth of talent is to struggle with the entrenched idea that we must look outside to find the best and the brightest. The festival showed that Africans have the potential to redefine an age-old genre. Moh Dediouf, a Senegalese musician in a sequinned dashiki, accompanied by a saxophone and his back-up singers in traditional Zulu jewellery, brought a certain flavour to the festival that is not seen anywhere else.

With festivals like the Cape Town International Jazz Festival going from strength to strength, there is potential to build a billion-dollar industry right here on the continent rather than always having to go and beg for affirmation on the ‘international stage’. It would be great to be at the centre of a genre rather than constantly being relegated to the realms of ‘world music’ a la the Grammys.

Kagure Mugo is a freelance writer and co-founder and curator of holaafrica.org, a Pan-Africanist queer women’s collective which engages in activism and awareness-building around issues of African women’s identity, experiences and sexuality. Connect with her on Twitter: @tiffmugo