Category: General

Tradition and beauty: Mozambican women’s mussiro masks

In the northern coastal region and islands of Mozambique, it’s common to come across women with faces covered with a natural white mask, called mussiro or n’siro. The purpose of the mask seems to have evolved over time. Nowadays it tends to be considered more as a means of beautifying the skin but, according to oral accounts, mussiro masks used to carry other subliminal messages related to the civil status of women.

Matope Jose, writing for the local Mozambican blog Mozmaníacos, sheds some light on its historical tradition: “The Nampula province is traditionally known as the land of muthiana orera (simply beautiful ladies). The women from that region of the country have a technique that is particular to them: they treat the skin from an early age, using a sought-after forest species called mussiro, a plant that by law must be preserved and multiplied, and that is used more generally by communities to cure various diseases, as well as for decorative purposes.”

A woman from Ibo Island, Mozambique, with a mussiro mask on. (Flickr/Rosino)

In a video by Julio Silva, women from Angoche explain how the tradition has been passed down to today’s generation from their grandparents, and they show how the cream is extracted from the Olax dissitiflora plant using a stone and some water:

“This is the plant that we, as mussiros, use on our faces. It is what you can see on my face, that’s the plant.

I am Fátima, from Angoche. This mussiro, our grandparents first used it to show when a girl was a virgin. Then she would enter a house. They painted themselves with this mussiro to become white, until a boy came along who they fell in love with and married; only afterwards did they stop using the mussiro. Only afterwards, they use the mussiro like this, when someone is outside, in order to be white, to make their faces beautiful. This is mussiro. The plant is in the forest. While we usually go and meet our husbands, the great grandparents go and cut it and start selling it.”

According to Baia magazine, although mussiro was traditionally used by virgins or by women whose husbands were away, its usage has changed over time: “Nowadays, this paste is widely used and has been “liberalised” for all women, from the north to south of the country, so that it can be used not only by the Makwa or Makonde women, but also by the Manhungue, Machuabo, Maronga, Machope, Matswa, etc. It is already considered to be a beauty treatment used by all women especially concerned with African feminine beauty. Some designers are expecting their models to use this “Afro paste” on major catwalks, as they do at Mozambique Fashion Week.”

 This post by Sara Moreira was originally published on Global Voices Online.

Kalahari metalheads pursue a dream

In the remorseless Kalahari heat, leather is not the most obvious choice of attire. But to a dedicated band of Batswana metalheads, it’s the only way to dress. The country’s heavy metal scene, imported from neighbouring South Africa, may be niche but its fans are passionate about their style. Dressed from head to toe in black leather, sporting cowboy boots, hats and exaggerated props, they draw some curious looks on the dusty streets.

“People think that we are rough, evil creatures, but [metal] teaches us to be free with expression, to do things on our own,” said Vulture, the vocalist of the band Overthrust. He says there is a long way to go before the genre is considered mainstream, but that audiences have grown steadily in the past decade.

TKB, bassist for the band Skinflint, which is based in the capital of Botswana, Gaborone, says they are becoming a more familiar sight. “The culture doesn’t accept heavy metal fans, the people all look at you, but nowadays even the young boys know that this person is a metalhead.”

Morgue Boss (Pic: Frank Marshall, courtesy of Rooke Gallery)
Dead Demon Rider 1 (Pic: Frank Marshall, courtesy of Rooke Gallery)

Botswana got its first heavy metal band, Metal Orizon, in the early 1990s. The group are still writing music and performing live today.

Their drummer, Selaelo, said the dress code was an important part of the act. “[Around] 1998 the unusual rock star outfit caused a lot of curiosity among hostile members of the public. This curiosity from non-rock lovers, I would say, brought more attention to the metalheads. Now that they had more attention, the rockers took [it] a step further by acting and posing in public. It was now more of a fashion, or the ‘in thing’ for those who loved the subculture.”

Selaelo added: “Some say our music is just noise and some perceive us as violent people … but that has not dampened our spirits. We will continue to show our worth in society and to follow our hearts for the love of metal.”

Metal Orizon are still pursuing their dream – to be able to make a living from their music.

There’s not much airplay for metal in Botswana, with only one radio show that broadcasts for 50 minutes a week on national radio. Fans keep up to date through word of mouth, swapping tapes and social networks.

Though attendance at concerts is small in comparison to the west, the scene has slowly built a steady fan base. To date, no western heavy metal act has performed in Botswana, and no Botswana metal act has performed outside the region.

The most popular band, by far, is Wrust, who have toured South Africa and played as a support act for the Brazilian heavyweights Sepultura. Wrust say they draw on western influences, with a local twist in the lyrics and delivery.

But vocalist Stux Daemon said traditional culture was harder to integrate. “You are going to try to use your surroundings to influence your music, your thoughts and your songwriting, but [Setswana culture] is not something we focus on,” he said.

Frank Marshall’s exhibition, Renegades, is currently on display at the Rooke Gallery in Johannesburg.  

This post was first published on the Guardian Africa Network. 

99 problems but love ain’t one of them

I moved with a spring in my step, a bunch of fresh red roses in my hand from the city market, and a heart-shaped chocolate bar. It was Valentine’s Day and I had the proverbial 99 problems but the lack of someone special to spend it with was not one of them. I passed a few women in flowery red dresses on the city streets, but in my neighbourhood – Tena estate, Nairobi – it was only the employees at a hairdressing salon who were dressed for the occasion. For most, it was just another humdrum day.

There’s an increasing cynicism about relationships among young men and women in the city. Women are sick of the traditional role society has expected them to play over the ages, and they’re fighting back by becoming more independent. It’s unsettling to some men, who feel threatened by their partners’ careers and independence. A common, blunt refrain among women is: “All men are players” while men retort: “A girl is yours only when you are with her.”

If love is in the air in Nairobi, it’s a very suspicious kind of love.

On Valentine’s evening, my girlfriend Karen and I joined my buddy and his girlfriend at Tribeka, a popular club in the city. The atmosphere was romantic and electric; everyone here had come to celebrate. Across the table, a guy had swept his girlfriend off her feet and they were kissing like there was no one else was in the room. Another guy near our table wasn’t so lucky – all he got on this special night was a thunderous slap from his partner.  She probably found out that the rose he’d given her wasn’t really from him.

You see, it’s silly season in Kenya: election time. The front-running Jubilee party took the opportunity to hand out free roses to Nairobi residents – which guys readily passed on to the girls they had their sights set on, relieved that they didn’t have to fork out for them. Most people are still recovering from the Christmas shopping sprees that have left holes in their wallets.

Meanwhile, women expect men to woo them on Valentine’s Day – and every other day. My male friends blame the barrage of Mexican soap operas on our television screens for creating unrealistic expectations of them and their budgets. We would never be caught dead watching The Power of Destiny with our girlfriends, so we’re totally clueless about how to be a knight in shining armour, Don Juan and Bill Gates all rolled into one.

Businesses in Nairobi are quick to capitalise on Valentine’s Day with promotions and gifts galore. (sxc.hu)

Earlier that day I stopped at the supermarket for ice cream. The store was draped in red, and two women in red T-shirts were managing a stall at the entrance, selling teddy bears, chardonnay, whisky, cards and chocolates. I bought chocolates – but they told me I was only the second guy to have purchased something from them that day. They’d received most of their support from women.

I learnt that some women had a trick up their sleeves for this day. They run to the shops before work to purchase expensive flowers and fine wines. At noon, the delivery man arrives at their offices to deliver a “surprise”, while their colleagues ooh and aah at their treats. These women are paying for their own gifts if only to keep up appearances.

The night before Valentine’s, I went to the local pub to watch the Real Madrid and Manchester United game. One guy left early, saying he promised his partner he’d be home by 7pm. Another lamented having to budget for school fees and a special gift for his wife. An older guy said his wife of nine years, who’d never demanded gifts or expressed interest in celebrating Valentine’s before, was now expecting him to come home with something big.

I consider myself lucky then, to have a girlfriend who was sincerely happy to receive just a bunch of red roses and chocolates on February 14. In return, she gave me a single red rose and a big smile. No matter how cynical I am about love, I think I may have found the rare woman most of my friends are searching for.

Munene Kilongi is a freelance writer and videographer. He blogs at  thepeculiarkenyan.wordpress.com

Drama and devotion on a Friday night

The Sayyeda Nafisa mosque in Cairo is surrounded by chaos, chaos that laps at its walls and occasionally seeps inside its doors.

The women’s section is entered via an alleyway running along one side of its walls, an obstacle course of ever decreasing human need: from beggars, supine and supplicating, to an insistent seller of single flowers wrapped in plastic and tied with a ribbon (a gift for Nafisa), to the relative self-sufficiency of a small stall selling religious bric-a-brac.

Inside, women lie prostrate or sit or pray at the shrine’s entrance, buffeted by the voices of three rambunctious cleaners who are as much concerned with cleaning out the pockets of the faithful as the faithful are with cleansing their souls, busily sweeping/blocking the mosque exit as they extol the beauty of the “moons” in front of them.

At the shrine itself women touch the walls as they recite Qur’an while on the other side of a trellis-like structure dividing the sexes, men do the same. At the end of a room an officious man in his sixties oversees proceedings, occasionally barking out orders at the squawking cleaners and even the devotional themselves.

There is a constant stream of people on this early Friday evening. A small boy wanders through the supplicants, lost in his own reverie – of crisp-eating. Another woman dressed in a black baggy tunic reclines against a wall, cheek in palm, staring into the middle distance. Then she suddenly and without warning prostrates herself in prayer, almost throwing herself flat onto the ground until her thin form is submerged in her clothes so that she resembles the Wicked Witch of the West who got her comeuppance.

There was drama inside the mosque on this Friday evening. With great bluster a woman – still wearing her shoes – swept into the entrance hall and declared that she had been robbed while at the shrine. One of the cleaners, a particularly active woman in her early 70s wearing a green khimar matched with a long necklace of prayer beads, immediately launched into action and declared that she would find the thief. The doors to the shrine room were shut, to no clear end. The thief had gone. The officious man, armed with a long metal ruler, began imperiously demanding that women at the shrine leave, and was mostly ignored. He focused his attention on a woman seated on the floor.

“Stop begging and get out,” he said.

“Don’t push it,” the woman replied.

The man declared that he would summon someone to remove her. The woman looked the other way and continued eating.

There is a donation box next to the shrine. A woman opened her purse and moved a single LE10 note out of the way to get at a few coins, which she dropped in the box. Another woman gave guavas to the officious man and the cleaners and anyone else who crossed her path.

The cacophony of it all was pierced by the call to the Esha prayer, beautiful but loud, pumped out of the mosque’s speakers. But even at top volume it could not drown out the sound of a fight coming from the alleyway outside. The cleaners took their brooms and immediately went to inspect.

Two robust matrons, eyeballing each other, were screaming threats and invective. One of them worked at the stall they were standing in. A group of people watched. A young girl of around 16 sat on a stool in the stall and became increasingly agitated until a youth of around the same age or younger suddenly flung himself on her and viciously attacked her, dragging her out of her seat and along the ground. One of the matrons hit her on the back with both hands. She was punched and pulled across the narrow alley until one of the cleaners, a determined septuagenarian, intervened and led the sobbing and distraught girl into the mosque to seek refuge. It was impossible to tell how the fight had begun or what it was about.

The robust matron sat on a plastic chair and answered her mobile phone as if nothing had happened. She interrupted her caller only to entreat the young man not to follow the girl into the mosque as he took his shoes off. He went in briefly anyway.

The cleaner who had rescued the girl appeared.

“Come inside again and I’ll give you fucking hell,” she promised the boy. He skulked away.

The fury lingered as the prayers began. A man had watched the violence impassively – he started reciting Qur’an halfway through while spectating. He left. The robust matron took up her sentry position at the stall again as the sound of the prayers floated out into the tormented night and disintegrated above a young woman who emerged from the mosque in tears and pressed her face into the wall, arms by her side, perfectly still apart from the sobs rippling through her body. Opposite her, somebody had twice written in a strange curling font on the mosque wall: “I seek forgiveness from God”.

Sarah Carr (@sarahcarr) is a British-Egyptian journalist. This post was first published on her blog www.inanities.org

Wed for bed: Underground marriages in Egypt

Khalid and Egan (not their real names) are undergraduate students at the American University in Cairo who are “deeply in love” in every sense of the fairy-tale phrase. They are desperate to marry but cannot afford it. So they turn to a solution that is popularly referred to in Egypt as “underground tube marriages”.

These secret unions, also called urfi marriages, have exploded in colleges throughout Egypt. Despite officially being banned, they have an established Facebook presence and are spawning new entrepreneurs. Weddings and dowry payments typically cost thousands of dollars in Egypt and even if a marriage is concluded to the satisfaction of the bride and groom’s families, city apartments are way beyond the means of many newlyweds.

To make matters worse, in predominantly Islamic Egypt, sex before marriage is fiercely discouraged and engaging in premarital sex can have dire social consequences. Many families in Egypt are ready to disown their children if they live as partners without official marriage. It is this pressure and the urge to engage in premarital sex that drive many students into urfi marriages.

What is required for the secret unions to take effect is simply consent between boy and girl. Usually two witnesses, often friends, sign the secret marriage agreement. After this, the consenting boy and girl are legally married. This union is halfway between the official Egyptian legal system recognition and traditional family understanding of marriage. That’s why the couples who partake in these ceremonies consider themselves “married”.

In some colleges the urfi marriages take place in abandoned lecture theatres or in secluded accommodation hostels. These are as cordial as conventional receptions. If the urfi marriage was conducted in, say, an abandoned science lab, a feast of drink and food will follow at the same venue after the conclusion of the vows. Noisy conversation and jive music in any college dormitory on a weekend is a sure sign of the celebration of an urfi union, said one elated new bride, proudly showing me an ivory-coated ring that she deftly hides from her family and outsiders.

The need for secrecy does not just apply to the couple. The witnesses, though they may welcome an invitation to officiate, also want to be secret — it is a social embarrassment to be labelled a conveyer of secret marriages.

But a girl who engages in secret marriage faces the possibility of never marrying formally if the outside world manages to unlock her secret past. If an urfi marriage does not work out, and a prospective suitor hears about her past, he could spurn her.

Urfi marriages are more about chemistry than money, even if they are not always about falling in love forever. As Egan admitted: “I could not wait for us to finish our four-year degrees and then marry. Even if that was the case, he could never afford the $7 000 and the Toyota Prius that my family demanded in order to give their consent.”

The proliferation of underground marriages has turned some enterprising students into semi-successful businessmen. Some students advertise their services on university notice boards and others offer “marriage witnesses” services on Facebook and other social networking sites.

One third-year physiology student, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, said: “I usually charge fellow students $50 if they want me to be a secret marriage witness. I’m never short of customers — every two weeks on average — and I’m paid more thereafter to make sure I lock my mouth once outside the ‘underground’.”

It is not all merry sailing for the lovers. There is no legal status awarded to these marriages if the relationship turns sour.

The courts do not place any paternity burden on the man if these marriages end in divorce and the belligerent parties emerge from the underground to take their custody battles into the legal courts above. But Egan, who was well through her first urfi marriage, summed it up: “Urfi marriage gives me a feel-good feeling and erases my guilt whenever I want to indulge in pre-marital sex.”

Hadid Beduwi is a Chadian journalist married to a New Zealand diplomat in Alexandria, Egypt. This post was first published in the M&G newspaper.