Category: Lifestyle

Nigeria’s yan daudu face persecution in religious revival

On special days, after dawn prayers at the mosque, Ameer, a father of two, returns home to put on makeup from the collection he shares with his wife.

Usually, however, he settles for a colourful headscarf of the sort worn by women throughout Nigeria. Ameer also uses the female version of his name, Ameera, preceding it with Hajiya, the honorific for women who have completed the Muslim hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Ameera is known as a yan daudu, shorthand for “men who act like women” in northern Nigeria’s Hausa language. The phrase means “sons of Daudu”, a fun-loving, gambling spirit worshipped in the Muslim Bori practice, whose trance and dancing rituals are traditionally associated with marginalised poor women, sex workers and disabled people.

For more than a century, hundreds of yan daudu were tolerated as part of an unremarkable but fringe subculture in the Muslim north, famed for their playful use of language, sometimes even accompanying politicians during election campaigns.

In this spirit, Ameera’s parents were accepting. “My parents realised all the things men like, I didn’t like. I didn’t like farming. I wanted to cook and sell things like women. Most of all, I loved braiding hair – I can do yours very nicely if you want,” said Ameera, with a dimpled smile and shrug of delicate, bird-like shoulders.

“They bought me a doll and let me spend hours braiding its hair,” he said, his soft voice almost drowned out by the screech of rickshaws and shouting tradesmen in a bustling, overcrowded satellite town outside the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

But now, with a religious revival sweeping Africa’s most populous country, the yan daudu are increasingly being persecuted. As Nigeria edges closer to passing a Bill outlawing same-sex marriage and targeting groups who support sexual minorities, many fear they will be driven underground.

“I don’t mind it when my friends call me yan daudu, but these days it sounds ugly [abusive] in other people’s mouths,” Ameera said.

On the plastic-covered walls hung miniature portraits of yan daudu colleagues, taken during a special trip to a studio so long ago the edges have yellowed. Many had previously lived in Kano, the north’s main city and a former Islamic sultanate that has long been a regional hub bringing together sexual minorities from across Nigeria and its desert neighbours.

“People were more tolerant then. Now people are more religious, we’ve had to change our outlook too. We can’t go out wearing brassieres and makeup any more,” said Salihu (Hajiya Sara), a yan daudu from neighbouring Chad, dressed in a sober black kaftan and so painfully shy he can barely make eye contact. He fled Kano in 2000, when Nigeria underwent one of its periodic “morality campaigns” and 12 northern states adopted Sharia law.

“It hurts my heart that people say, ‘May Allah reform you,'” he said, washing his feet in preparation for prayers.

As he hurried to the muezzin’s dusk call floating over the lamp-lit stalls, he added: “All judgment belongs to Allah, so if we are different it is because Allah made us different. All these clergymen condemning us should be careful though, because Allah can make one of their own children like us.”

Yet there remain some signs of acceptance. Dreadlocked mechanic Rodney Musa, repairing a motorbike in a patch of oil-stained dust nearby, isn’t bothered by his neighbours. “They’ve been here for the past 10 years – as far as I’m concerned we’re all just trying to earn a living,” he said.

Overhearing the conversation, a passing shop owner, Naz Nwakesi, reacted with horror. “They’re simply homosexuals with bad characters. They should try to reform themselves,” he said.

Amarchi, braiding hair at an open-air salon wedged between the Jesus is Trading hardware shop and Godz Power Barbing salon, said the yan daudu were embarrassing to women. “They should speak to God and ask God to make them women,” she added, before quoting a Bible verse that forbids cross-dressing.

At Ameera’s food shack, where around a dozen yan daudu find refuge working in an occupation normally reserved for women, these criticisms hurt. “That’s why my heroes are female prostitutes. There’s a kinship between us because they know what it is to be judged,” Ameera said. Though many yan daudu are gay, “some of us pretend to be gay just to feel alive – at least we know where gay people fit in the scheme.”

Whatever their orientations, few see being yan daudu as at odds with family life. Ameera is preparing to take a second wife while Yahuza (32), wearing a sparkling red dress and sandals decorated with bright diamante flowers, has three.

Monica Mark for the Guardian. 

Learning to be Ethiopian again

“I want to go to Holland or to England because it’s clean and beautiful there,” said my 11-year-old sister Lidya, who has never traveled outside of Addis Ababa or owned a television. Looking out of the taxi’s window I can see that city streets are not too clean, drivers throw garbage out of the window, men pee wherever they feel like peeing and it’s okay for anyone to pick their nose, publicly, for minutes, and shoot little snot balls up in the air. Still, I tell Lidya that Holland is really not that much cleaner or more beautiful than Ethiopia.

“It’s just cold,” I say.

“How cold?”

“Too cold.”

I don’t want to admit to her that streets in the Netherlands might be cleaner because I’m trying to make this country my home again. One year ago, I moved back to Addis Ababa after finishing my postgrad degree. I lived in the Netherlands for 23 years before this, after being adopted by a Dutch family when I was four. I grew up learning how to speak Dutch instead of Ethiopia’s national language Amharic. I watched Dutch cartoons like Fabeltjeskrant instead of listening to the local radio shows my friends tell me about. My favorite food was Wentelteefjes (the Dutch version of French toast), and I almost forgot the taste of Ethopia’s traditional dish, injera (flatbread).

I’m often complimented by strangers for returning ‘home’ – and Addis does mostly feel like home especially when I’m surrounded by friends. I came back to discover what my place of origin is; to see if I was still Ethiopian despite growing up abroad with a European family. And, of course, to see what type of family I would have grown up with had I not been adopted.

Young boys playing soccer on the streets of Addis Ababa. (Reuters)
Young boys playing soccer on the streets of Addis Ababa. (Reuters)

Strangers ask me daily what happened to me when they notice I don’t speak Amharic. I’m learning though – there’s an alphabet poster stuck to the wall in my home, which has earned me the nickname “Amharic baby” from Lidya. I’m still getting the hang of proper greetings in formal settings and the rules and customs around social interactions.

People usually feel pity for me because I wasn’t raised here and didn’t absorb the culture and language. So I’ve made an effort to behave like a proper Ethiopian girl by wearing my hair straight these days (I used to be pro-Afro) and listening politely to my mother’s pastor who hopes to find me a suitable fiancé. (I’m not too sure if I want to get married, and I feel the pastor is intruding in my personal life.)

Celebrating the return of the lost daughter must seem like a major disappointment for my Ethiopian mother. I cannot imagine what her community says about me. Although she is very sweet and calls me daily – something I have never done with my Dutch mother although I don’t doubt the relationship I have with her – I don’t feel we have anything in common to build a relationship that resembles anything close to a mother-daughter bond. She thanked heaven endlessly for “bringing me home”, but now we don’t see eye-to-eye on religion, the amount of times I visit, and almost any other decision I make in my life. Adoption didn’t turn me into the kind of girl she imagined, and that’s a disappointment.

I decided not to stay with my Ethiopian family when I returned as I’m more comfortable living on my own. I’ve been doing it since I was 19. Despite not being married, I moved in with friends who happened to be guys. Another disappointment.

Lidya, too, is not impressed with my lifestyle. She sends disapproving looks my way whenever I mention going out for drinks with friends, and questions why I’m not religious. Last Friday, I fetched her from the church compound for lunch. My mother doesn’t allow her to eat burgers so I whenever I take her out I let her order whatever she wants. This time, while waiting for our food, she asked me why I only go to church when the service is about to end. I told her I’m not too sure about God – and got another disapproving look, followed by an explanation that this happened to me because I was raised in Holland. Had I stayed in Ethiopia, she assured me, I would have been a decent church-going girl.

One year on, I’ve realised that I’m an Ethiopian that sees most things through the gaze of a non-Ethiopian. Small things remind me of this, like being asked what the breakfast dish firfir is, and getting it hilariously wrong.

But I do feel at home and I don’t complain about Ethiopia like the expats do. However, I also hate the frequent power cuts, the slow network connection that means I can’t waste hours on YouTube, and that there isn’t a range of 35 toothpaste brands to choose from.

My gaze is changing, slowly but surely. When friends from abroad came to visit me here, we end up arguing about the stereotypical and judgmental statements they tend to make about Ethiopia and its people. They don’t know enough to say the things they do.

I’ve decided to stay, not just because I found a great job, or because I’m no longer judged by my skin colour or because I’m still dealing with an identity crisis or because I want to discard my Dutchness. I want to make this country a part of me. I’m curious about how long it will take before I’m Ethiopian enough for Lidya to stop calling me “Amharic baby” (maybe when I start taking my language course more seriously?). One day I want to be able to say I’m Ethiopian with the same confidence with which I say I’m Dutch.

Marthe van der Wolf is a journalist based in Addis Ababa. She holds an M.Phil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town.

 

What the hookah is socially acceptable anymore?

Ugandans love a good party, every day of the week, till all hours of the morning. We weren’t crowned number 8 in the World’s 10 top drinking nations for our conservative ways. Here in Kampala we tend to embrace a novelty or fad with extreme enthusiasm until we are bored stiff of it. Dance floor smoke machines were once the in thing – we’d literally be choking as we danced at different venues, each trying to outdo the other, until we eventually tired of it, or suffocated. The latest fad is smoke of a different kind: shisha.

The first time I saw a hookah pipe in Kampala, I was warned that it was drugs. Many people probably had the same perception, and believed it served religious and cultural purposes that weren’t our own. It took a while for the trend to take off last year but once it did, it was big.From restaurants to cocktail bars, private parties to clubs, pipes are almost always on standby. It’s good business for the night spots, and the ‘shisha guys’ earn a decent livelihood from it. At a standard and affordable price of $6 per hookah, establishments are less interested in capitalising on shisha profits than they are in buying patrons’ time. Keeping us there for hours equals more spend at the bar. Ka-ching!

At first I was allured by the novelty, especially because it was available at home and not just abroad, but the excitement has since burnt out for me. All anyone seems to care about is shisha. Well, that and how an hour-long shisha session is as harmful as smoking a hundred cigarettes.

(Pic: Flickr/Ian Lloyd)
(Pic: Flickr/Ian Lloyd)

Smoking shisha in public goes against what’s accepted in our social culture, especially for women. Despite the stigma associated with women smoking cigarettes in Uganda, shisha is a firm favorite with the ladies. It’s obvious to me why it’s socially acceptable, or at least somewhat socially acceptable. Smoking shisha serves as an extension of the modern African woman’s liberation – freedom of choice combined with a dose of rebellion while still fitting within the boundaries of the acceptable. Women are not smoking locally made Rex cigarettes while cheering on the Gunners; they are peacefully and calmly smoking the fruits of mother nature. Mint, berries, grapes and apples; so very demure, acceptable, pretty and fragrant: the definition of an acceptably perfect East African woman.

Other than shaking it on the dance floor, I don’t know another way women and men can acceptably be so socially intimate with each other. Shoot me now for going against anti-smoking campaigns but isn’t there something sexy about smoking? Not the lung cancer, addiction and bad breath of course, but as she inhales deeply with her well-groomed painted red nails, the smoke screen against her pretty face, a woman has a certain je ne sais quoi about her. If there wasn’t a ban on tobacco advertising in many countries I’m sure we would be seeing this kind of imagery more than we do now because it is alluring. Kampala’s upscale bars and clubs are filled with corporate women, drink in one hand and pipe in another, sitting among their male colleagues, passing the pipe from person to person. Not so long ago I learnt that in Kampala-shisha-slang lingo, the plastic mouthpiece is called a condom. I rest my case.

With hookah pipes starring in every other Facebook picture of a Ugandan nightclub or social event, I don’t see the fad going anywhere anytime soon. This 400- year-old trend has modernised itself within popular culture, not just in Kampala but throughout the world.

While there’s a need to highlight the dangers and effects of shisha, it doesn’t help that our local journalists and health care professionals are a bit over the top with their attempts.

“Uganda will fall into an abyss because of evils like shisha, homosexuality and other emerging moral upheavals…” Dan Kimosho, public relations officer at National Medical Stores, recently wrote.

Okay, then.

They may be coming from a good place but hookah is not a gateway drug to crack and prostitution. The most recent media hysteria is that smoking shisha will cause failure to conceive in Ugandan women. Is now a good time to bring up our over-population crisis and extraordinarily high fertility rate? Probably not. What health care professionals, media and government should focus on is providing accurate information and adjusting regulations so that they tally with general smoking legislation on health, safety, licensing and age limits. Then us big girls and boys can choose to fall into the abyss of evil armed with facts and figures. What is socially acceptable anymore? Looking around Kampala’s nightlife scene, I see a lot more to be concerned about than hookahs – and the starting price is apparently the same as a round of shisha.

Melinda Ozongwu is a writer based in Kampala, Uganda. She writes television scripts and regular opinion pieces on the subtext of urban culture in African countries. Her blog SmartGirl Living is a cocktail of thoughts, recipes and advice for the modern African woman. Connect with her on Twitter

African musicians to look out for

The music scene on the African continent has always been a hive of activity, starting from the early sixties when the likes of Franco reigned supreme. But this activity was always shrouded in terms such as “world music” which tended to lump wide-ranging musical styles into a flat, gray mass of indistinguishable sounds.

Over the past decade, this trend has changed. More cross-continental collaborations are taking place and, thanks in part to continent-wide television networks like MTV Base and Channel O, more people are being exposed to the wide array of artists coming out of the continent.

I’ll be bringing you a monthly recap of some of the amazing music being released, from Ghanaian hip-hop artist Sarkodie  and Nigerian artist 2Face Idibia, to the emerging Namibian hip-hop trio Black Vulcanite and South African pair Dirty Paraffin. For this inaugural music review, I trekked east and found Kenya’s Camp Mulla collaborating with recently-relocated Ghanaian rapper M.anifest on a made-for-the-club-dance-floor track; crossed the border over to the DRC to find Alec Lomani’s mind-altering beats, then headed to the continent’s southern tip where current hip-hop darling Khuli Chana was waiting with his poignant blend of retrospective rap awesomeness.

All In – Camp Mulla ft. M.anifest

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Kenya’s Camp Mulla  collaborate with Ghana’s M.anifest on a song so watertight it wouldn’t need to jostle its way onto a commercial radio playlist to be noticed. When I first heard All In‘s opening chords, it sounded very urban. Bar my reservations about the appropriation of fringe cultures by the mass market, All In is a decent song. M.anifest’s ascent has been nothing short of inspiring – barely a year has passed since he moved back to Ghana from America, but his list of achievements and award nominations are testament to his focus and relentless work ethic.

Pardon My French – Alec Lomami 

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Imagine Miriam Makeba on tour in the summer of ’72 in New York City. Pata Pata had just been released, and as the world prepared to usher in a new superstar, time leaps forward to 2013 in Kinshasa.  Her historic tune has been usurped, turned on its head and re-interpreted into an unintended – yet exceptional – groove by Alec Lomami. The Kinshasa-born rapper currently living in South Africa is responsible for lifting the iconic song’s lilting melodies and ejecting electronic sounds which underpin the original’s funky strut. This accentuates rather than obscures Pata Pata‘s ubiquity on the musical landscape. Lomami expertly maintains the original song’s charm, yet drives it forward with his imaginative, forward-thinking approach to composition and song structure. “The song is an almost four-minute complaint,” he explained in an interview recently.  “It is me being cynical … I tell myself ‘no one really cares, bruh, you’re just wasting my time.'” Pardon My French must be played at a really high volume while doing Saturday morning chores like laundry. Ridiculous dance moves are compulsory.

 HazzadazMove – Khuli Chana ft KayGizm

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Khuli Chana’s story is not just the usual narrative of obscure-turned-famous artist. It is, rather, a nuanced tale of a childhood spent in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana under Lucas Mangope, absorbing mid-nineties rap music and dabbling in high school rap groups which laid a solid foundation for his music career. He was recently honoured with three Sama awards including Album of the Year. Khuli is no stranger to mainstream success; as part of Morafe, the group, along with Hip Hop Pantsula (HHP), brought the Motswako sound to a greater audience in the mid-2000s. Arguably, Motswako – a “melting pot of creativity, style, music and art” according to HHP – has now become synonymous with good times and party vibes, and Khuli Chana is its president. Firmly rooted in the basics of rap music, his impeccable flow and delivery set him apart from his peers. Coupled with his relentless work ethic,it will ensure his music endures time and its elements.

Hip-hop is taking on an increasingly localised flavour, but it’s not all Africa has to offer. In my next review I’ll take a look at Ghana’s Azonto dance craze and South Africa’s emerging electronic music acts.

Celebrating natural hair: The Coiffure Project

Baltimore-based photographer Glenford Nunez‘s latest project was inspired by his assistant Courtney who wears natural hair. He started photographing her with his cellphone and accumulated a small body of work that he then turned into a book of natural hair portraits.

Nunez on a shoot. (Pic: TYP Photography Studio)
Nunez on a shoot. (Pic: TYP Photography Studio)

Nunez is one of many photographers documenting a growing trend and pride in natural hair. Other projects worth checking out are Michael July’s coffee table book dedicated to the Afro and Nakeya B.’s “The Refutation of Good Hair” series with models eating handfuls of Kanekolan hair.

(Pic: www.nakeyab.com)
(Pic: www.nakeyab.com)

Nune’z mobile pics of Courtney led to the creation of the The Coiffure Project in which he showcases the beauty of natural hair on women of all shapes, colours and sizes. All his photos below are courtesy of TYP Photography Studio.

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