Tag: culture

Saved by education: A Somali woman’s story

Growing up in Mogadishu in the late 80s in a house full of young single women, the standard dress code for us was a traditional costume called a dirac (a long transparent loose dress), worn with an underskirt, bra and a light shawl. Women did not cover their hair until they were married. My aunts were allowed to date once they turned 16. There were only two rules: date men who had cars so they could pick them up and drop them off, and be back home before 10pm. When their potential suitors came to fetch them, they would politely greet family members with the customary “Galab wanaagsan” (good afternoon) or “Habeen wanaagsan” (good evening).

Just before they left for their dates, my aunts would burn some of my grandmother’s homemade unsi (incense) and apply it under their clothes for a long-lasting patchouli-mixed-with-vanilla-like sweet scent. It was amazing. I would sit in the room with them and hope for some of that perfume to get onto my clothes and hair. I often tried on their beautiful, multi-coloured diracs and high heels. I could not wait to turn 16, get my hair highlighted and straightened just like my aunts, and go on dates.

But in 1990 the civil war rudely interrupted my plans and, at the age of 13, I fled Somalia with my family and thousands of others. There was no more talk among young women about dates, fashion and hairstyles. All I was left with were three younger siblings to look after, a disabled and unemployed father, and desperate poverty. My world was turned upside down and I had to find something else to look forward to, now that my aunts were married off and I was the eldest female in the house.

During 1991 and 1992, we lived in Eastleigh, then one of Nairobi’s slums populated by other Somalis also escaping the civil war. My focus in life changed considerably during this time. I realised I had only two options to escape poverty and the miserable living conditions I found myself in: marry or study. Most of the women in my family only studied as far as high school, and I was not impressed with how their lives turned out after they got married. They seemed unhappy, and some of them were even beaten by their husbands.

To me, marriage seemed like a trap. Women were burdened with too many babies and no time to enjoy life. I was also surprised by the rise of a strict version of Islam that had women get rid of their colourful and beautiful diracs and wear ugly umbrellas. The music stopped, perfume became haraam (forbidden)  and “Subax wanaagsan” (good morning) was replaced with the Islamic greeting of “Assalamu alaykum”. It seemed that our Somali culture and way of life was erased, overnight.

The only way to escape this systematic silencing of women and the oppressive new culture was to study my way out of the slum. Despite wearing a hijab (forced on me by my father and “society”), I registered for the cheapest and only English classes I could afford. They were held in the local church a couple of blocks away from the dingy two-bedroom flat I shared with my dad, three siblings and five other relatives. This initially caused a lot of heated arguments with our Somali neighbours. How can a Muslim girl in hijab enter a church?! Where are her father and male relatives to stop and discipline her? I calmly tried to explain that I was attending English classes and not going to the church to pray. What I could not say out loud (my first lesson in carefully picking my battles) was that I did not care much for their opinion and there was nothing they could do to stop me. If I could not wear the beautiful Somali dirac, put highlights in my hair, and look forward to dates, then I was going to find other ways to get excited about life. What better way than learning English as part of my get-out-of-poverty strategy – and irritating the self-appointed moral police at the same time?

Fatuma Abdulahi.
Fatuma Abdulahi.

My lucky break came in mid-1992, a few months into my English classes. A British charity, The Hugh Pilkington Trust, was sponsoring refugee students to complete their war-interrupted studies and offered free English classes. My kind and dedicated Kenyan English teacher encouraged me to apply and told me that if I did well, they would send me abroad to complete my studies! In addition, the charity gave students a small monthly stipend to help them make ends meet so they could focus on their studies. This was the ticket I had been praying for. I threw myself into that English class like my life depended on it; I listened to the BBC World Service religiously; I told my siblings that from then on I would not speak anything but English. Everyone thought I had gone mad but I had a plan and nothing was going to stop me.

A year after I enrolled in the class, I won a scholarship to attend the prestigious United World College, an education movement comprising 12 international schools and colleges. I had to choose from three colleges in Swaziland, Canada and Hong Kong. I did not know where Hong Kong was, but I knew where Swaziland was and I wanted to get the hell out of Africa. All I experienced in this continent was war, poverty and stifling cultures. Many Somalis were immigrating to Canada, so that was a no-go. I needed a break from Somalis also. I asked about Hong Kong and how far it was from both Somali culture and Islam, and when they told me it was the furthest from both, my decision was made!

I studied in Hong Kong for two years and obtained an International Baccalaureate (IB) pre-university diploma. I went on to receive undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in politics in the United Kingdom, also on full scholarships. Studying, living and working abroad widened my perspectives. After nearly 20 years away, I have returned to Africa for good, grateful for the wide open spaces and eager to contribute to the changes necessary in Somali culture so the next generation of Somali girls lead better lives.

Fatuma Abdulahi blogs at postcardfromafrica.blogspot.com. Connect with her on Twitter. 

Impressions of Tanzania: A nation united

I recently needed a refresh of my Kenyan visa with a trip out of the country. I didn’t have money to fly but could afford a road trip somewhere. And I like road trips. So I bussed from Nairobi to Mombasa, then Mombasa to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. From Dar es Salaam, I caught another bus all the way across the north of the country to Arusha. And then I went back to Nairobi.

I did the entire fleeting trip in a record 36 hours, over a weekend, at minimal cost. I saw the entirety of northern Tanzania, ate at many roadside diners, and gauged something about the nature of the people. I even got a new Kenyan visa thrown into the bargain as well.

***

The road to Dar es Salaam runs past a distant Indian Ocean with crowds of coconut palms on the shoreline. Ragtag kids are just chilling out near the road, or playing ball in the yard of a village, surrounded by banana palms. Mothers are hanging up their washing, dads perhaps meeting with friends in the shade outside. A few small grocery shops and makuti (palm frond) bars punctuate the smooth journey on good roads.

Arriving in Dar es Salaam in the late afternoon, and having already been on the road for the entire day, I quickly enlisted a guy to help me find a local place to stay. In what was probably a half hour of walking Dar, we decided on a hotel overlooking a small sandy village that seemed undisturbed, living at the edge of the city.

I walked around a bit as dusk fell. It was obviously safe in the village as well as in the small part of the city at its fringe. No one even looked at me except to greet. I bought some dates at a fruit market, drank soda at a sidewalk cafe and ate an early dinner as dark descended.

I had pilau rice and masala fish at a family restaurant run from the covered veranda of their flat-roofed family home, where I drank bottled water in the absence of any beer on the menu. It made sense to be sitting outside in the humid night.

Through the evening, all around me, people sat outside, under cover from the drizzle, on benches, chatting in the damp darkness. Others passed, seeming always on some mission or other: men in Muslim headgear, women in multicoloured, patterned veils. There was constant activity as people crossed in angular paths, avoiding errant boda-bodas (motorbike taxis) on the road.

Urban East African Islam, peaceful and serene.

I slept early and checked out early to catch a bus direct to Arusha. A well-powered luxury bus took twenty of us the huge distance to Arusha, travelling comfortably quickly on the broad clean tarmac.

On the way, the vegetation changed to African savannah. Thorn trees and a carpet of green grass in the rain. Copses of hills with a backdrop of distant mountains. A few zebras and giraffes on the plain aside Maasai herders and morans (warriors) loping in the bush. And Maasai-style conservation all the way: thousands of newly planted trees.

The bus arrived in Arusha in the dark, and in the rain. I was expecting cash in the morning, to get me out the country and through the border so the boda-boda guy dropped me at a three-star place in the centre of town where, unusually, I was able to negotiate to stay the night and only pay in the morning.

By 10am, the cash I’d been promised from Kenya hadn’t arrived, so with not much else to do but wait, I wandered around Arusha a bit. And the experience of Arusha in the rain was enchanting.

One street down from the hotel, an informal market of banged-together split-pole stalls and homespun wooden trailers ran all day. The sellers, some of them older mamas, but some of them mothers with young kids, sat sheltered in the constant drizzle, busying themselves amidst spirited chatting and vigorous laughter. They were trading fruit and vegetables between themselves more than with anyone else, eating avocados and pineapples in the rain.

Everyone was in wonderment that I spoke some Swahili and most engaged me in brief conversation, usually asking where I was from.

“Mimi ni Muafrika kutoka kusini,” (I’m an African from the south) I’d say, and they would usually laugh with a nod when I assented to the recurrent question of “Mandela?”.

They giggled at my Nairobi Swahili, a language that contrasts with the soft, lyrical style of theirs. But I was at least able to converse with them a bit in the notable absence of English. We were all at ease.

I was greeted warmly, sometimes quizzically, when asking for directions to the bank ATMs, and then to the only money transfer place still open. Both times I asked, the guys walked with me to the place, just so that we could chat.

The entire experience of Tanzania was without incident and salama sana (very peaceful). I saw no one begging and no one asked me for a thing. Only a Maasai mama selling jewellery at the Namanga border post wouldn’t let me go.

There’s a lot going on in Tanzania that’s promising and the country is recovering from its socialist slump. The roads are good and Dar es Salaam is obviously growing rapidly. Arusha is also the permanent headquarters of the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.

There were no images of African disease and famine to take home, and despite the simplicity of many Tanzanians’ lives, the people I spoke to were happy. And even if Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (African socialism) wasn’t the greatest economic success, that he produced a tribeless society is remarkable. Tanzanians no longer learn a mother-tongue language first. Swahili is their common language, giving them a singular identity. And what I experienced during this visit – and the two before it – was a joyous people, a people at peace with themselves. It’s not like that in Kenya at all.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly.

Funerals the biggest parties in Ghana

The chance to show off your best black clothes, eat spicy giblet kyinkyinga kebabs, enjoy unlimited free drinks and perhaps meet the love of your life – welcome to funerals, Ghana style.

Such is the love of funerals that they take up most of the weekend, and some Ghanaians want to reduce the working week to make more time for them.

“Funerals used to take up Saturday and Sunday, but now I’d say 90% of churches bury bodies on Friday as well, so people are having to take time off work to go to the service,” said Gabriel Tetteh, an online funeral planner. “With the pressure of having to fit in a visit to the service while working on Friday, and all weekend taken up, when you go to work on Monday you feel the pain.”

President Yahya Jammeh has just made the Gambia the first country to introduce a four-day working week, decreeing that the extra time should be used to devote more time to prayers, social activities and agriculture. Now some are hoping this will spread to Ghana. “The truth is that over here, public-sector workers have always found ways to have four-day weeks if they want,” wrote Elizabeth Ohene, a former government minister in Ghana.

Funerals offer the biggest parties and best socialising in Ghana, and are attended by extremely distant relatives or anyone who has known the deceased (and sometimes those who haven’t). Towns and cities are dotted with signs by the roadside advertising important funerals to passers-by, to attract the maximum number of mourners.

Ghana is also famous for its elaborate coffins, with families choosing to bury loved ones in caskets shaped as beer bottles, aeroplanes or giant shoes.

An employee of the Tchadio workshop prepares coffins representing a plane and animals in the Teshie area of Accra. (AFP)
Cultural Producer Lisa Warrener inspects a coffin carved in the shape of a frilled lizard by the Paa Joe Carpentry workshop in Ghana and commissioned for Festival Melbourne in 2006. (AFP)

“We estimate that the cost of funerals in Ghana often runs into thousands of dollars,” said David Dorey from MicroEnsure, a UK-based company that provides life insurance in Ghana. “There is obviously this cultural thing that seems to have spiralled slightly out of control.”

Some Ghanaians have complained that the fixation of funerals represents a prioritisation of the dead over the living.

“We Ghanaians, we love funerals. If you are sick, no one has money to pay your medical bills. If you need money for school fees, no one can help you. But if you die, everyone is running to give money for your funeral – a lot of money! We love funerals too much,” said Seth Akpalu, who lives in the capital, Accra.

“In Ghana, people do spend more on the dead than the living,” said Tetteh. “There are some people, when a relative is living, they wouldn’t mind. But when the person dies, they put a lot of money into it, otherwise other people will be there insulting them.”

Asked why they enjoy attending funerals, young Ghanaians said it was mainly for the social aspects, and the refreshments. “Free Fanta and small chops,” tweeted Deborah Vanessah, a singer and model. “Sexy black clothes,” tweeted another.

“Funerals are grounds to meet new partners if you are unmarried. I have met a girl at a funeral on two occasions,” said Samuel Kofi Nartey, a law student in Accra. “You know, in Ghana our funerals are parties. You get to dance with a person or sit around with them and talk about stuff and one thing leads to another.”

Afua Hirsch for the Guardian Africa Network.