A few weeks ago my fellow Hanang volunteers and I held a girl's empowerment conference. For four days, I watched 29 girls come out of their shells, make friends from other villages, put on plays about peer pressure and the dangers of unprotected sex, giggle hysterically at condom balloons, confidently answer questions during Jeopardy on the last day... it was a blast. Since the conference, I've been thinking a lot about women's empowerment, which got me thinking that I should write a blog entry about women's empowerment. But I didn't want to tell another sob story. There are so many sob stories out there about African women falling victim to some atrocity or another. After a certain point, sob stories are disempowering. Instead, I'm going to tell a story about a group of strong women who are kicking ass and taking names. And they didn't need an American to come in and tell them how to do it.
For months now I've been hearing about these infamous "Mama's meetings" taking place down at the grazing/market grounds. All women in the village are required to go (except me because apparently I'm not considered entirely female due to my foreignness...apparently). The women who attend the meetings are also required to keep their specific proceedings secret--which doesn't seem to stop some of the gossipier Mamas from telling me everything that happens after each meeting. At first all they did was sit around talking and talking and talking and talking about all the problems in the village. People in this village love to talk about problems and brainstorm solutions. Implementation of those solutions is a less common phenomenon. So I was pretty surprised when I heard that, on recommendation of the Mamas, a curfew has been implemented in the village.
How does a group of unarmed, technically powerless community members enforce a curfew? Anyone found wandering outside after 10pm runs the risk of being picked up by community patrol groups and, if they refuse to beg forgiveness and go home immediately, might find themselves thrown into the river and then forced to roll around the in dirt. Seriously. For women who have been drinking, the curfew is much stricter, 5pm. This is supposedly to give them enough time to sober up and cook dinner for their families, as well as to avoid becoming targets of violently drunk men.
In addition to the curfew, the Mamas have succeeded in implementing and enforcing new prohibition laws, banning a particularly strong kind of local brew and restricting drinking before noon. They have also begun a particularly fierce campaign to combat the increase in "matusi"--bad language. I've greatly increased my Kiswahili vocabulary by asking the Mamas what kinds of words they mean when they say "matusi". I am now fully prepared to insult anyone's mother in all sorts of creative ways. It's probably best I avoid using my new vocab, though. The consequence of saying gross things about other people's mothers could range from paying a heavy fine to being exiled from the village to death by Barbaig tribal magic. Eek.
Those who break the new laws are brought to justice before the meeting-at-the-grazing-grounds--which, if they actually attended like they are required to, would mean every adult woman in the village and a few important men, non-voting observers. In this case, "justice" usually means paying a fine of one goat or sheep or, if the offense is particularly awful, an entire cow. The women at the meeting then call a man in to slaughter the animal and then divide up the meat amongst themselves.
Unlike in court, where a person can get off of any crime lacking in evidence by simply refusing to admit guilt, there is no escaping justice at the Mama's meeting. If a person refuses to admit to his alleged crime and pay the fine, he risks getting cursed by old women from the Barbaig tribe--who oversee the proceedings of the Mama's meetings as sort of mentors. Most people would rather pay a fine than get cursed by a Barbaig woman. Apparently really bad curses can lead to illness, starvation, and the death of a family member. If you're innocent and get cursed, apparently it won't stick. But still...who wants to risk that??
The system may seem a little far-fetched to those of us who don't fear curses, but it's working. The other day a young man made a particularly crude comment to my friend Mama Bulali and she just pointed towards the grazing grounds and said, "Do you want me to give your name to the Mamas?" The guy shut up fast.
It may be hard to understand how people believe in things that are, to an American mind at least, so obviously untrue. What's so scary about a bunch of old ladies wrapped in checkered blankets and smelly leather skirts, anyway? (Well, the atheist might say, what's so scary about an imaginary all-powerful being that we've never seen or heard from?)
This question makes me think about the time I had a particularly hyper bat in my house. I ran over to my neighbors house, screaming "popo kichaa!!!" (crazy bat!!!). She came over to help me assess the situation. After a few hours of trying to kill the awful thing, my neighbor announced, darkly, that this was not a normal bat we were dealing with... it was the work of a wizard, and had been sent to me by an enemy.
So I sat down and made a list of all the people in the village who might dislike me enough to send a wizard-bat to annoy me.
I got about 4 names on the paper before I remembered that I don't believe in wizards.
The next day, the bat mysteriously disappeared of its own volition. Now, I'm not saying I believe it was a wizard-bat. Nor am I saying it wasn't. I mean, this thing was not acting like a normal bat. But I digress. The point is that the wizard-bat taught me how even an ever-so-practical college graduate could look at a perfectly ordinary situation and, with the counsel of a trusted friend who seems to understand these things better than she does, wonder if she's found some proof of magic.
Last week I finally got a chance to visit one of these Mama's meetings. My first thought was that I seemed to walked into a live filming of the Tanzanian village version of one of those daytime talk shows. Judge Judy or whatever. People publicly denounced each other for selling illegal booze, wayward sons begged their mothers for forgiveness after being found guilty of theft, audience members booed nasty characters and cheered when justice was served. One woman was brought before the meeting after being caught tying her sick, confused mother to a tree. The old woman's son-in-law was sought at home and brought to the meeting, where he declared his willingness to take the old woman in to his own home and keep her safe. The audience cheered like he'd just announced that he'd been selected for the national soccer team.
Then the Barbaig ladies started leading a very passionate prayer for rain and things got less like an American TV show. The women prayed in their tribe's language, Kibarbaig, and a young man, one of a small group of sheepish-looking men present to observe, translated into the common tongue of Swahili. After a few minutes everyone (self included) was cheering and screaming "mvua inyeshee! mungu mkubwa, mvua inyeshee!" (let it rain! great god, let it rain!). After a few minutes of this I got bored and started looking around at everyone else, wondering which God we were praying to anyway... or whether we were all praying to a different God. Most of the women present were from the Iraqw, Rangi, or Nyaturu tribe. Besides myself and maybe a few of the Barbaig ladies, everyone present was a devoted Muslim or Christian. Though the prayer was being led in the traditional style of the Barbaig, the vast majority of the attendees were not (technically) believers in the Barbaig tribe's particular brand of religion.
I later asked my neighbor why people seem so confident in the Barbaig prayers, rather than praying according to Christian or Muslim traditions, or using the traditions of one of the more popular local tribes. She replied that people respect the Barbaig because they hold so firmly to their ancient way of life and believe so deeply and completely, unlike other tribes whose beliefs have been spread out and mixed up with new religions. Though they have moved up into the mountains in order to continue their pastoralist lifestyle, the Barbaig are respected as the traditional inhabitants of this area, and thus have a greater understanding of the prayer style particularly suited to this land.
After praying for rain, we got down to the business of distributing free meat and then the meeting was adjourned in time for the women to get home and cook dinner.
