FIRST WIFE: Peace be unto this house.( places plate down)
Why are you like that?
HALIMA: (sniffles and buries her head on her knees in tears)
FIRST WIFE: Tell me...(accidentally dips her head in a pool
of blood) Ah,that’s why you are crying?
HALIMA: He beat me up,my body is paining all over. He was so
rough last night.
FIRST WIFE: He did not mean to hurt you. It’s his way of
showing love.
HALIMA: I am so hurt,I don’t want him to come here at night.
FIRST WIFE: It’s only because it is your first time. You are
so lucky,other girls your age want a husband as rich as ours.
That is an excerpt from a Nigerian movie Dry
by Stephanie Okereke Linus: Halima is nine years. For a minute there,I
switched stations and went to keep up with whatever is in vogue to tear down
the definition of femininity. A definition
arrived at after countless centuries of activism,only to be torn down by attention-seeking ingenues
that could not return a favour and fight for their enslaved sisters. Then
I switched back to the movie and recognised a world that I had forgotten to
remember.
It was probably one patient ,passed over from the
unfortunate hands of a crude traditional birth attendant. They broke her but
could only admit to wanting her fixed,whole to birth more babies.Thank God for
adult diapers? No,she could not afford them as often as the stool and urine
spilled;literally spilled uncontrollably. The ward reeked because of her
fistula,even pots with festering wounds complained of that kettle. She needed a
surgey and her monthly Kshs.500 NHIF remittance might have been able to cover
it.But that was a privillege way above her partner’s wages;besides,the
contribution would be diverted to campaign coffers and sponsoring sports events
while she languished in her own filth.
The free maternal care programme that would have encouraged
a hospital delivery was not so free, with strings attached to the NHIF
subscription. We did not even have enough experienced Obstetrics &
Gynaecologist specialists in our facility(yet it was in the second highest tier
of hospital classification that should have these). She would have to travel
thousands of kilometres away to the national referral hospital to book a
corrective surgical procedure that might not be immediate;give or take weeks
of waiting and prayer to be included in
the waiting list for free procedures.So add the horror of a cumbersome bus ride
through the roughest roads with bumps,the bickering by other passengers and the
impatient relatives who might not be able to host a latrine for a relative.But
thank God for partners like Freedom from Fistula,otherwise...
She was the girl whom grumpily I ate for when my tantrums
could not fathom mother plating ugali and beans.In my friend’s world seen
through the TV,she was my warning that people were starving in that drought;her
parents’ cows and goats kissing the caked-dry grave in that severe five year
torture.Obviously,our tales of getting to campus were different struggles.While history had
favoured my ancestors to be at the right place and choose to educate women
before me,she had a mother who heeded her husband’s every command.Even when
this meant making her daughter revise her horror of being a child bride. My
parents kept a bank account,while a clever man with camels and Zebus in her
village had a flock that outlived the drought.That sexagenarian man was her
village’s SI Unit of riches and he preyed on teenage belles like her to wife
them after the mother’s ensured they were “cut” to the cusomary requirements.
She was the heroine that would tell her grandchildren what
shelter her defiance and flight landed her in;straight to the bold arms of the
woman who run it.This woman would be bold enough to vie for governor but would
be asked to forget it for rousing a bigger rubble than she could handle. My
friend was a stolen wife who might never go home,valuing her culture from a
distance but craving a change. She taught me not to chase after the trends so
much as I should to help her settle in this freedom she is painfully adjusting
to.
In my paradise,FGM was dying.In her hell, she was fanning it
ablaze. She scoffed at alternative rites of passage like I would at corruption.
“I am a woman,not a victim who happens to be a girl. Expect me to do it for my
daughter as my mother did it for me,” she declared as I mulled over the pages
of Letter to my Sisters. This short
story had not gotten through to her. She bragged of how she would sneak her
unborn daughter past her husband-to-be,claiming they were both going to visit
the grandmother. I bet it would hurt my friend when she sees that the
mutilation that she was campaigning for might cost her the unborn daughter.
Paradise is a daily struggle but it gets easier with all of
us in it. Initiators of the #MeToo movement or suffragists who demanded a vote
for evry skirt never envisioned setting many free. The silence or ignoring of
women may have set our sisters and daughters up for the same trap. There are
enought music videos,books and other audio-visual content that berate us and spur
on molestors. We need to expect this danger,the world is rotten. We should
expect to fight for it,suspect any other definition of paradise,face fragile
masculinity head-on,invest in greater esteem for all men and tear down
institutionalised sexism. I don’t need to tell you how,but I will if I have
to...
One for the sisters...
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