By Njathi Kabui
There is no greater area where Western thought differs from my indigenous culture than on the issue of women. It would not be an overstatement to say that we should not celebrate International Women's Day without first acknowledging these differences. I am culturally in tune with both my culture and Western culture to know that women in these two traditions carry very different weight. Yet, there are fewer areas that the blatant obliteration of my indigenous culture wrecked more havoc than in womanhood. That doesn't mean that my Gìkùyù culture was perfect or should be the global standard. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. There are however great lessons worth noting and meditating on.
For brevity, let me point three distinct aspects I greatly admire and would gladly recommend today for their practical benefits.
The first and most amazing cultural practice was the ability of a barren woman whose husband died before the family having bore a single child to have a right to marry another woman. The second woman would have children on behalf of the barren woman. The barren woman would take the status of the late husband and the two women would raise their family without any prejudice. White women in America were being burned at the stakes for being witches around the same time. To this day, women's issues are deeply biased by sensless decrees that benefits neither women, children or men.
Secondly, women in my culture had their own hut which they shared with their daughters. The idea of a man and woman permanently sharing the same house had everything to do with colonial taxation on huts as a way of forcing locals into being laborers on British plantations in order that they may earn fiat currency for their tax dues. That practice caused many families to reduce the number of huts and thereby the annual tax bill. Having different houses or rooms for men and women might help the souring divorce rate.
Lastly, a woman was never married by a man but rather by the whole family. Marriage works better when the two families are closely connected. There two families entered into a blood alliance with each other. Such bonds were more supportive of the newly weds and harder to break. This is starkly different from the modern western marriages based on legal bonds that are based on a government certificate or a preacher's prayer. The history of the government and religious authority in the West have a checkered history of fiat culture and generally working against the interest of the common global citizens.
If I can use the oldest writings in Western tradition, the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, we can learn a ton. The Odyssey, interestingly enough, starts with a wedding. All the gods and goddesses had been invited to that wedding except the Aris, the goddess of chaos. In retaliation, Aris threw an apple into the wedding premises that ultimately started a war and eventual destruction of the city of Troy. The whole book is about Trojan war. Well, an apple one day did not keep the doctor away, instead it caused the death of so many Greeks and destruction of the city of Troy. Aris, true to her nature, wrote that the apple she threw inside the wedding compound belonged to the most beautiful goddess at the wedding. The three major goddesses got into a contest with each other. Each goddess tried to bribe Paris, the judge, seeking his favor in the contest. Many deaths happened because of a spiteful goddess who offered another married woman to Paris as a gift for the vanity of being selected as the most beautiful goddess.
Amonst another Greek city of Sparta, the women fared worse. Married couples did not live together and the bride had to wear male clothes. It shouldn’t then surprise us that a culture that fences itself as being based on that of the Greeks would be so violent. That violence is bound to ultimately reach women. Such violence ultimately leads to a violent culture, country and globe. Like the Greeks, my village was divided by a different type of apple but nonetheless had a male deity. Our region was divided based on the church that was the first to camp in the area.
My oldest sister had to walk several miles to attend school at another village because the local village school was closed to her and my brother due to the fact that the Church of England discriminated against those families who were involved in the struggle for independence. The catholic church was more dominant in the next village and therefore accepted anyone that the Church of England did not accept. In other words, there was only one white way to learn and each had a religious gatekeeper. It is therefore no wonder that as Emperor Haile Selasi in a speech before the International League of Nations once said “ Everywhere is war”.
That is why as an indigenous man, I know that violence to women is violence to the whole world. The Greeks had a war that was started by the desire of the three goddesses' vanity of being the most beautiful and my village suffered violence due to the failure to follow the deity of the British who shed blood for the salvation of all. Yet few have seen that peace, especially the indigenous people. It is therefore hypocritical for the same people who have caused so much violence leading the call for peace, especially to those who have been on the receiving end of the violence and exploitation of the empire builders.
clarify that there is a great difference in how we look at this big day. That does not change the fact that many of the problems that indigenious people the world over are facing regarding women have roots in the injustices perpetrated on them by the biased western tradition. Like all traditions, there are some positive aspects and there are negative aspects.
I ought to clarify that there is a great difference in how we look at this big day. That does not change the fact that many of the problems that indigenious people the world over are facing regarding women have roots in the injustices perpetrated on them by the biased western tradition. Like all traditions, there are some positive aspects and there are negative aspects. Indigenious cultures the world over have their own adjustments to make as they remove any biases based on sex. Those gender biases, it has to be emphasized, are often and mostly if not always two ways.
International Women's Day should actually last 9 days, 6 hours and 3 seconds. 9 days for every month that we all spent in the womb, 6 for the average number of parents(including grandparents) and 3 for the three meals we have in a day. Each and every aspect mentioned above all has the testament of the power of women and the magic that takes place when it is complimented by the male power.
The magic is also in the resulting balance, what we may call sustainability. That we have major crises in the world is a sign of the imbalance of the relationship between the two sexes, but more of the women's energy.
I am therefore in mood of meditation than that of celebration. That meditation has allowed me to realize that we are fast moving towards extinction and the easiest way to get there is by causing inflation of womanhood, in other words by creating fiat womanhood. In other words, by lowering the health and vitality of women, you lower the quality of everything about life exponentially.
One hundred uneducated and hungry women have a far more damaging impact on society than 1000 uneducated and starving men. Ironically, the Greek have one interesting story that can remind us that women can rise even in the face of the most severe bias. Antigone’s story is a great example. Her name gives away the whole tale. Her name literally means one of opposite opinion. Anti- opposed and gnom- opinion. Antigone refused to obey the king’s decree that her brother, Polyneces, had aligned himself with a hostile neighboring city in a bid to overthrow the despotic ruler of Athens. The botched efforts led to the death of the brother of Antigone. The King decreed that the treasonous brother of Antigone should not be accorded a proper burial Antigone however disregarded the decree by the despotic ruler and accorded his brother the burial he deserved.
Indigenious cultures have their own Antigone in their folklore. I know of numerous such stories in my culture. Today is a great day to meditate on each and every Antigone in our communities and support an environment that would nurture our women in a bid to restore sanity in our relationships, through justice. Nothing good will come out of any efforts that are not based on justice, equality and honesty. Any other way will lead us on the path of Polyneices, which literally means many troubles. One of those troubles is certainly our food. Having food trouble is itself many troubles in one. The unconscionable fact that those Polyneices food troubles are not experienced equally but have a both a gender, genetic, geographic and geopolitical bias. Those bias need to be antagonized just like Antigone did over 3 millenias ago. The Agikuyù have only to mditate on a bias going back about a century. It's therefore a huge bias to put all the women in one basket, pot or guard. Can you digest that?