Some part of me wants to write some poetry about this experience, colour it beautiful instead of the ugliness that it truly was. (and I have…) Jamais dans ma vie a quel que chose comme ca passé, pour moi c’est tres bizarree et I am so angry. And to think this was just a few hours out of a day in my life, and some people live a whole lifetime and don’t get that amount of time off from this thing they call the burden of womanhood. Today for the first time I was made to feel the brunt of my biological sex/chosen gender. Today for the first time I fully appreciate the negative connotations a male dominated world would attached to what I normally consider the blessing of my womanhood. Today I am made to question why indeed I was sent to occupy space in this world as a member of the community of woman; and yet I despise not my womanhood. I simply see the ignorance and peril of those who would seek to strike this woman, whether in word, thought or deed. I realise that the work is much and the labourers are few, just after meeting with a beautiful woman Aminata Dieye, who is one of the few labourers, toiling aimlessly to ensure that other women live a better life. Today I encountered he who would scorn my womanhood, and instead of stand tall defiantly I could not because there seemed to be an impervious wall between him and me. A wall guarded by the laws of the land, a wall clad with the religious, social and cultural practices/beliefs that would seek to also scorn my womanhood, and so now I resort to the one weapon I have. The weapon that the scrawny man, neither le patron, nor the institution that is the state can take from me. I strike back with a clenched fist and pen in hand and I write for all who care to read about the small man who guarded the big ‘small’ mans house. LES FILLES SONT INTERDIT
They say the appreciate women, or at least the beauty of the woman and yet the shut us out. We entered the compound like I had many times before, only this time the guard came up behind me, a little scrawny looking man and he yelled eh, LES FILLES SONT INTERDIT! Even though I am quite competent in French at that moment I could not quite comprehend the words being yelled at me, perhaps because of the distance between him and me, or perhaps even because of the muffled volume of said yell, (the ocean in background drowned out some of the fury he attempted to convey.) I think most of all I was unable to understand his wolof-ised French (for just a moment) because of the lunacy of the message and the tone through which he conveyed it. Not only was this the first time in my not so short life that my biological sex/chosen gender barred me from entry into a place, yet it was that the little man exuded such incredulous power in uttering those words. He had the guts to scream that I, a woman was not allowed into a place, which by the way I had already entered at a previous time, and would have gained complete and successful entry had his scrawny behind continued to laze under the tree away from his actual ‘post’.
So I guess for some reading this, you may wonder, why is she kicking up such a storm, surely she is aware that she currently inhabits an Islamic nation, or even for the more ignorant, a patriarchal sub-Saharan African nation. Well, I too am African, and I have lived in the region before. And no I do not by any means at all believe that either my biological sex/chosen gender or my continental identity or current geographical location should predispose me to such blatant prejudice. In fact none of my identities should. I am truly aghast at this interaction, the other men around me many of whom frequent this location and have seen me there before were taken aback by this interaction as such I am confident that this is not the way Kungakona lana. And yet I am made to wonder about this little man, what gave him such audacity (other than the ‘order’ from his patron), what made him so confident when he uttered those words? Some part of me wanted to ask DO you know who I am? Not meaning to demean him in any way, but more to stand my ground and assert myself, and yet all I could think to do was retreat, like a lost puppy with my tail between my legs. It was so infuriating because I was with my younger sister who has never been here before, so for her this experience taints her impressions of this unknown place. A place that will remain unknowable because this man has now constructed a palatable wall, he has created the divided between US and THEM
Then the deeper I look, the more I realise that this happens a lot, perhaps not quite as vivid, but it happens all the same. So I look a little more closely at the many interactions I have with the local taxi man, and I begin to see that our interactions are more than that of local and foreigner. They are more profound than the banal thief and victim, they are in fact rooted in a tangible and perhaps more rigorous power structure that exists and functions within this setting. I am grappling with trying to make sense of this all. I do not want this one experience to cast a shadow over how I tell my story, or even to create a biased sensitivity to such interactions.
and it was all over a basketball game...
I will leave you to work through this for yourselves. Do leave questions comments etc…
A tout a l’heure
The Faithful Inquirer
No comments:
Post a Comment