Women’s work

International Women’s Day 8 March

 

I posted a version of this last year, but here it is again…

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Maasai women house builders. Photo: Creative Commons – Jerzy Strzelecki

 

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I’m thinking of women whose life is immeasurably harder than mine. Could I, for instance, walk the Maasai woman’s barefoot daily trek across wild bush country, searching for firewood, fetching water, taking produce to market? Could I have reared children in the dung and wattle hut that I had built myself? Could I live obeying a husband’s commands even when I thought them wrong? What kind of bravery, tenacity and inner strength would I need to live this way, and to still live well? These days, things are slowly changing for Maasai women, not least because campaigners from their own communities are pressing for girls’ education, the end of genital mutilation and forced teen marriages. But for outsiders visiting the Mara it is all too easy to see only the grinding poverty and the reconstituted, fit-for-tourist shreds of former warrior glamour. But before jumping to too many conclusions about what is really going on, here is my version of a Maasai traditional story that sheds some light (literally) on their own views of the man-woman relationship.

 

And the moon still shines

Long ago Sun wanted a wife
so he married Moon and they made a pact,
to ply the sky in endless round,
Sun ahead, Moon behind.
And each month, tiring of the trek,
Sun carried Moon-Wife on his back.

But then one day they came to blows.
Moon crossed Sun and Sun lashed out,
beating his Moon-Wife black and blue.
Moon struck back. She slashed Sun’s brow.
He gouged her cheek, plucked out an eye.

Later Sun fumed: I’ll shine so hard
that none will ever see my scars.
While Moon tossed her head:
Why hide my wounds?
I still light up the night sky.

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text© 2014 Tish Farrell

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Photo: Creative Commons www.flickr.com/photos/javic

 

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International Women’s Day 8 March

House BuildingCreative Commons photo: Jerzy Strzelecki

House Building
Creative Commons photo: Jerzy Strzelecki

I’m thinking of women whose life is immeasurably harder than mine. Could I, for instance, walk the Maasai woman’s barefoot daily trek across wild bush country, searching for firewood, fetching water, taking produce to market? Could I have reared children in the dung and wattle hut that I had built myself? Could I live obeying a husband’s commands even when I thought them wrong? What kind of bravery, tenacity and inner strength would I need to live this way, and to still live well? These days, things are slowly changing for Maasai women, not least because campaigners from their own communities are pressing for girls’ education, the end of genital mutilation and forced teen marriages. But for outsiders visiting the Mara it is all too easy to see only the grinding poverty and the reconstituted, fit-for-tourist shreds of former warrior glamour. But before jumping to too many conclusions about what is really going on, here is my version of a Maasai traditional story that sheds some light (literally) on their own views of the man-woman relationship.

And the moon still shines

Long ago Sun wanted a wife
so he married Moon and they made a pact,
to ply the sky in endless round,
Sun ahead, Moon behind.
And each month, tiring of the trek,
Sun carried Moon-Wife on his back.

But then one day they came to blows.
Moon crossed Sun and Sun lashed out,
beating his Moon-Wife black and blue.
Moon struck back. She slashed Sun’s brow.
He gouged her cheek, plucked out an eye.

Later Sun fumed: I’ll shine so hard
that none will ever see my scars.
While Moon tossed her head:
Why hide my wounds?
I still light up the night sky.

Creative CommonsPhoto: William Warby (flickr.com)

Creative Commons
Photo: William Warby (flickr.com)

Text: Copyright 2013 Tish Farrell

…of womanplace

photo: Oxfam International, Eddy Mbuyi 2013

photo: Oxfam International, Eddy Mbuyi 2013

Still mindful of last week’s International Women’s Day and the fact that many rural women all over the world spend much of the day hauling firewood to cook by, here’s a poem about it. I wrote it after visiting farms in Kenya’s Central Province in 1997. There had been elections at the start of that year and the farming community concerned had given financial support to a local politician on the understanding that he would bring electricity to their farms. He didn’t. So here’s what happened: it’s a case of woman living creatively or the triumph of art over adversity.

Power-play

 Joe Maina, small-time farmer

says before the polls he paid

some local boss three thousand bob

to bring the power lines down the Rift.

Their broker won, but now as ever

Faith Waithera Maina cooks githeri,

bending at her hearth,

three rocks to hold the pot,

sleek skin cured  hide in smoke-house fug.

Next, slogs like an ox to fetch more wood.

Our days’ career – she shrugs.

Till dusk she lights her sofa room with fumy lamps,

where hanging on the wall,

with keep-safe snaps and family memorabilia,

a cast-off city sixty-watt

has second lease –

recharged, of course,

to make a perfect vase

for trailing sprays

of purple

Tradescantia.

On the farm in Kenya's Central Province

On the farm in Kenya’s Central Province

Text and photo collage: copyright Tish Farrell