Woman of Africa

As a young girl growing up, I believed there was something wrong with me because I couldn.t balance a pot of water on my head whenever I went upcountry during the school holidays. The village girls would laugh at me and say things like, "I bet you can't cook ugali either." How right they were. With hindsight, I suppose they had to find ways to poke fun at me because I was the only one among them who could speak English. And anyone who spoke English held the enviable place of distinction in the rural areas.

All the villagers had admiration for one of their own who had learnt the ways and language of the white man. All, that is, except the old women. They had lived long enough to earn the wisdom that came with their grey hair and refused to be fooled by the trappings of modernity. As the years passed and I grew older, they shook their heads at my brightly painted lips, relaxed hair and Western way of dressing, and often dropped proverbs like "Mwenda tezi na omo, marejeo ni ngomani." Loosely translated, this means East or West, home is always best. It took me a while to figure it out but when I did, I discovered something about the soul of the African woman and, by extension, myself, I discovered her enduring spirit.

So much so that I now have a picture of an African woman on the windowsill in my office. For me, it is a picture that brings meaning and dignity to what has been our collective troubled experience. It is a black and white portrait of a rural African woman in her mid-thirties who is, I assume, trudging to or from the market. She is carrying a load of firewood on her back while her child is strapped to her front with a leso. Her back is bent from the heavy load, her forehead creased from a difficult life and her eyes downcast in such deep thought that it is possible she didn.t notice the photographer snapping away. I wonder, could she be thinking of what to cook that evening or whether or not she will fetch a fair price for her goods at the market?

In contrast, her child, who looks about two years old, looks with wonderment into the camera lens, oblivious of the fact that he is adding to his mother.s physical discomfort. Long after her has learnt to walk and begun to dream of the big cities of the world, he may still not realise just how difficult it was for her to trudge that dusty road home daily. There is nothing uncommon about my picture of the African woman for one just has to drive 10 minutes from the city centre to see a woman carrying everything from firewood and water to a bulging kiondo on her back, sometimes on her head. In most instances, she carries her child or he walks beside her if he can. This is a picture that tells the story of the woman of Africa.

Any foreigner will tell you that the women of Africa work doubly hard. In many communities, they actually take part in back-breaking activities like building homes, collecting firewood and water, tilling the shamba and rearing the children. And when they are employed outside their homes, in most instances they are paid less than their male counterparts for their labour. In addition, a significant portion of the work they undertake for the community is undervalued and more often than not, uncompensated. The women of Africa are usually the first to rise and the last to sleep. They rarely leave their children behind, carrying them to the market, the shamba, almost everywhere. In most of Africa, it is the women who carry the community on their backs through their small income generating projects.

Even a visitor from Mars will tell you that the African woman.s lot is a difficult one, as she is also the one who bears the brunt of most of the ills afflicting the continent. She has been described as the face of HIV/Aids, poverty and civil war. It is her haggard, hungry face we continue to see on the news bulletins of the world as she breastfeeds her child even though she has not had a meal in days. It is the same weeping face as she passes her hand over her dead child's face to close his eyes after he has breathed his last due to malaria, diarrhoea and the other diseases that steal our children before the age of five.

Unfortunately, many of us, the daughters who drive on the tarmacked highways and ride up steel elevators to our offices filled with polished wood and leather furniture and the latest technological gizmos, sometimes forget that we wouldn.t have got where we are today without her resilience and hard work.

People ask me if I'm a feminist when I take this tone. I can tell you what I am: an African woman in form and spirit. And if we speak of women.s liberation, it is because the baton has been passed on to us. We must do our part and take the debate from the shamba and homestead to boardroom and Parliament. We must articulate her groanings into persuasive speech that says to the world that if the woman of Africa is shackled in chains of inferiority, Africa is still not free.

It is because of her struggles that we are able to successfully carry our own loads in the corporate world. She keeps the faith that we, the daughters of today, will take the struggle for justice and equality further than she could ever dream of. She is proof that what didn.t kill her through generations of slavery, colonialism and dehumanising cultural practices only made her stronger.

In the words of African - American poet and writer, Maya Angelou's poem: "Still I rise"

You may write me down in history
with your bitter, twisted lies,
you may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Out of the huts of history's shame - I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain - I rise
I'm black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide,
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear - I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear - I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave,
I rise I rise I rise

But back to that picture on my window ledge. Far from being a pitiable picture, she reminds me of what is possible. And like another African woman in Mozambique who gave birth in a tree several years ago, she tells me that in the most difficult of circumstances, in places ravaged by death, disease, war and calamity, it is still she who gives birth to the hope for the continent.

Editors note: Carole Mandi is an editor of a woman's magazine. This article appeared in the Daily Nation, Kenya's National newspaper on 8th March 2006. I have reprinted it in it's entirety as a tribute to the African women.