A dedication to all suffering African Women
Many years ago (in the last millennium) when my age was less than two score, my father had requested his work colleague who was a bachelor to allow me live with him, because our house was getting too small for the many of us. I cannot even remember how many we were. All I know is that we were indeed many, and that I was the oldest (among the children of course). The new house was made out of mabati but had nice wooden partitions inside that allowed for it to be cool even when the sun was very hot outside.
The wooden partitions also acted as dividers between our room and the neighbour’s room. His name was Alois and his wife was called Margaret (names changed to protect their identity). The wooden partitions could keep the heat out, but certainly not the sound. They were not very good sound proofing material, because every time he chose to beat his wife, and he did that regularly, I would hear every blow land on the poor lady and also the words he used, even though he belonged to another tribe and I did not understand what the words meant. But I heard them. There were these famous two words he would shout “xxxxxx Margaret!” (first word hidden not to reveal his tribe), and I would sit up in bed (he never beat her during the day) expecting to hear blows raining and the woman wailing, “Alois please spare me” (sometimes saying it in Swahili).
There was this day that he came home at about 8:30 pm and the next thing I heard the famous ‘xxxxxx Margaret!’ I sat up, my heart pounding like it wanted to exit the rib cage. But before I could even hear the pounding, the woman said in Swahili (probably she wanted me to understand what she was telling him): “Alois you are not even drunk.” While I did not understand what he said in his language, I want to believe he asked her: “What do you mean I am not drunk?” She said in reply: “You do not have any money and you do not even smell alcohol. Do not pretend to be drunk.”
That must have been a tactical error on her part because he beat her so bad that she ran outside, something that she never did. She used to take her blows like the good African wife she was. After I made sure that the beating was over and I could only hear her whimpering close to my window, I pushed my head out the window and even before I could offer my apologies, she said: “Masai (she could not pronounce my name as Mathai), today Alois has killed me.” I almost fell off the window but thank God it did not happen because I would have landed on her hurting body. Before I could think what to tell her, she said: “This time Alois has gone too far and I will certainly send radi (lightning) to him. He must die.”
My sympathies now turned to the jolly man who was best known as Bwana wa Margaret, and quickly back to me. I knew that if the lightning came, the house would go up in flames and my library of three books, my closet with four shirts, two kipande surualis, one long pant, a pair of underwear and a pair of shoes (and no socks) would be consumed in the process. I had to stop it. I sneaked out the door (she could not see me because she was by the window) and dashed the nearly two kilometers to the police station, not to report about the lightning that would come crashing from the heavens but to report that a man had killed his wife (that is what she told me, if the dead could speak!). The inspector sent out two constables, a man and a woman, with the instruction, “Lete hiyo Alois hapa. Ni lazima alale ndani.”
My heart started beating regularly. But it started racing again after I saw what happened next. When the police officers arrived at her house, she asked them what they wanted. They said that they had come to arrest Alois. She told them not her Alois. She was blocking the door with her body and the policeman tried to push his face towards her, but before he could say what he intended to say, she swung a clenched fist which landed squarely on his nose that so much blood came out you would have thought six chickens had been slaughtered simultaneously. The lady police officer tried to rush in to stop Margaret from hitting her male colleague a second time but in the confusion she hit the veranda post sending her kofia to the ground and she too started bleeding.
The police officers gathered their courage and arrested Margaret whom they took to the police station. Alois did not bother to protect his wife from arrest. I believe he was saying to himself, ‘good riddance I wish she is locked for many years.’ I followed them closely and I did hear the police woman tell Margaret in Swahili because they belonged to different tribes, “You have downed government crown on the ground! Woman, you will be jailed for so many years you will die before the sentence is over and your people will come to collect your bones.”
Now that worried me and I started regretting having called the police. But my worries were laid to rest when at the police station the inspector asked them: “I asked you to bring Alois, what are you doing all bleeding and arresting a defenseless woman?” They hesitated, but the police woman gathered courage before her male counterpart and said: “Afande, this woman has beaten us and even removed my kofia and threw the crown on the dirty ground. She should be jailed.”
The inspector could not believe what he heard and in reply told them, in a thundering voice that could have been heard miles away: “Take that woman home!” Now the male policeman found his voice and said, “Sir, it would be desirable if she walked home on her own. It is not very late and nobody will attack her.”
That happened in the last millennium. I might have added some chumvi but the essence of the story has not changed (nisameheni and do not let Jobjow know for he might sack me). Come to this millennium and whom do we find? Rose Muhando. I do not even know her tribe because she is from Tanzania. The people in Tanzania, unlike those from Kenya, are so cohesive, that I tend to think they have only one tribe. So I call them Watanzania, Rose Muhando’s tribe.
Jobjow has posted a terrific video, Nipe Uvumilivu, which depicts a heartbroken Rose, with four children all smeared with a lot of dust on their faces and body, singing about her problems.
Not just singing, but also being beaten by her very own ‘Alois’. What she sings about reflects her true life as she is the mother of three children and their father/s walked out on her. My Swahili appears to have taken the back seat since I relocated to the Caribbean because I do not seem to fully grasp the meaning of a word she has used, ‘walionizalisha’. It can be translated to mean the fathers of her children or the midwives who attended to her. Someone educate me, and please don’t recommend Jobjow as he cannot even pronounce that word, him being a true Kenyan.
Why do I compare Rose with Margaret? Only in December last year that this same Rose was quoted in an interview saying that she wants to get married. That she does not mind getting married to a nice man. Please Rose, do not beat your pastor when he tells you not to get married to so and so, because Pastor knows better.
Rose’s Nipe Uvumilivu (Give me Endurance/Perseverance) is a song that has a nice, simple and slow melody and is rendered prayerful. Its ‘temperature’ is right all through other than one point where she shatters the peace by raising her voice above the song’s tempo (6:50 – 6:52). The kids portrayed have conducted themselves like real actors, so much so, I am left wondering whether the opening scene had the kid fall accidentally or as part of the script.
Are those her kids? She has three but the video shows four, or were they borrowed to act? The ‘Alois’ in the video appears to enjoy his role as the man who knows how to discipline his woman. Watch him spring a gaiety (3:00 – 3:24) after he would have clobbered members of his defenseless tribe. See him do overtime – I wonder who is paying him (6:34 – 6:46). The footage of the woman bringing in farm harvest to the homestead reminds me of the many African women who have broken their back to feed their families. They are always there to make their husbands feel like true human beings. Kazi bila mshahara.
Rose Muhando has done justice with this song, which I will implore Jobjow to dedicate to all the suffering women in the world and Africa in particular. She gets four and a half of our green stars.
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