The little girls in this village want to grow up to be princesses but before long, reality pulls that fantasy rug out from under their feet and they fall on their parents’ consoling words ─they can be anything that they want to be when they grow up. The little girls understand their no-limitation future, so they want to grow up to be men: to not wait at home all day but to go out and ‘hunt’, make money. To be waited on the way women wait on their husbands, all day toiling under the sweltering heat of the sun, pounding maize with their hands. When the men come, holding the pride of their masculinity, a dead animal for meat, they know they will get larger servings for their toil. The women, though tired, serve them with a smile on their faces and a spring in their step.
So the little girls want to be men, just like their fathers. Even though sometimes their fathers go hunting and never return. To explain their absence, their mothers tell a Setswana tale of this one train that once went through the whole village running over little people’s fathers. The tale is so short it fits into one phrase, ‘Rraago o gatilwe ke terena, your father was run over by a train.’ The women say this to their children when they ask where their fathers are, a blanket excuse for whatever real reason it may be that the fathers are not in the picture. Sometimes they came back, these fathers, a little smaller and without a name. The little girls know that these are not the kind of men they will become. The ones who leave crops in the field for the women to grow, who gift other women their names and plough stranger’s fields; the kind of men who sometimes come back during harvest season to demand a reward from the field’s produce, bearing sob stories of how they have wanted so much to come and take care of the crop but the scarecrows looked so real that they ran away for good. The little girls also know that to keep their names, they have to grow up to be men and before Arefa was a woman, she was no exception.
In her mother’s mud-built hut, she was sitting by herself, the women were outside flowering the outer walls with colourful patterns. Arefa was on her monthly period so she was not joining the women. When her ‘visitor’ came that morning, all red and unannounced, her mother, who seemed to have been expecting it for a long time told her she was now a young woman, no longer a little girl. She could not understand how a pool of blood on her skirt meant she had, overnight turned into a woman, ─and the pain, was it necessary? Did it mean that becoming a woman would be painful or was it just nature’s way of reminding her she was not in control of her body? She had noticed how, that year, her skirts were getting tighter where they used to just run loose and how the boys’ eyes seemed to linger on those areas. They were outside ─the boys playing soccer and Arefa just knew that this was the end of life as she knew it. She was no longer going to play the boys’ games so freely anymore.
She called her mother into the room and regretted it as if her voice, with a mind of its own, had things to say that she was not ready to share. Where was she going to start? Even at twenty-three, the thought of breaking the news of her pregnancy to her parents was debilitating. Her mother did not take kindly to anything that disturbed the constant rhythm of things, so Arefa braced herself.
“I have something I need to tell you, mama,” she said when her mother walked into the room, barely waiting for her to take a seat, her voice heavy with urgency and fright.
“I am pregnant.”
The words spilt out of her mouth ahead of her mind again. Her mother slowly took her seat and shook her head lightly as if to find room for the words in her mind. Her face was covered in disdain. She had always dreaded the day this would come, a daughter bringing shame to the whole family by falling pregnant before getting married.
She had hoped that with her daughter things would be different, unlike with her.
“Who is the father?” she asked finally when she found her voice. She wished she could be someplace far instead of here. What was she going to say to her husband? A boy spoke to his daughter through the fence and now a baby was on the way? That she looked away to make a good pot of Bogobe and when she looked back Arefa was a mother? Exactly how much time is a woman given to get this parenting thing right? The thoughts were loud in her mind.
“It’s the guy next door, Tayo”, answered Arefa from behind her shame.
“I have no child who bears children. From now on you are a woman and women get married, Arefa. You will have to get married and rid us of the shame of having a daughter with no ring but a swollen tummy. Ke heditse,” Arefa’s mother said, rather matter-of-factly, then sat there staring into space with a furrowed brow that expressed more concern than anger. A single tear trickled down her left cheek which she gently wiped away without shifting her gaze. Arefa knew this expression on her mother’s face. It meant she was mapping a way forward and leaving less room for frustration, something most women around her were good at. They displaced disappointment while putting their minds to work, strategizing; a kind of prayer or sacrifice to whatever god of the issue at hand to hold them up, not let them crumble and fall, because, after all, women have to be strong, right? Especially married women, supposed to keep it together no matter the circumstance. A bad report from the herdsman? They can handle that. A baby lost pre-term? They will see how to get through it. A husband’s secret affair? Sure. What’s a daughter’s out of wedlock pregnancy?
Arefa knew her mother cared about her, but even she was disappointed in herself. During her final year of studying accounting, she had become a statistic. When she discovered she was pregnant she was only two months along but she dropped out of school and could not tell her mother until three months later. She wore baggy sweaters and thanked the gods hers was a winter baby so she did not have to explain the heavy dressing but she knew she was about to run out of luck. When asked about her always being home, Arefa would whip up a lie about the lecturers being on strike, her school allowance not being credited or anything to justify her being at home on a school season. It was more the shame that kept her hidden in her room. Coming from a Christian home with strict morals, judgment from outsiders was going to be even harsher for her, let alone her parents’ rage.
Sego sa metsi
The events that unfolded in the following months saw Tayo’s uncles come to ask for Arefa’s hand in marriage. They said they had come to ask for sego sa metsi, a daughter in law. Even though Tayo’s father was Nigerian, they had lived in Botswana for years and had even learnt the traditions that the people abided by. They asked for Arefa’s hand in marriage more to respect the culture, to admit that one of their cows had broken into their kraal and they wished now to fix it, to have relations with Arefa’s family by taking her as their daughter-in-law.
Not to say she was not happy to be getting married, but she could not help but wonder why it was that when a woman fell pregnant there was so much pressure to marry her off. She understood the shame of being unmarried but it just did not feel enough to justify the almost forceful, ultimatum-like suggestions to get married.
“Why can’t we just have a child mama?” she asked her mother one evening who raised her head slowly from the bowl in which she was cutting up vegetables for the day’s dinner.
“Nnyaa Arefa, you’re getting married to that man. We cannot let him do this to you and walk away as if nothing happened.”
“But what if I did not love him?” she surprised herself with the question.
“Love is not a difficult thing my daughter. Building a family is more important than love. Love just weaves itself in as time goes on, you will see, you’re going to be just fine,” her mother said comfortingly. Things had taken a better turn since Tayo’s uncles had agreed to the bride price. Her mother wore a beautiful garment of pride every day with preparations for her daughter’s wedding. Her father’s laughter was even a little louder and her servings of food were a bit more. “You’re eating for two, my child,” her mother would say, placing a plate of dumplings and beef stew enough to feed a small village before her.
They got married in a small, beautiful ceremony held at home, with most villagers present to share in their joy. The newlywed couple, who could barely get a moment to themselves to determine if they really wanted to spend the rest of their lives together or just wanted to abide by the culture started their union this way. Arefa kept comforting herself with the knowledge that at least she liked Tayo, something that was not the case for her mother the time she and her father got married. She knew the beauty and order of Setswana desired for children to be raised in stable families but she also knew that the culture could be problematic.
Her mother, Tiny, once told her that when she was still drunk with youthfulness and naivety, she was married off to a man she did not know if she loved, Arefa’s father. They had met on her usual route back from school which became a daily occurrence. She would greet the man as she would any elder but this man seemed to take interest in talking to her, extending his greetings to something about the weather or meeting her curfew. Over time, he made it a point to bring Tiny snacks and little school stationery here and there. Her family was not well off, which didn’t help her already reserved nature hence she was always walking alone from school, keeping to herself. Wearing a short school uniform with shoes whose holes wouldn’t look so bad if they were, at least, polished. She would welcome this man’s pleasantries without question. The man asked her a lot about school and her plans and that alone made her feel safe and important ─if not special.
One afternoon when they met, the man asked Tiny, “Don’t you want to go have a hot meal at my house?”
Hesitant, she replied, “As long as I am home by five otherwise I’d get in trouble with my parents.” That she’d get in trouble was an understatement, her father was a stout Motswana man who did not welcome any change of routine. Coming home before sunset was a practice he made all the children in the family swear by and coming later than that warranted serious hiding.
“Have I ever got you in trouble?” asked the man looking intently into her eyes, she felt something fluttering in her tummy and a warm rush of blood over her whole body.
This man had this effect on her, she did not quite understand it but she liked it. Sometimes when the man brushed his hand lightly against her shoulder and quickly dropped it when strangers passed by, she would have the same feeling. When the man asked her to keep their friendship between them, she agreed. She felt needed and special to know that a whole man had a little secret he only wanted to share with her. But that evening, a hot meal at home became something else she struggled to wrap her mind around. The man kept apologizing when he escorted her back to the road at which they had taken as a detour to his house.
“Monyasa’s uncles are coming next week,” Tiny’s father had said to his wife. “We have agreed to charge them twelve cattle, ten as bride price and two for damages,” he concluded with finality. Tiny, their daughter had brought shame to the family by falling pregnant unmarried; the only way to fix this was to marry her off to the father of the child, Monyasa. That was the only way to make him also pay for defiling their daughter. Tiny’s mother knew that she could not object to the marriage, she too was ashamed of having her little daughter become a mother without a husband. So she meekly nodded her head at everything her husband said. The proceedings continued and two months later, Arefa was born.
Arefa’s mother narrated these events to her with a strained voice, one that would have carried so much shame if time hadn’t ironed it all out of her. She had accepted the ways of her culture, consoled herself with the pride of being a wife and having a home and besides, her husband did not ill-treat her. She might have taken long to fall in love with him but she had found a way to accept her fate.
In this village, the little girls grew up to be women. They were almost disappointed by the failed dreams of their girlhood but, love soon intoxicated them. They loved boys and got whipped for taking too long to return from the river where they collected water. They became women, had children and did their best at mothering them. Besides their problematic patriarchal African traditions that often left women on the back burner when it came to big decisions like marriage, running families and the like, culture also afforded them the joy of belonging, of knowing that it takes a village to raise a child so they did not have to bear the weight alone. There was always the relief of having uncles who were always there as second parents, who negotiated bride price, bought extra pairs of shoes for little nieces and nephews and returned home from the city with more than just handfuls, with a presence no other could gift their families. In this village the cultural festivals were big and the weddings even bigger. Even the funerals pulled crowds who gathered around the deceased’s family to help them lift the darkness of grief. This was Kanye, South of the landlocked beauty that is Botswana and there, the little girls were learning to love the women they were becoming. The culture’s dynamic nature gravitated towards progressiveness: the women were not afraid of themselves, they became CEOs and political party leaders, self-made business owners and housewives, and they stayed single if they wanted to. They taught their sons the gift in vulnerability and that it was okay to come back home, hands bleeding but having caught nothing, that their efforts at making a living for themselves and their families would always be met with adulation whether they got those prestigious jobs or not. They taught them that there was no weakness in tears or vulnerability.
Monna selepe, o a adimanwa
There was the case of Arefa’s sister, married straight out of high school, she and her husband secured great jobs and climbed gracefully up the corporate ladder. They were an example of what to become if you did not want to be a failure. Yet, when Peo came home one day crying and beaten to a pulp, her mother gave her a cup of water but would not let her come into the house. She told her a married woman must be able to hold her family together, even though it was her husband breaking it apart; breaking her apart. Her sister would oftentimes be sent back home with only a promise of a reconciliatory meeting with her husband, her abuser. This, despite having three miscarriages at his hands.
When Arefa asked her sister what the problem was, she said, “I am dying at the hands of Villander because of Monna selepe o a adimanwa.”
Arefa hated how when issues about marriage were spoken of, there were always these Setswana sayings concealing the ugliness of issues. Her sister lamented how when she complained about her husband’s infidelity, she got beaten up by him. Several meetings of reconciliation were held to stop her from leaving but one day she purposed to leave for good.
On her way out, her husband, as if he could read her mind burst into tears and said, “I am HIV positive Peo, who will take care of me? I promise I am a changed man.”
The selfishness in his statement was loud and unashamed. He sure was a changed man. He was no longer the pride of different girls in town. Once again Peo stayed and went through the pain of seeing a man she loved wreathing in pain resistant to ARVS because he had stayed so long without treatment. The stronger doses he needed to take made him weaker and weaker to his last day.
Monna tlhogo ya lolwapa
At their grandmother’s house, Gorata and Pitso were bickering over who should make the fire and cook.
“I cooked food yesterday!” Gorata lamented.
The clouds were beginning to cover the sky in a blanket of grey and neither of the two wanted to find themselves with the task of cooking outside in such bad weather. Whoever was to cook would have to shield the fire from the rain by using the fire-thinned sheet of corrugated iron that was now soot heavy but too light for the purpose. It was an arduous job and both of them knew it.
When Mma Peo came she said, “Gorata, what kind of woman are you going to be? Do you not know that Pitso tlhogo ya lolwapa? He is a man, older than you, respect him and go cook.”
At that instance, Gorata got up to do as told. Once again she was dealt the wrong hand, doing chores because she was a girl, her brother, two years her junior was said to be her father because he was the only male in their family since their father had passed on. This angered her so much but what could she do? It was the culture she was raised in that made the rules of gender roles and determined her lot. She could not understand why this culture which was said to be so dynamic hadn’t changed for the better, why it placed women on the back burner and why it often burdened little boys. Sayings such as Monna ga a lele made little boys grow up so closed up inside that when they became men, all they knew was rage, softness was a language for the weak to them. When a little boy is said to be the head in the family because the father is absent by way of death or choice, he thinks he must quickly graduate from boyhood. He skips stages in trying to become a man while still tied to his mother’s apron strings. He has no time to develop the language to say, “This is too heavy for me,” or “This hurts,” because what kind of man would he be? Whose daughter would want to marry him? Whose children would he want to father if he could not handle issues the weight of his father?
This was Arefa’s world, one in which she had to raise her daughter and build a family. In a culture with so much colour yet such dark complexities. Her forefathers had come and raised her parents and her parents’ parents here so it could be done, perhaps with a bit more female empowerment, perhaps with a lot more equality preached to both men and women. Looking into her daughter’s glinting eyes she laughs to herself, remembering how much she wanted to grow up to be a man, realizing just how naïve she had been and just how much she would be forfeiting then.
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