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Sisterhood is Powerful

Sisterhood is Powerful

Last updated on: October 12, 2007 at 4:19 pm by Cathleen Falsani

Sisterhood is Powerful 2007-10-12T16:19:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

ASEMBO BAY, Kenya — “You can still smell it,” Millicent said in Swahili.

The only odor I could detect was the earthy combination of eucalyptus trees and freshly turned African soil.

“What can you smell?” I asked.

“The hippo,” Millicent answered, pointing to a swath of crushed vegetation a few feet in front of us. “It ate all of my sweet potatoes.”

Ah, yes. I hate when that happens.

The hippopotamus had made its way to a tract of land a couple of hundred yards from the shores of Lake Victoria where Millicent and a number of other Luo widows have a small farm.

The Asembo Bay Women’s Cooperative grows kale, onions, papaya, mango, tomatoes, potatoes and a variety of other produce they rely on both for sustenance and as a source of income.

As Millicent showed me around the farm, we compared notes on her life in Asembo Bay — a tiny fishing village about 25 miles from the city of Kisumu, and not too far from where Barack Obama’s Luo grandmother, Sarah, lives — and mine back in Chicago.

The heir demands sex

“If your husband dies, what can you do?” she asked.

“Anything you want to do,” was my answer.

“Do you have to marry again or can you live by yourself?” she said.

“It’s your choice,” I said.

“Sawa,” she said in Swahili, meaning “all right.”

When Millicent’s husband died a number of years ago, tribal leaders told her she didn’t have a choice whether to marry again. In Asembo Bay, where most inhabitants come from the Luo tribe, there is a long tradition of “wife inheritance.”

Originally it was a noble concept: When a husband dies, his side of the family is responsible for the physical needs of his widow and her children. While the widow is officially another “wife” of her brother-in-law or another male in-law — polygamy is practiced here in some quarters — the relationship is meant to be nonsexual.

But that changed in recent generations, with the heir demanding sex, seizing the widow’s property and leaving her destitute. This new brand of wife inheritance also has led to soaring rates of HIV/AIDS.

“They tried to take my cow but I said no,” Millicent said, motioning to a skinny Holstein tethered near the grave where her husband is buried between her house and the chicken coop.

Millicent shirked tradition and said no. No, you can’t take my house.

No, you can’t sell my property. No, I won’t marry him.

The community could have shunned her or worse. But she believed she could make it on her own, with God’s help. The only man she needed, apparently, was Jesus.

By her bold example Millicent has empowered other widows in her community to reject the practice of wife inheritance and stand up for themselves.

There are 26 widows in the cooperative, ranging in age from late teens to early 80s. Together they care for about 70 children, including a number of orphans. They run several businesses — the farm, a mill that grinds nuts (a dietary staple in this part of Kenya), a dairy farm (with four cows), seven small shops that sell everything from steel wool to eggs, and a fish-smoking operation.

Standing outside Leonitta’s large hut overlooking Lake Victoria, the woman we came to call “Big Mama” and some of the other Mamas of Asembo Bay, as they are known, proudly explained they had recently bought a boat.

They did so because they were fed up with fishermen sexually exploiting the young women who collect the day’s catch along the shore each morning.

The Mamas said no to trading sex for tilapia, bought a small boat, and hired a group of young men to fish for them. They then smoke the fish and sell it to the locals. (It’s delicious.)

As the women continued to tell their stories, I thought of the “Proverbs woman” described in Hebrew scripture. In Chapter 31 of the book of Proverbs, the ideal woman rises early to provide for her family; has strong arms from all her hard work; is smart with her money and her businesses; helps neighbors in need, and wears purple garments she makes herself.

The Proverbs woman, the Bible says, is worth more than rubies.

In their matching royal purple dresses, heads held high, arms finely muscled from years of manual labor, the Mamas of Asembo Bay should be valued like precious gems. Yet they have been treated as little more than chattels.

After a lavish lunch of local delicacies prepared in honor of their Chicago visitors, the Mamas danced, singing a song that was either about God’s grace or matatus, the insane minibuses that get most people from place to place in Kenya — at their own peril.

Holding a horsehair baton, Leonitta motioned for me to dance with them. She is a fierce, regal woman with a broad smile, thick build and piercing eyes.

You don’t say no to Big Mama.

So I danced awkwardly as they whooped and hollered, shaking rusty bottle caps strung on a piece of wire. They celebrated our presence, God’s grace and each other.

Before we left Asembo Bay, the Mamas asked me to tell their story. And then they prayed for my strength.

They say sisterhood is global.

They also say sisterhood is powerful.

So it is.

GODSTUFF

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