KWENU! Our culture, our future

Half a Pot Full

Her name was Yei Fomba, but most people called her Dabuteh. It was a sobriquet from her father, a humorous man who called his children by nicknames he gave them according to their character or temperament. As a little girl, she was always joyful when her mother's cooking pot was more than half-full of rice, and so her father named her ‘half a pot full.’ That meant the rice would be sufficient for everyone on a given day. Those were the only days, in the confines of her parents' home, that she enjoyed childhood.

The family lived in Gbamendo town, in a big compound situated along the main motor road to the prosperous trading town, Kwendu. Dabuteh was born into a home of over forty children. Nine of her siblings were from the same mother, but she called each of her father's remaining seven wives 'mother,' and they treated her as a daughter. Her mother lost a child at birth, whose twin died of chickenpox two years later. Her mother had told Dabuteh that the twin had called the sister to the heavens, and that was that. Of her remaining siblings, two boys and four girls, five of them attended school. Her eldest sister had married and moved to a distant land. Dabuteh was the only one left to help her mother with domestic work and the petty trading that helped pay school fees for her schoolgoing siblings. She always nagged, “I could learn the white man's language too.”

At age thirteen, Dabuteh was ready for initiation into the Bondo Society, ripe for the ritual of female circumcision that would mark her passage into womanhood. Most of her sisters had already been initiated. Now, her time had come, but her father was waiting for a man who would shoulder the expense and ultimately become her husband. Such men often earmarked their brides at a tender age. Although she was a beautiful little girl, Dabuteh had a hard time attracting a prospective husband. Her beauty was intimidating. Her father encouraged her to dress like a young woman who was ready for the Bondo ritual and a husband.

Dabuteh ran around the compound bare-chested, exposing her virgin breasts. She wore beads of various colors and shapes around her neck and waist. Her parents bought a new wrapper and new underwear for her. She played with the lappa, knotted and unknotted it, flashing her new underwear at available bachelors or married men who were poised for new brides.

Her mother regularly braided her hair in cornrows, insisting on neatness. Sometimes, when Dabuteh wanted to play instead, her mother reminded her, “No man wants an unkempt and dirty woman.”

That dry season, Juma dawned bright and beautiful. The tropical sun rode high overhead. The rice farms were ready for harvest and ripened seasonal fruits beckoned to be plucked. Bananas hung heavy on the trees. Food was plentiful. Women stood outside in the sun and watched their shadows, awaiting Friday midday when their shadows lay beneath their feet and the time for collecting tilapia and bullfrogs arrived. This delighted young women like Dabuteh who could follow the older women to learn how to fish and make delectable freshwater fish soup for their future husbands. The prospect of adding this soup to their husband's diets that evening filled the older women with excitement. Although tradition forbid them to discuss the effect of freshwater fish on male sexual performance, they knew it improved their husbands’ sex drive. And so they moved helter-skelter to look for their fishing nets and baskets.

Dabuteh fastened her little fishing basket onto her head-tie and stuck part of the oval wooden frame of her little fishing net under her armpit. She drew close to her father and said in a subtle voice, "Father, I am going fishing with my mothers."

The presence of two men sitting and talking with her father mesmerized her. Adorned in huge white gowns and headscarves, the men looked like ghosts. Her father was also dressed in his Juma prayer gown, in preparation to go to the local mosque for prayers. This was the only time he could be found home. Otherwise, he would be on his farm. The men had stopped in front of their compound to perform Juma prayers before proceeding on their long journey home.

"Fetch some water for Kai Alhaji," her father commanded with an unusual show of authority intended to impress his strangers.

"But, Father, my mothers are leaving me behind," she answered pouting.

"Do as I say! And besides, you are not going anywhere today," her father stated firmly.

Dabuteh turned around with her head buried in her chest, biting on the beads around her neck, and walked away.

After a while, her father shouted, "Dabuteh!"

"Naamu, Father!" she answered from her mother's room, where she had laid down and buried her face in a pillow, weeping in disappointment for being deprived of going fishing. She wiped all traces of tears from her face, ran to fetch water for her father and his visitors, and ran back outside with the water. Facing her father and the strangers, she stood arms akimbo waiting for any further instructions. Her virgin nipples pointed straight at the strangers.

Her father told her, "Go tell Bondu Dahai that I have strangers. Help her prepare some food for the strangers. When you are done, wait here. I am going to the mosque with Kai Alhaji and I will be back soon."

Bondu Dahai was the youngest of her father's wives. Dabuteh wondered why had he not called Bondu Dahai so that she could have gone fishing with her mothers.

Dabuteh did not know what her father had discussed with Alhaji, but Alhaji kept coming by the house each time he went to Kwendu. He brought with him many gifts that ranged from clothes, and food, to money. Besides the merchandise Alhaji bought at Kwendu, he had amassed considerable wealth from mining diamonds. It did not surprise her when her parents started arrangements for her initiation into the Bondo society.

Dabuteh's initiation turned out to be the grandest Bondo celebration ever held in the township of Gbamendo and its surrounding towns and villages. Alhaji hired the most famous balladeers from faraway chiefdoms to celebrate the momentous occasion. He brought cows, goats and sheep to be slaughtered. "I have not seen so many animals bound for the abattoir in a ritual rite of passage celebration," an old woman told the Soko in glee. The Bondo Priestess smiled in reply.

Dabuteh began the sacred Bondo Society initiation rite with her mother's ministrations. Her mother dissolved white clay in cold water and rubbed it over Dabuteh's body. Young Dabuteh endured the chill of the harmattan wind on her already cooled skin. Her mother admonished her to stay calm and not frit away to the eternal shame of the family. Older women joined the rite by beckoning her and the other would-be initiates to answer the Bondo cry: Ooooohooo! Ooooohooo! The women snarled, crawling at the initiates, prompting the girls to repeat the Bondo cry: Ooooohooo! Ooooohooo! No sooner repeated, the women urged Dabuteh and the other girls to march to the Bondo Bush where the newly made women, resplendent and arraigned for the initiation, came out and joined in the merrymaking and feasting.

~

"You have attained womanhood now, Dabuteh," her mother said. "Six moons have passed since the Bondo ritual, and you must be well enough to go to your husband's house."

"Yes, Mamma, I don't feel anymore pain," she confirmed her mother's assumption.

"We are going to escort you to your husband at Temasadu today," her mother said.

The older women of Gbamendo were delighted to be part of the convoy that accompanied her to Temasadu. Like the Bondo initiation ceremony, Dabuteh's marriage ceremony was glamorous and the envy of all, becoming a hot topic for gossip in Gbamendo. Every mother wished such good luck for her own daughter. Many of them encouraged their children to dress like Dabuteh, spurring a renaissance of neatness and cleanliness for young women in their prime.

One mother yelled at a lad who usually came by to see her daughter, "She is not in a hurry to marry. Don't come back here any more."

"Kumba!" another mother called upon her teenage daughter. "Go take a bath and come back for your cornrow braids." They all were hoping for their daughters to find a rich man like Dabuteh's husband, Kai Alhaji.

~

When Dabuteh left Gbamendo, she did not know about the cultural differences that separated the two towns, only forty kilometers apart. She only knew that Kai Alhaji's six wives welcomed her with open arms.

The youngest wife was especially happy when she said, "Welcome! I will show you around. If you have any questions about the cooking utensils, let me know. All of them are yours now."

The eldest wife also held her own separate orientation meeting with Dabuteh. "Here, we wake up at dawn to pray. We take three recesses during the day and one at night for prayers. Tomorrow, I will give you your hijab to veil your face, your ablution kettle, a prayer mat and prayer beads. You will also start taking classes at the madrassa next week."

It soon became obvious to Dabuteh that everything she did looked bad in the eyes of the other wives. Although Islam was not new to her, she found practicing it very strange. Her father was the first Islamic convert in her family, but he did not demand that his family practice the religion. A Pommassu, a supreme leader of the Poro, he went back and forth between his role in the traditional secret society and the newly adopted religion. But Dabuteh tried to learn quickly and adjust to the new tradition. The wives had abandoned their religion, tradition and culture under similar pressures when they were married to Kai Alhaji, and they expected her to do the same.

Dabuteh did the laundry and ironing, she cooked and served food, she bathed her mates' many little children, and she dressed them and prepared them for school and madrassa. In eleven years, she gave birth to eleven children and always had a newborn and a toddler to care for at the same time. Her knack of balancing her housework and childcare was almost magical. She could balance a two-foot water bucket on her head, carry a child on her back and have fresh vegetables she picked from the garden in her hands. But she ran away several times to Gbamendo for various maltreatments, though her parents always encouraged her to return.

"A humble wife shall become blessed with successful children," her father always reminded her. Her father sometimes took her back to Temasadu when she ran away.

Finally, to encourage Dabuteh to stay in her marriage, her father sent her younger sister to live with her and to help her with the endless domestic chores. Both sisters did not only work very hard, but also suffered beatings from Alhaji's other wives when they failed to do certain things properly or complete their chores.

One awful afternoon, a piece of charcoal fell on one of the wives' gown and burnt it while Dabuteh was ironing the laundry. She concealed the burnt side of the gown to postpone the dreaded confrontation for another day, but unfortunately, the wife wanted to use the gown that day to wear to a wedding.

The wife shook the gown in front of Dabuteh's face when she noticed the burnt area, screaming, "Allahu akbar! Did you burn my gown?"

"Yes, I did by mistake," Dabuteh admitted.

The wife grabbed Dabuteh by her hijab and dragged her to the ironing table, forcing her head down. Luckily, the hijab protected her face from direct contact with the hot iron.

"Don't you realize that my gown is worth more than anything you have ever possessed? You deserve to be burnt in punishment." The wife continued trying to press Dabuteh's head against the hot iron while she struggled to escape. Dabuteh's sister came in on time and grabbed the woman by her hair and pulled her away. Emboldened by the surge of anger caused by the incident, she gave the woman a severe beating. Within a week, Alhaji evicted Dabuteh's sister from his household.

Since Alhaji was not ready for another wife any time soon, Dabuteh's role did not change. Now she understood why the wives had greeted her so warmly when she first came into the family. She was their slave! On top of this, because of Alhaji's reduced drive to succeed, his diamond business declined, and financial hardships began to take a heavy toll on the family.

Alhaji's children were not used to hard work. Many of them dropped out of school, a situation that also threatened Dabuteh's children. But she refused to let this happen. While Alhaji leaned toward the alternative, which was sending all of his children to an inexpensive madrassa, Dabuteh was adamant about having her children learn English, even if it meant sending them to a more expensive school. She turned to the petty trading she had learned from her mother to earn her own money. Alhaji would not let her distill omole because of his Islamic values, though omole, a local gin, was an integral part of her trade. They battled back and forth until Dabuteh decided to leave Alhaji and Temasadu for Koidu, where she could distill her omole in peace.

Although she did not divorce Alhaji, once out of his house, he would not help her, nor could she return to Gbamendo. Her life became one hardship after another. She worked endlessly, laboring under extended relatives who had settled down and built houses in Koidu. Dabuteh had left some of her teenage children behind in Temasadu. Alhaji and his family cared for them . . . just barely. If her children were to survive, she knew she had to do everything possible within her power to fetch them.

Dabuteh pressed herself hard to succeed. Lines of weariness and fatigue marked her face. She constantly frowned; her brow became furrowed from fighting and haggling in the local market with other traders over petty cash and customers. Soon, her clothes hung on her undernourished frame, and she discarded the hijab and long outfits as they interfered with her ability to move easily through the market place in her hunt for the best deals. She saved every penny she could, scrimping on her meals. But her mind remained sharp, constantly searching for new ways to escape her hardships.

It was only after she became the most famous omole distiller in Koidu and controlled thirty percent of the market that Alhaji started to visit her again. After many years of struggle, she had overcome poverty, built herself a house and retrieved the rest of her children. Omole retailers flocked in and out of her house for their supplies. Even Alhaji's other wives came to Dabuteh with their children for help when circumstances grew too difficult for them at Temasadu. But even while accepting her help, the wives still referred to her omole trade as sinful, "harram!"

Dabuteh did not let their comments bother her for their presence made her life bittersweet, reminding her of the cost of the grand Bondo initiation ceremony, the long years of struggle and all she had managed to do by her own power. Her pot was full.

Copyright © Karamoh Kabba, 2007

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