African Womanhood

Timely conversations kindled by The Woman King

Dahomey Amazons. (2022, November 3). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey_Amazons

Last night my children and I watched The Woman King. I am not very good at watching movies because I tend to doze off, but this movie was great! (I just had a problem with the way Hollywood thinks Africans speak, you have heard it; they lower their tone, speak forcefully but hesitantly and enunciate every l.e.t.t.e.r!)

My kids are not new to this particular story of the Agojie or other African female warriors and leaders (thanks to me), but I think seeing the women in action sparked a lot of interesting and thought-provoking conversations. We spent much of the evening after the movie, googling and sharing our findings. What stood out for me during our discussion was the subject of womanhood. These were women, they danced, they laughed, they loved, and they birthed children. They also experienced hurt, rape, the death of loved ones, abandonment, and rejection. Best of all, they fought back, saved themselves, protected their families, were very enterprising, were loyal to the sisterhood, and were fierce killers. Very unladylike according to today’s standards. So I tried explaining to my children the different facets of African womanhood that we either forgot or were evangelized out of us in the name of the Lord. To explain our womanhood, I had to try to understand the present view of femininity and its origins.

After France seized what is now southern Benin in 1894, colonial officers disbanded the territory’s unique force of women warriors, opened new classrooms and made no mention in the curriculum of the Amazons. Even today, many in the country of 12 million know little about their foremothers.

“The French made sure this history wasn’t known,” said the Beninese economist Leonard Wantchekon, a professor of international affairs at Princeton University. “They said we were backward, that they needed to ‘civilize us,’ but they destroyed opportunities for women that existed nowhere else in the world.” (From The Washington Post)

The foreigners through their religion and education brought the concept of femininity as part of their strategy to colonize Africans. The thought of all women armies or female-led empires must have sent chills down their spines because an African woman is multifaceted. Before she was convinced to be one thing, she was a caring mother, a fierce and powerful priestess who had access to the spiritual world, a ruthless and unforgiving warrior, a healer of herself and her family, a just and effective leader, a strategic advisor, a sexy concubine, a vengeful witch whose power was felt far and wide, a shrewd trader, an ambitious wife, and the list goes on. She was whatever she wanted to be and she was good at it. This could not have been good for the colonizer so to neutralize her, they made her like their women, dainty and docile, wielding no influence or power. Known to faint at the onset of any extremes, her most powerful weapon? Tears. And they succeeded for a while.

They told the African woman to cover her body, modesty they called it. She cut off all her beads and became plain. She was dumb now, her dressing had been a way to communicate, and announce who she was. They took away her love for colour, and vibrance and replaced them with black, white, and greys. The modern colours. Minimalism. A good woman did not call attention to herself. Silence was encouraged. She could no longer speak up before men. If she had to, she had to bow her head in shame and cover it. She was cursed, by God himself after all she made the man leave a garden where he was happy because she fed him a forbidden fruit. Giving birth would be painful and she could not use her traditional herbs to heal herself because it was witchcraft. After all, she wanted to go to heaven yes? After living an inauthentic life, they promised an eternity where she would either sing endlessly or be a virgin reward to men. Instead of a powerful ancestor who would be reborn countless times in her lineage.

The introduction of the Western and even Eastern ideals of femininity greatly interfered with the harmony experienced in African society and is a cause of a lot of the breakdown in our society today.

Men and women had their place in society. We revered authority but it is important to remember that authority was not always a man. We had several matriarchal societies and if we studied our history long enough, we would realise that the matriarchy or patriarchy was not always permanent. Things changed according to the times. In times of war, for example, warriors emerged irrespective of gender. It never made men less or women more masculine. African womanhood was rooted in purpose, achievement and power, not in her ability to fold handerkerchiefs and cross legs.

The foreign feminization of the African woman weakened her. First, she now regarded her man as her enemy. Whereas in another lifetime they would work together, she was now convinced the man wanted to sit on her head. But she was not entirely wrong, the foreigners said the man had power over the woman. In many cases, her man abused this power.

She had been silenced, her colour and vibrance neutralized. She could no longer express herself. Dancing in public was considered vulgar. Her powers were considered witchcraft, she watched helplessly as her children died as she poisoned them with modern medicine.

In her quest to be modern and feminine, she bleached her skin and straightened her hair with dangerous chemicals. The whiter and daintier, the more feminine. The more beautiful and acceptable to foreign standards.

She accepted the box they had put her in and with it, limitations. Women don't do this or that, they don’t go or come.

So powerless was she that all she could do was pray. Where she would have slit a man’s throat for defiling her, she forgives and waits for vengeance from the sky. Where she would have seduced the most handsome and powerful man, she waits like a mango to be picked. Where she would have led her people to prosperity, she watches, paralyzed as society sinks to oblivion.

Then one day the western woman, the ideal feminine got tired. She tried to recruit us into a fight we are not familiar with. Her fight thrives in competition with her man. She shuns structure, she does not understand that life is constantly moving and giving us what we need at different times. Today the man leads, tomorrow the woman leads. Today the women protect, tomorrow the men are the protectors. She wants to lead, always. She is also angry. She does not try to understand where we are from, she just wants the numbers. She does not understand that the man is part of us. Without him, there is an imbalance. We need a collective healing, not a movement.

Let us be honest, nothing foreign describes the African woman wherever she may find herself on this earth. Our attributes cannot be fully described or experienced all at once. African femininity is not a set of rules, it is who we are, and who we need to be. It is living in harmony in the physical world and with the spiritual world. It is everything and yet very personalized. It is what kept society together and frightened invaders. African womanhood is fearless, full of love, vengeance, preservation, rebirth, prosperity, healing and is constantly becoming. Only we have the ability to reclaim our African womanhood.