Rites of Passage

I have been thinking a lot about rites of passage lately. I recently spent time in our Tanzania office with the advocacy team who were initially formed to respond to the practice of Female Genital Cutting[1] that is prevalent across most of the communities we work with. One of the ways in which they seek to tackle this phsyically harmful practice is through offering an alternative rite of passage, in recognition of the fact that the cutting itself is considered by the community as the only means for a girl to achieve adulthood, and therefore indispensable to their future.

Traditionally, a girl of about ten years old will leave her family, along with a group of others her age. A huge celebratory feast is thrown in their honour, before the girls are removed to a female only gathering and each girl is cut by an older, female member of the community. Each girl is then taken into her own room, or private lodging, where she stays for one month, with an aunt, a friend of her mothers, or an older female who she already has a relationship of trust with. This month of physical healing is a time for the older woman to teach the girl about womanhood, about sex and sexuality, about men and marriage and the role required of her as a woman in her community. This vitally important, highly positive, invaluable source of knowledge is rarely mentioned when we in the West hear of this practice. Everything you ever wanted to know and were too afraid to ask is told to you, over time, by a woman who speaks from her experience, and with whom you already have the basis of a trusting relationship. The whole process is concluded with another feast, this time a celebration of the group of girls who have emerged from their huts as women of the community. The alternative rite of passage fulfils all these steps, with the exception of the physical cutting, because the emergence of these girls as informed, and therefore confident, self-respecting women, is irreplaceable.

My time in Tanzania got me thinking about rites of passage and how much we make room for similar ceremonies in our own lives, in order to respect ourselves as worthy members of our society. It got me thinking about whether we need to pass through similar rites of passage in order to respect ourselves.

A few weeks ago some great friends came to stay. You know the strength of a friendship by the ease with which you spend time in each others company: there was no need to entertain this couple, and we talked from morning to night, enjoying peaceful coffee in the lulls of quiet as we digested our thoughts, without the pressure of an awkward silence. One of these friends was telling me about a girl named Anna, whose heart was broken by a man who didn’t want to marry her. On their break up, he had agreed that she could write to him, but not that she could contact him in any other way. For two years she sent him a white card in a red envelope for each week that he refused to talk to her. After two years of silence, she had an epiphany: perhaps an understanding of love as a risk and marriage as a mere social institution. Whatever it was that changed her mind, Anna began to look around amongst her male friends for someone she felt she could partner life with. She chose someone reliable and safe, someone who shared the same passions as her and wanted a similar lifestyle, someone who would work hard for the same goals. Three days before their wedding, Anna received a white card in a red envelope. As my friend narrated this story, goose bumps spread down my arms. Even writing it now has the same effect – can you imagine the grief of such timing? Despite the letter, Anna decided to continue with her marriage plans. Both doing their PhD research, they had been married for nearly a year by the time I heard their story, but had yet to live together. This didn’t seem to be an issue and I asked my friend why she thought Anna had wanted to get married, when love was not in the equation and even partnering her life with him had not yet become a reality. I think she saw marriage as a necessary rite of passage, my friend replied.

In hindsight, having a trustworthy, older, female friend to initiate me into the world of being an adult would have saved me years of wondering, of sneaking peeks at agony-aunt pages in women’s magazines, of re-reading all the passages of novels I could find that talked about sexuality and pondering what it was I aspired to be in my female role models. A month’s worth of answers possibly wouldn’t have satisfied my curiosity, and would I have known the questions I wanted to ask when only 10 years old, if the root of these was, ‘how do I earn my self-respect in a world where anything goes and social identity is so transient’? I think not.

Whatever the case, I find myself contemplating alternative rites of passage, and missing the lack of these in my life. In response to this gap, I catch myself viewing otherwise unremarkable occasions as opportunities for ritual and observation. I’ve found it satisfying, and to some extent self-illuminating, to place informal ceremony into occasional things I do. I find that marking specific choices, celebrating particular thoughts and reflecting on the gradual changes I make as my life develops, have me feeling more confident, more self-respecting, more inreplaceably, me.

[1] I specifically use the term Female Genital Cutting because I think the stronger statement of FGM (M for Mutilation) pushes a stereotype of brutality and violence about a culture already so destructively misunderstood. Ignorant generalisations of the less development world are a constant bug bear of mine when I work in an industry so focused on its development and yet so obstinately unwilling to include any representation of its voices. With this in mind, I use the term Cutting in order to discuss the rite as a practice of an unknown culture without the Western perceptions we may place on it. This is not an article debating the ethics of FGC and so the terminology I choose serves my purpose well.

The Inner Child

Travelling has always been a time for reflection for me, as it is for most people. There’s something about this middle ground of worlds that allows you to be the person you want to be, unlimited by the expectations and structures of the reality on the ground. For some, a plane can be ‘home’ – it is neither the culture of origin nor that of the destination, when each can be a painful reminder that you no longer fit in either.

Travelling has also been, in the past, fairly fraught emotionally, ping-ponging back and forth between the world of my relationships and the world of my obligations, half of my life spent in each and my soul yearning for some strength to do it, or the grace to transition gallantly at least.

2009 was a year of facing some of the fraught memories of years spent concealed as a Ping Pong. Most people will know that dealing with negative memories requires returning to them first. A painful experience, to delve into the past and fish out the bad stuff, confront it firmly enough that it loses its hold, and leap safely back into reality without fragments of pain clinging on tightly. There is a theory in Psychology around the idea of the Inner Child; that if you experience trauma or negative experiences before you are an adult, it is often necessary to return to that age in your emotional memory and consult the child of the experience, in order to properly deal with that pain. Having spent my teenage years flying between worlds in what I remember as being a fairly traumatised state of mind, I found it completely impossible to get on a plane as an adult without feeling the fear and abandonment of that teenager.

Six months ago, equipped with my new found knowledge of the Inner Child and built up by weeks spent coaching the negative memories from my then reality, into the past, I was encouraged to get on the plane with the teenager. As bizarre as it sounds, we sat together, me and myself, and flew from Kilimanjaro back to London: the terrifying journey of our childhood. Despite my consciousness, my body responded, as habit told me it would, to the Leave-taking, and Me and Myself struggled with our nausea across 4000 miles of the world. As much as I fought the feelings of my teens, they remained a reality in my adult world and it took my younger self a whopping two weeks to return to her place in my memory. Exhausting, when the enemy you fight is your own, anxious self and your only weapon is the rationality of hindsight.

Today marks a huge turning point in my life. I sit writing in Addis Ababa, my connecting plane to London warming up on the tarmac. My adult self types this out: no children allowed. One difference I can pinpoint is allowing myself the concession of considering the leave-taking well in advance. In the past, denial was a good friend. The Leave-taking approached and I waited for the nausea; shaky, nervous, stomach vibrations; panic. Nothing. I got on the plane this afternoon with the sadness of saying goodbye to the people I love, but my emotions belonged to me, here and now, and there is no trauma in delighting in the wealth of people who make my world, across the world. Today I am the strong leave-taker and the passenger on this plane is myself. I can’t pinpoint other differences that make this journey so epic, except the overwhelming feeling that I have grown into my skin; and the healing that comes from validating feelings of pain, not only towards others, but towards yourself.

You can’t IMAGINE the delight!

People Make My World Go Round

Today, the sky is entirely white. I look up to see a mass of cotton wool balls dabbing dark houses for rain spots, which splatter sparsely against clinical windows, as if asking permission to enter.
Tin-tea on my toothpaste-teeth as the day begins and I stop for a moment to think. I think about People. People make my world go round.

I have a friend whose humour delights me. Her wit cracks my sides wide open with laughter. Stomach-clenching hesitation of no-breath pauses: I have to remember to breathe. My laughter explodes with Life. Under-breath murmurs of it; Life is a joke, despite her grief.

I have a friend whose mind delights me. His thoughts dance circles around mine. Like high footed, twirling skirts, quick-step-thought-jumping, I'm forced to run to keep up: I silently exalt when I skip ahead. He allows a small breather on the dance floor; I have time to retrace my steps and delight in the pace. My mind explodes with Life. Brain ballet is life’s breath; or a safe game to hide behind.

Despite my jack-in-the-box, jingle-jump between worlds, wherever I am, the people around me make that world go round.

Switch Off

Sometimes its easier to keep going without thinking. Sometimes its best to control your thoughts, take command of the situation and fill your time with practical things. Sometimes, when the light is fading and bed is beckoning and your mind slows down to contemplate the bigger picture, it is easier to fill your head with a mindless novel and wish for sleep with all the denial of someone turning their head off.

I turned my head off in July. It is September and the leaves on the trees tell me the warmth is going. Wait for me. It will take time, but I will turn it on again.

Pause for Reality Please

There is a sad silence about my soul these last few days; a pause of reality in an otherwise endless going of doing that makes no demand for understanding. Each day is a test of my strength to face my decisions, to deal with the consequences, to accept the changes and find the strength to mourn them. Putting ones head back into ‘doing’ finds the easy comfort of denial. Anyone who has ever said goodbye will know the heart-pulls of the days leading up to it. Days when ones stomach is warm inside, with the bitter feeling of anticipation; where hands shake with unsteady nerves and the heavy feeling of Lost follows you like a shadow.

My goodbyes have started, despite my anticipation of its coming. Last week, I sat with seven hundred others under the shade of acacia trees overlooking the Monduli hills. Hulda Ayoub Zelote, cleansed of wrinkles and shrouded warmly in her coffin, lay while we filed past, bidding farewell with a nod of our heads, aware of the crowd. Two older men, one supporting the other and his stick, walked slowly – painfully – up last. They approached the coffin in careful steps, aware of the uneven ground. One steadied the other and, slightly leaning forward, they bowed to her in perfect sychronisation. That mythical lump of cliché appeared in my throat: an incredibly moving moment to see men, whose age alone commands respect, honouring a woman, and a Maasai at that, when Maasai women are truly at the end of the political food chain.

Perhaps the pause of reality commanded by death strips away the prejudice that comes with doing life; perhaps prejudice is born when doing life makes no demand for understanding. Either way, the harshness of reality facing me now may be painful, but it is fresh and real and the doing of it will be heartfelt, demanding the thought and understanding it deserves.

To Live.

'How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.'

Henry David Thoreau

A Great Woman's Passing

A great woman died yesterday. She was, at a guess, as old as eighty, with her brown-skinned face so wrinkled and brown eyes turned blue with cataracts: she was a striking woman. She was the first woman from Arusha region to earn a degree, following Julius Nyerere to Uganda’s great Makerere University. She returned to Tanzania, a social-studies graduate, and became the first female appointed to a government position in the same region. Friends with Nyerere’s sister, she was recruited to the Independence party – TANU at the time – and fought for the freedom of her country.

Years, marriage and six children later, she fell in love with the words of Jesus and, walking hundreds of miles through the Maasai steppe, stopped to meet women and talk to them about Jesus’ take on gender equality, on love, on forgiveness and honour, on the difference between hope and despair and the power that knowing someone loves you can bring to your life.

She had an impact on hundreds of people’s lives. She had an impact on me: welcoming me into her home, offering beans and maize when 8 grandchildren also needed to eat; telling me with all the graciousness of a queen how she still remembered areas of Arusha town reserved for Whites Only, where dogs were trained to chase off anyone else and white farmers tied Maasai braids to the tailgates of their landrovers and dragged them out of town. She had the dignity to ask after me: what was I studying, did I plan to return to Tanzania, how was my mother, who she loved so much, and told me so.

Death is so final that, with its appearance, it is often a string of disappointed if-only’s that hold hands with our grief.