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.

In the Shadow of Injustice

A group of men sit on a hill. Their home is amongst thorns, their roof a tarpaulin sheet. They have wandered from Somalia, Kenya, into Tanzania, where the land laws allow nomadic grazing and their camels can eat freely. But they are not welcome, the local community, so close to the border, anxious about a large group of strangers; nervous of 1000 camels and what they may take from the community, already relying on so little for so much. There is a discussion: can the now-Kenyan citizens contribute to the development of the community in exchange for their camel grazing? The herders agree, donating the equivalent of $5000 to the village to build a school. A large sum of money and one that is not given lightly – the hands of the herders will feel its loss. They may live sparsely but they know how to save, their safety in moveable treasures.

The money is given to the local village government. The school it is intended for is a wooden shack with three walls, tree trunks for benches and a handmade, branch-woven tray as a teacher’s desk. It is 15 kilometres from the road and surrounded by small homes with young children who would otherwise not make the journey to school. The fence is a circle of thorns; the school gate a branch of barbs. The money, however, does not reach the school. Three years on, the voluntary teacher, seeking to give to her community, is still teaching on branches behind barriers of thorns: the village government holding the money.

Now the village is angry. They have walked round herds of camels on their land for three years. They know that the price of a fully grown camel in Kenya is $1200. They know the Kenyans are cultivating a small fortune at their expense. They wonder why, when their children sit on bent branches in the hot hut of a shaded tree, they aren’t benefiting from their village land?

The Kenyans too are angry. What hardships have they endured to reach Tanzania from their Somali homes? They have given a huge amount of money to find a home at last: it would seem they have not reached that home, after all. Unwelcome and unsettled, the law does not help them now.

The villages pick their way resentfully around the camel dung; the pungent smell of betrayal is stronger on their side of the fence. The Kenyans live quietly, the sun on their tents beating down its unforgiving rays of displacement. The stench gets stronger as the village government get quieter. There is little justice so near a border of laws: the shadow of Mount Namanga drowns it out.

From My Basket on the Left...

Last week, I had the lucky chance to attend the 2008 Travellers’ Philanthropy Conference, thanks to a scholarship I received from USAID. It was an interesting 3 days and I was delighted to have the opportunity to meet with so many challenging and interesting people from all over the world, right here in Tanzania. Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya gave one of the keynote addresses, and I was surprised at how delicate and witty this warrior for the environment came across. She and the second speaker, fellow Kenyan David Western, made some important and controversial points about fair-trade tourism, the focus of governments on tourism revenue over community rights and conservation, the importance of protecting Africa’s environment, and the need for encouraging indigenous Africans to ‘own’ their natural resources and not perceive them simply as a foreign tourist attraction.

It was all exciting and inspiring, but as I looked around the main hall, I wondered where all the Tanzanians were? Representatives of Tanzania’s tour companies came largely from the 38% of foreign-owned businesses and, while some may argue that companies with a wider range of foreign clientele are more likely to adhere to world standards of fairly traded services (not just goods), I would argue that any philanthropy they engage in will be seriously limited by their cultural perceptions of development, and not directed by the needs of the local communities themselves.

The issue is certainly not money. One of the main sources of advertising in Tanzania, and one which a significant number of Tanzanian-owned safari companies use, is a magazine who will promote your company for a mere $800 an (2 inch) advert. The cost of the conference was $395. Neither is the issue time: whilst the high season is certainly beginning, it is not yet in the full throws of 12 hour days, 7 days a week. One employee can certainly be spared 3 days work.

My Tanzanian friend, employed by a local hotel, told me she had not heard of the conference in Tanzania, but from her sister who lives in the UK. Who then, did the conference organisers advertise to? Who was the conference aimed at and why? Was there some discrimination in the choosing of their audience and if so, who made the decisions?

I prefer to believe in the underdog; in the great, corporate superpower that excludes the local community. Politically, I put all my eggs in one basket, and that basket sits firmly on the left, away from the shadows of the fence and bold in its declaration of injustice. As much as travellers’ philanthropy may indeed be the new ecotourism, and as much as corporate social responsibility may be labelled the ‘new development’, I observe from my seat on the left that it remains the same participants as in the old development, that the old development marginalised the conribution of the poor in dialogue around their 'benefit' and aimed instead to eradicate poverty from a position of cultural ignorance and that, once again, along the way, someone forgot to invite the Tanzanians.