young men, anyone with an education, go to Nairobi now to find jobs as casual laborers, or to be servants and
askaris
. *
“Now, before long we will have water taps in Karai. The pipeline the government is building has already reached the hills by the primary school. Then we will have development and maybe the people will come back from the city. But if they do, how are we going to support them? Our farmland is not good here and all the land is taken. This is the very poorest part of Kikuyuland.
“What we need are more educated ladies, people who will come to understand family planning and the need for smaller families, many less children. Our children face a very hard life ahead and it will be even harder if there is no family planning. Pills are sent to the clinic but no one uses them.”
As common as large families are, premarital sex is taboo in much of rural Africa and is punished severely, even by death in a few cultures. Removal of the clitoris—a brief, bloody operation that is performed without anesthetics—reduces the woman’s potential forarousal during intercourse, making sex a female activity of procreation, not pleasure. Marriages are arranged soon after the circumcision ceremonies, when the boys are about seventeen, the girl fifteen. The purpose of the union has little to do with companionship or sharing as we know it in the West. Rather, it is solely to produce a bountiful crop of children, who can help in the fields and can eventually take care of their parents in old age.
In the cities, sexual morals are much looser, but affection between men and women is only rarely displayed or expressed. You will never see a young couple in East Africa exchanging touches or simply sitting quietly in a restaurant, looking at each other. Africans skip the preliminaries known in the West; where a European couple might kiss, Africans copulate.
It is also curious by Western standards that homosexuality in Africa is virtually unknown. True, in the cities you will often see men holding hands, but it is a sign of friendship, not homosexuality. Africa’s tradition is rigidly heterosexual. Sexual roles—because of the emphasis placed on producing large families—are clearly defined, and parents never allow their children to play roles that would confuse their sexual identity. Any African having a homosexual relationship is quickly ostracized and in Kenya, for example, is guilty of a felony, punishable by five years in prison and up to a hundred lashes.
Perhaps more for economic than sexual reasons, male African prostitutes have appeared in recent years in areas where foreign influence is strong, such as touristy Mombasa on the Kenya coast, and Lagos, the boom capital of Nigeria. In 1978 a Swiss tourist spending Christmas in Mombasa was caught having an affair with a Kenyan male and sentenced to nine months in prison. But such incidents are rare, for the guilt of homosexuality is great. During Kenya’s Mau Mau war in the 1950s, the Kikuyu guerrillas recruited new supporters by sending teen-age boys into the prisons to tempt inmates into performing sodomy with them. The disgrace was so painful that the inmates, fearing the act would be revealed, were beholden to the guerrillas and became, as ordered, part of the Mau Mau movement.
The one constant amid the changes that are transforming the character of a continent is the role of the African woman, a person whose physical and spiritual strength is nothing short of remarkable.More often than not she is uneducated, barefoot, stoop-shouldered and beefy. Her comforts are few, her burdens many. But if liberation means the freedom
to
work, rather than
from
work, she is the world’s most liberated woman.
The African woman produces 70 percent of the food grown on the continent, according to the United Nations. She works longer and harder and has more responsibilities than her husband. She is the economic backbone of the rural community, the maker of family decisions, the
askaris
. *
“Now, before long we will have water taps in Karai. The pipeline the government is building has already reached the hills by the primary school. Then we will have development and maybe the people will come back from the city. But if they do, how are we going to support them? Our farmland is not good here and all the land is taken. This is the very poorest part of Kikuyuland.
“What we need are more educated ladies, people who will come to understand family planning and the need for smaller families, many less children. Our children face a very hard life ahead and it will be even harder if there is no family planning. Pills are sent to the clinic but no one uses them.”
As common as large families are, premarital sex is taboo in much of rural Africa and is punished severely, even by death in a few cultures. Removal of the clitoris—a brief, bloody operation that is performed without anesthetics—reduces the woman’s potential forarousal during intercourse, making sex a female activity of procreation, not pleasure. Marriages are arranged soon after the circumcision ceremonies, when the boys are about seventeen, the girl fifteen. The purpose of the union has little to do with companionship or sharing as we know it in the West. Rather, it is solely to produce a bountiful crop of children, who can help in the fields and can eventually take care of their parents in old age.
In the cities, sexual morals are much looser, but affection between men and women is only rarely displayed or expressed. You will never see a young couple in East Africa exchanging touches or simply sitting quietly in a restaurant, looking at each other. Africans skip the preliminaries known in the West; where a European couple might kiss, Africans copulate.
It is also curious by Western standards that homosexuality in Africa is virtually unknown. True, in the cities you will often see men holding hands, but it is a sign of friendship, not homosexuality. Africa’s tradition is rigidly heterosexual. Sexual roles—because of the emphasis placed on producing large families—are clearly defined, and parents never allow their children to play roles that would confuse their sexual identity. Any African having a homosexual relationship is quickly ostracized and in Kenya, for example, is guilty of a felony, punishable by five years in prison and up to a hundred lashes.
Perhaps more for economic than sexual reasons, male African prostitutes have appeared in recent years in areas where foreign influence is strong, such as touristy Mombasa on the Kenya coast, and Lagos, the boom capital of Nigeria. In 1978 a Swiss tourist spending Christmas in Mombasa was caught having an affair with a Kenyan male and sentenced to nine months in prison. But such incidents are rare, for the guilt of homosexuality is great. During Kenya’s Mau Mau war in the 1950s, the Kikuyu guerrillas recruited new supporters by sending teen-age boys into the prisons to tempt inmates into performing sodomy with them. The disgrace was so painful that the inmates, fearing the act would be revealed, were beholden to the guerrillas and became, as ordered, part of the Mau Mau movement.
The one constant amid the changes that are transforming the character of a continent is the role of the African woman, a person whose physical and spiritual strength is nothing short of remarkable.More often than not she is uneducated, barefoot, stoop-shouldered and beefy. Her comforts are few, her burdens many. But if liberation means the freedom
to
work, rather than
from
work, she is the world’s most liberated woman.
The African woman produces 70 percent of the food grown on the continent, according to the United Nations. She works longer and harder and has more responsibilities than her husband. She is the economic backbone of the rural community, the maker of family decisions, the
Similar Books
