A Girl Is a Body of Water

Remember, be a good person, not a good girl. Good girls suffer a lot in this life.

Stories are critical, Kirabo. The minute we fall silent, someone will fill the silence for us.

But the Bible says that God created Adam and Eve in his own image.’ ‘If he created them in his own image,’ Nsuuta snapped, ‘then afterwards Adam re-created Eve in his own image, one that suited him.

Once we shrunk, men had to look after us, and it was not long before they started to own us. Fathers sold daughters; husbands bought wives. Once we became a commodity, men could do whatever they wished with us. Even now our bodies do not belong to us. That is why when they need it, they will grab it. Things were so bad in some cultures, women had to be hidden away to protect them, in separate spaces where no men were allowed. Soon, they had to be spoken for by men.

Nothing takes the sting out of a woman like marriage. And when children arrive, the window closes. Wife, mother, age, and role model - the "respect" that comes with these roles is the water they pour on your fire.

men doing all they could to keep women as migrants on land.

Children do absolutely nothing on their arrival that warrants presents every year. If anything, they should give presents to their mothers, who come close to death.

No matter how much a husband loves you, Kirabo, you must buy your own land and build your own house – in case. Most women do it on the stealth, but I say let him know you are doing it, so he knows you have an alternative to his home.

Handicap,’ she said eventually, like it was a diagnosis. ‘This girl grew up in that deep, deep patriarchy which trembles in the presence of the Mighty Vagina.’ The Bunsens caught their breaths at the V word, but Kana did not pause. ‘A patriarchy that cannot make up its mind whether to fall on its knees in worship of the gateway into the world or to flee the crisis, the orgasmic paroxysms.’ ‘Watch it, Kana, that kind of mwenkanonkano is radical.’ ‘Any mwenkanonkano is radical. Talk about equality and men fall in epileptic fits.

When women bite themselves because they are powerless.

And did all the women shrink?’ Kirabo steered Nsuuta away from Grandmother. ‘With that kind of perversion, who would not shrink? Who would want to be huge, or loud, or brave, or any of the other characteristics men claim to be male? We hunched, lowered our eyes, voices, acted feeble, helpless. Even being clever became unattractive. Soon, being shrunken became feminine. Then it became beautiful and women aspired to it. That was when we began to persecute our original state out of ourselves.

I told you Grandfather is easy. Tom, I mean my father, is the same: they don’t put barriers against me. It is Grandmother, it is always other women, apart from you, who put up barriers against girls and on themselves. I know men can be tyrants, but a lot of women are nasty to women – everybody says it, unless you have not met Jjajja Nsangi, Grandfather’s sister.’ ‘Kirabo, have you seen God come down from heaven to make humans behave?’ ‘No.’ ‘That is because some people have appointed themselves his police. And I tell you, child, the police are far worse than God himself. That is why the day you catch your man with another woman, you will go for the woman and not him. My grandmothers called it kweluma. That is when oppressed people turn on each other or on themselves and bite. It is as a form of relief. If you cannot bite your oppressor, you bite yourself.

She could not bear to look at the coffin because the tree whose timber had made it was once a seedling with tender leaves and baby branches; then it had grown, Tom unaware.

The idea that girls expect a word from a man to make them feel good about themselves is another myth, perhaps to justify men’s bad behaviour.

Often, what women do is a reaction. We react like powerless people. Remember kweluma?

I fight with the boys – they don’t pass the ball to me and I throw them off my grandfather’s pitch. I hate chores, I hate kneeling and I cannot stand babies. Sometimes I feel squeezed inside this body as if there is no space. That is when one of me flies out.

Like life – you don’t remember when you were born. Or the sky – sometimes dark clouds came, sometimes it rained, but the next moment the sun burst through and the sky was limitless.

Who would want to be huge, or loud, or brave, or any of the other characteristics men claim to be male? We hunched, lowered our eyes, voices, acted feeble, helpless. Even being clever became unattractive. Soon, being shrunken became feminine. Then it became beautiful and women aspired to it. That was when we began to persecute our original state out of ourselves. Once we shrunk, men had to look after us, and it was not long before they started to own us. Fathers sold daughters; husbands bought wives. Once we became a commodity, men could do whatever they wished with us. Even now our bodies do not belong to us. That is why when they need it, they will grab it. Things were so bad in some cultures, women had to be hidden away to protect them, in separate spaces where no men were allowed. Soon, they had to be spoken for by men.

Maybe storytelling kills the pain, maybe they got tired of being in pain

Parents are designed to make us feel let down at some point, especially as we get older. That way we promise ourselves to be better parents.

Promise me you will pass on the story of the first woman -- in whatever form you wish. It was given to me by women in captivity. They lived an awful state of migration, my grandmothers. Telling origin stories was their act of resistance. I only added on a bit here and a bit there. Stories are critical, Kirabo,' she added thoughtfully. 'The minute we fall silent, someone will fill the silence for us.

Nsuuta, every woman resists. Often it is private. Most of our resistance is so everyday that women don't think twice about it. It is life. Even the worst of us, like Aunt YA, who massage the male ego with "Allow men to be men" are not really shrinking but managing their men.

To city people, if you did not wear shoes and changed clothes twice a day, you were poor. But in the rural, that was silly. Wearing a different dress every day meant doing a lot of laundry on Saturday, which meant fetching a lot of water.

poverty and wealth were constructs after all. Rural poverty was different from urban poverty.

she could not tell her husband she had a child. Being a woman is not easy. Men do not understand.’ He turned to Miiro. ‘We make them pregnant, but we will not marry a girl who has a child. You want to ask, did she have the child with a tree?

But then again,’ she sighed, ‘with well-off people, you never know where their privilege first came from. Often someone bled, someone sweated, someone cried or died to make them rich. That is what my father says.

She looked at Sio’s tears and thought How Zungu. You go and hurt someone, and then when it comes to apologising you help yourself to crying as well. She had seen it in films. Man cheats, man confesses to woman, man cries, and the betrayed woman is robbed of her right to tears.

A guy takes a girl out, spends his transport money on her and walks miles and miles back home. Then, after all of that, she dumps him. You know what some guys believe?’ Kirabo shook her head. ‘That women pretend, that some perform inferiority to give us a false sense of superiority.

Their attitude was If you don’t know how to pleasure your men, step out of the way.