Sai Hankuri

Shameless

For women here, shame (or, kunya) is a way of life.  It’s hard for me to keep up with everything that causes it.

Saying the name of your husband out loud brings a woman shame. A girl’s first pregnancy is so shrouded in shame that it goes unacknowledged (which, as you can imagine, has many consequences for seeking prenatal care or timely obstetric interventions). “Ta cin wake”, “She ate beans” people say. Expected to deliver alone and completely unassisted, I asked a 15 year-old girl who had taught her what to do when the time came – what to expect. She covered her face, embarrassed, and shook her head: “No one”. Such a conversation between mother and daughter would be too shameful. I’m told that if you cry during delivery, but are then seen playing with your child, you will feel ashamed. Indeed, a mother’s relationship with her first child is characterized by shame (according to Baba of Karo, a beautiful biography written about a Hausa woman in the 1950s: “the mother refuses to look at him, she refuses to touch him, she hides her hands and covers her head and face. It is her first child, she is very embarrassed . . . The child’s mother always remains ashamed of him”).

Today I was told that if you say the name of your mother-in-law out loud, not only will you be shamed, but when you die, you will “only see black” and you won’t ascend to heaven. I’ve been told that women will go months with painful gynecological conditions because they are ashamed to even indicate where there’s pain. Women avoid coming to health centers to give birth due to the shameful exposure that biomedical birthing requires (understandable – stirrups don’t do much to protect modesty).

Shame!
When I show women pictures of Adam, they cover their faces, shriek and giggle, and say “Don’t you feel shame!?”
Shame?
Shame of what?

The never-ending quest to avoid shame guides so much of women’s daily behavior, dress, and health-seeking choices.

During interviews, in cool and measured voices, women walk me through the obstetric catastrophes that caused their injuries. Today, a woman told me about her 5-day labor, a half delivered child, it’s gruesome extraction, and the constant flow of fecal mater she discovered upon awaking from a 2-week coma. She didn’t cry, she didn’t wince. I asked my research assistant how she could handle such loss and pain with such a perfected poker face. I was told that the shame an emotional reaction would bring would be nearly as bad as what had already happened. (Hyperbole, I’m sure.)

Clearly shame isn’t the only force at play. Still, in some ways women here remind me of spaghetti-western cowboys. Stoic. Silent. Unemotional. Private. If it weren’t for the hubris of Marlboro men, they’d be spot on.

Quick to laugh, quick to cry, and not easily embarrassed, I can only imagine what these heroines think of me…
Utterly shameless indeed.