Ann is blogging from West Africa, posting new photos and stories each day for 16 days, starting Sunday, November 25 — the kick-off of “16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.” You can catch her earlier posts here and sign up to get e-mail alerts about new posts at theIRC.org/join16days.

Yamoussoukro, Cote d’Ivoire—“Where does it start, this violence?”  That’s my colleague Tanou again, questioning the women about a photo of a wild-eyed man wielding a stick of firewood he’s used to beat his wife, and another of a man twisting a woman’s arm.  Pain contorts the woman’s face but the man appears to be laughing.  Someone asks if the man is playing.  “No,” says the photographer.  “He is not playing.  He laughs because he is enjoying himself.”

Asked if this man is “playing,” the photographer said he is “enjoying himself,”
inflicting pain on his wife. Photo: N’Zi Ahou Madelaine

“You see that a home is a violent place,” says another woman.  That’s where violence starts—at home.”  

“That’s right,” says another.  “It starts with the mother in law. A mother in law does not like to see her son give money or assistance to his wife.  She says bad things about his wife and tells him to beat her.”

“Why is that?” Tanou asks.

“It is because she wants to keep everything for herself,” says another woman.  “She is mean.”  The others agree.  They don’t yet see how they’ve been set up to compete with each other for scarce resources.   Being mean seems to be the characteristic defect of mothers in law.

“Is there anything you can do to change that?” Tanou asks. 

“No,” they say.  “There is nothing we can do.”  It is almost always their first response.  The idea that one might do something to effect the course of events is foreign and strange.  These are women who scarcely rouse themselves to step from the path of a speeding car, so firm is the belief that god disposes.

Yet one woman disagrees.  “We can do something,” she says.  “Mothers in law are old.  They can’t change.”  (They have forgotten Malik’s mother who switched sides to support her daughter in law.)  “But we have sons and one day we will have daughters in law, and we can treat them differently.  We can tell our sons they must not beat their wives.”

“Yes, many changes can happen that way, from one generation to the next,” says Monika Topolska, rising to agree.  She’s IRC’s country coordinator for GBV, joining our meetings this week. Now she tells the women about her grandmother in Poland, who led a traditional life, her mother who raised her sons and daughter as equals, and herself—a woman who has a career in Africa while her married brothers in Poland share the housework with their working wives.  The women laugh, delighted and amazed.
 
Tanou asks, “Did you think that white people do not have to work for equality and justice?”

“White people have different cultures,” Monika says, “but women in all cultures face very similar problems.

Women complain that men ride their bikes home from the fields empty-handed,
leaving women on foot to carry the load. Photo: Samandougoulou Assetou

I say that in my country too, which is very different from Monika’s, changes have taken place little by little over time because women—women everywhere—try to make life better for our daughters.

It’s what these women want.  One says, “What about the widow’s ceremony?  It is violent—violence against women—but we have a part in it.”  The others agree. The “ceremony,” it seems, is a kind of torture inflicted on a widow by her dead husband’s family for the purpose of extorting money and property.  They accuse her of murdering her husband and force her to drink a potion that is supposed to compel her to confess her many acts of adultery.  Sometimes they murder her.  Among the Senufo people, the widow is forced to sit for three days, naked, beside the decomposing body of her husband.  During this vigil, other women are compelled to keep watch over the suspect widow.  “We could be kind to the widow,” says one woman.  “We can not change the tradition, but we could request that she have a small cloth to sit upon.  It is not good for a woman to sit naked upon the ground.”

It’s a start, I suppose, that small cloth for comfort beside the decomposing corpse, but I am suddenly overwhelmed by the depth of their submission. By how very far we are from Warsaw and New York.  Among the Yacouba and the Senufo farther north, where tribal traditions are reinforced by the local version of Islam, women are not allowed to speak.

But another woman takes issue.  It is the woman who serves as the community health worker.  She often talks with doctors and nurses.  She knows a lot about women’s health.   “Maybe we can not change traditions but we can refuse to practice them,” she says.  “Here is an example.  I will not excise my daughters.”  She is alluding to the practice we call female genital mutilation.   “I will not allow it.  And I will not hide my belief that it is wrong.”  It is a brave speech, but it is followed by silence.  The subject is too dangerous for words.  Still, they have listened.

“Someone should do something about forced marriage,” says another woman, to shift the subject.

Women, with babies on their backs, carry produce and firewood home on their heads.
Photo: Kacou Ahou Helene

“Yes, and someone should do something about husbands who beat their wives,” says another.  “It is not fair.  They work in the field together.  Then the man rides his bicycle home.  The wife must load the basin with the fruits and vegetables and fire wood and carry it all the way home, with the baby on her back as well, and then prepare the dinner and fetch the water for the husband’s bath.  And then she must make the bed.  Or else he will beat her.  It is not fair, but every husband behaves as if he is a chief.”

Another woman cries out.  “Oh, no!” she says.  “That is exactly what I tell my young son:  ‘You will grow up to be a chief.’  I do not say the same to my daughters.”  She starts to laugh.  She has had a revelation.  “That’s where the violence starts,” she says.  “It starts with me!”

“Ah haaa,” says Tanou.  “Can you do something about that?”

“Yes, I can,” says the woman, emphatically.  “That much I can change today.”

Women tell their sons they will grow up to be chiefs. 
Women are told never to slap or hit a boy over age nine because he will hit them back. 
There is no rule against hitting girls or women of any age. Photo: Ann Jones