People (and women) in Tanzania

Aside from the animals seen in the Serengeti (more on that to come), the thing that has been the most fascinating to me is watching the people of Tanzania and how they go about their day. The interaction between men and women is very different from in Canada. When you pass an open air market and look at the crowd you can’t help but notice that most of the men and women are not together. Now, what I mean by this is that the women congregate with the women and the men with the men. The men tend to be doing manual labor types of jobs and the women are generally selling something (oranges, ‘Goodwill shoes’, lettuce, bananas)usually just one or two items is all they have. Small children will be strapped to the ‘Mama’s back (all women who have a child in Tanzania earn the right to be called Mama..I for example could easily be called Mama Karen). The title of Mama, from what I gather, really explains a lot about the culture. Women here are born to become someone’s wife and ultimately someone’s mother. Women in Tanzanian culture are in many ways, non-people. They hold very few positions of power and are among the poorest in the country. When a woman marries here, she becomes the property of her husband. Her job is to look after him and raise the children. At face value, that doesn’t sound too bad, but the problems happen when she chooses to leave the marriage or when he dies. She, being a non-person, can be left in a very precarious position, as she may not be welcomed back to her own family (to live under her father’s roof) as she is considered a burden. She may become the ‘property’ of her husband’s brother, if he chooses to take her in. Her role in that household would be to work. When issues such as HIV/AIDS come into the mix, things get complicated. You see, it is not uncommon for married men to have extra-marital affairs here and this can be a source of HIV infection for many women. When a woman’s husband dies, she may be left destitute as no one will take her or her children in. I have been told by several women here that in these situations, if/when she dies of AIDS, which she in all likelihood has contracted from her husband, no one will provide a place for her to be buried because traditionally she should have been buried on the land she shared with her husband (which in many situations, has been confiscated by one of her husband’s male relatives)….and so on, I think you probably get the picture, so I’ll say no more. (and for those of you who know me, know I could go on for hours about this kind of stuff…I just can’t help myself)