The beacons. The bearers of our light.

An essay by NAOMI NDUTA WAWERU

We were the first to hear the village news bearer weep. We got up from our sleeping mats. We tied the heavy lesos around our bodies. We tightened the knots at our waists. We wore our headscarves and headed out of our huts. We stood outside our homes. We inspected our numbers. When we were sure that everybody was there, we waited for the white smoke to rise. We were the first to see it because we were the first to get up from our sleeping mats––because the one who lit the fire was one of us.

And so we knelt. Our soft knees on hard gravel. Our hands drooped by our sides. And we lifted our heads. We faced the mountains. And we prayed, each in our own tongues––that the creator see it fit to send the sun. And if the creator saw it fit to send the rain, that the gravel beneath our knees pave way for the grass. But that the day’s festivities be done.

We stayed this way for a long time. Until we could smell the delicacies brewing in our kitchens. Until we could hear the clatter of pots and pans. Until we could hear the cows and goats bellow at the fullness of the milk in their udders. Until we could hear our babies cry out looking for us. Until our daughters came to us and patted our shoulders. Until our sons stood in front of us and helped us on our feet.

“The brides are ready.” Our daughters said.

“Let them come to us.” We said.

“They ask that you go to them.” Our daughters said.

“We will go to them.” We said. 

And we went to them. Because before we were born instructors, we were born givers. And we had nothing much to pass to our daughters but our obedience. Because they had obeyed us when we had asked them to preserve their bodies. When we asked that they keep their teeth whitened. When we asked that they keep their nails short and their breasts untouched. And when we got to their rooms, we shut the doors behind us. The windows alike. Because Ocean Vuong says that there are things one can say only in the dark. And before we were born givers, we were born to preserve our secrets.

“We came to you like you asked,” we said, “and so we will ask you to tell us why.” 

The brides pointed to the ground next to them with their heads. And we sat where they sat. On the handmade reed mats. The mats we had held between our thighs as we sat in the sun. The mats we had put together as we sang for our daughters. The mats we had straightened with sore palms as we narrated stories and folk tales passed to us by our mothers in these very rooms. The rooms we had smeared with wet red mud weeks before. The rooms which still smelled of cow dung mixed with the salty lake water. The rooms which smelled like the cradle of new beginnings. The rooms that smelled like something in there could actually flower. 

Our daughters, the brides, laid their heads on our laps. And we let them. By putting our hands around their ripening bodies. By clasping our free hands with their free hands. By often passing our fingers through their long hair. By mindlessly braiding a section and consciously unbraiding it. By running a comb through the messy parts.

“They will use our hair as a weapon to fight us.” They said.

We understood this fear. Because we had told them about our nights before we became brides. How our husbands demanded that we shave our heads. How our mothers pulled us between their thighs and passed scissors through our hair. How we had sobbed. How our mothers’ heavy lesos had absorbed the tears and dried our eyes by the time we got up.

“A bride should not cry on the eve of her betrothal.” Our mothers said. “Swallow your tears. Sit up straight. Show your husbands that you are lucky to have them.”

And we swallowed our tears. And we sat our tears alongside our silence. So that neither could grow louder than the other.

“We will not let them.” We said to our daughters.

And the grooms arrived. And they demanded that the brides’ heads be shaved clean. We refused on our daughters’ behalf. We stomped the ground. We patted our bosoms with our hands. And we hid the brides in the rooms. And the grooms’ fathers came asking why we would not let their sons have their brides. We made them swear that their sons would not pull at our daughters’ hair to pick a fight. We made the grooms draw a line on the wet morning earth and swear never to cross it. And when the last of them had drawn the line and crossed it, we opened the doors to the rooms. The rooms where we had adorned our daughters with jewellery, smeared brown henna on their hands and sprayed their new lesos with rare perfume. We handed the grooms their brides. Our daughters. Our girls. Our women.

We danced at the arrival of the bride price. Because some of us were married off for free. Some in a time of famine in exchange for a sack of grain. Some in exchange for debts. Some as a medium of exchange ––for the freedom of the war captives.

Instead of shrubs, we planted flowers around our daughters’ homes. So that instead of sustaining thorns on their hands while they weeded the rejects out, they would pull at the roots of the weeds and they would keep their palms uncut. We wanted to afford them the freedom to roam their homesteads without the wariness that comes with the fear that a thorn will slip into their feet. And besides, we wanted them to know that the ground that was capable of producing prickly things, was also capable of bearing flowering things pleasing to their touch.

And on the night they were summoned to their husbands rooms, we did not linger in the vicinity. Neither did we stick our ears to the walls of their huts. We gathered the necessities for the night in baskets. We tied our toddlers to our backs. We held our children’s hands and led them out of our daughters’ homesteads.

We watched our daughters cry at the joy of bringing forth a life. We cried with them. Because we could not cry in joy when we brought them into the world. We could only let out a breath of relief that we were not infertile. That our mothers would not be blamed for any miscarriages. And they would not spit on us as a way of sharing the disgrace we had brought on them. That they, and ourselves, would not be considered outcasts who were either possessed or cursed.

We held the newborns in our palms. Unwashed. Raw. And we did not slap them when they did not cry. And the ground did not swallow us. Neither did the sun shy from rising the next morning because of our failure to pass on a ritual. We named them. And we held them towards the mountains. We told Nyame their names. So that He would bestow each with the blessing their names spoke.

When our daughters presented their children for baptism, we stood behind them. We helped them tie the white cloth on their shoulders. We saw the water run down their foreheads. Their apprehension grew into long smiles. Their tiny hands reached for our daughters’ hands, the priest’s hands, our hands.

Well, not all our daughters were able to bring forth a life. And the husbands brought them to us with one complaint or another.

“They can not give us children.” They said.

“They said that maybe we were the problem. The woman is always the problem.” They said.

“They lied. They said they had some pain in the abdomen that made them work less frantically.” They said.

We did not pull at our daughter’s ears. Because some of us did not have the ability to bring forth a life too. We beckoned them. We pulled them to our bosoms. They clutched onto our bodies because we let them. We had always let them. And they told us the underlying truths.

“We are afraid.” They said.

“Of what?” We asked.

“Of what we do not know.” They said.

We undressed. We showed them the scars and marks on our bodies. The swellings in our thighs. And for the scars we could not show, we narrated their weight to them. How we harmed ourselves and were harmed. The scars were the aftermath of suppressing our fears. What we had to show for being blamed for what we did not know. What we sustained to make our psychological distress a tangible distress. And in the process of revelation, we told our daughters that we were not interested in seeing the scars, the body marks nor the swellings translate on their bodies. We made our daughters promise us that they would not undress before their daughters in an attempt to showcase the aftermath of the distress they carried in silence. 

We turned to modern medicine. The men and women in white coats identified the turmoil brewing in our daughters’ bodies that traditional medicine could not quite name. They gave us tangible language we could hold with our hands.

They replaced the word ‘curse’ with ‘condition’. 

We memorised these conditions with our loosening tongues. PCOS. Fibroids. Endometriosis. Abnormal cycles. Luteal phases. Hormonal Imbalances. 

We replaced the word ‘punishment’ with ‘remedy’.

We memorised these remedies with our loosening tongues. Myomectomy. IVF. Surrogacy. Hormone Therapy. Laparoscopic approaches. Adoption.

We learnt what had been ailing us through what was ailing our daughters. We stepped on each other’s toes. We threw quick and knowing glances at one another. We cried about what we did not know our bodies were capable of. What we were once told were abnormalities. What made our husbands throw us out of our homes. What made our fathers ask our mothers what they had done to beget barren daughters. What made our mothers pass hot iron between our thighs. What made us examples when a mother wanted to show her daughter how a possessed bloodline looked like. What we, and our daughters now knew. We held our daughters to our bosoms.  Because they had given us a definite language to express ourselves. We bit our fingers for blaming ourselves.

When our daughters were down with cramps, we ran hot towels on their abdomens. We tended to their pots. We fed their husbands and children. We taught them to carry one another. To lift one another. When one of us died, we took on the mothering role of their daughters. 

Well, not all of us were keen on our mission to lessen the burden on our daughters. There are those who rebelled. We pulled their daughters off their hands. We took the daughters under our roofs. Our daughters welcomed them. Because we had shown them the immeasurable gift that was their sisterhood. 

There are those of us who tightened the clutch on their daughters’ hands. Well, we let them be. Not everyone could be saved. And some of us forced our girls into circumcision. We did so in secret, because some of our daughters had heard of us and what we were doing. And they swore to expose us to the authorities. We warned them with threats of abandonment, of disowning them. 

“No man will want to marry you.” We said.

“You will be undesirable.” We said.

“We did it. We did not die.” We said.

The world became aware of our activities when the news said a girl had died while undergoing the cut. “She bled to death.”  

We were ticked. We became the lessons. Some of our girls escaped from our homes. Some were rescued. We were arrested and arraigned in court. It took a lot of our girls shedding blood for us to become agitators too. Like our daughters.

We were also charged for forcing our daughters into early marriages. For encouraging a crop of child brides. We were guilty of manipulating our daughters to stay in their abusive marriages. Because some of our daughters tied a rope on a tree on an ordinary morning and ended their lives. Some drowned themselves in lakes and rivers. Some harmed their children. Some harmed their husbands. They were locked in women’s prisons. We visited them with pots of yams and mild sauce. We held their hands through the prison cell railings. They cried into our hands. We apologised to them. They apologised in response. 

“We did not mean to kill them.” They said.

“We did not mean to harm them.” They said.

“It was better that way.” They said.

We mobilised lawyers for them. Some of them were freed. Some of them could not imagine being freed only to return to their life of anguish. They opted to remain in the prisons. We hang our boots. But we did not stop thinking about them. And we did not stop advocating for their freedom.

And because we took our daughters to school, they got good jobs. They ran their own businesses. They bought us television screens. We saw the protests. We saw them lead the protests. We saw the news coverage of the protests move from just a snippet towards the end of the broadcast to headlines,When one of them mysteriously disappeared. When our girls were murdered. When one of them was manhandled for how they dressed. When they were forced to undergo the cut. When they were victims of Gender Based Violence. When they were victims of domestic abuse.

We admired them for their courage. We stepped on each other’s toes and threw quick and knowing glances at one another. Because we had tolerated social injustices against us for a long time. Because we had chosen silence where our daughters were choosing advocacy.

“We can now die.” We said, with or without meaning it. We had raised a revolutionary sisterhood. We saw it when one of our daughters died and they held vigils. 

Agnes Jebet Tirop. 

Sharon Otieno. 

Nicole Chemutai Serem. 

Chizoba Favour Eze. 

Our daughters asked that their names be fearlessly said.

We watched our daughters become agitators of change. Activists. Care givers. We watched our daughters become Njeri wa Migwi. Joan Chelimo. Janet Mbugua. Wawira Njiru. Adelle Onyango.

Our daughters formed movements. Inua dada, a hub of transformative thinking, gender equality and economic empowerment. Usikimye, a refuge for victims and survivors of serial and gender based violence. Mama Rescue, to respond to children in distress. Food for Education, an incentive that sees hundreds of school going children access free meals. The Sisterhood, a mentorship programme that helps our daughters access therapy and safe houses. They won prizes. Grants. And the world knew about us. Knew about them.

We saw them fight for paid maternity and paternity leaves. Nursing beds for the newborns at the workplace.

There was an uproar. A resistance. Our daughters were labelled hard-headed, arrogant, hard to please, overly ambitious.

“We will not marry them.” The men said.

“Who will marry them?” Their fathers, our mothers and some of us asked.

“Your daughters intimidate us.” Their husbands said.

The uproar did not stop them. We saw resilience. We saw strength. An attempt at collective and embodied healing amid the unavoidable tumult of inhabiting a feminine body. We saw them build safe spaces for one another. Form mental health forums. Advocate for gender equality in the workplace. Our daughters spearheaded campaigns. 

#NoMeansNo. 

#Mydressmychoice. 

#StainNotShame. 

#GirlsNotBrides. 

And when our daughters lost pregnancies to miscarriages and stillbirths, we did not criticise them. We held them to our bosoms. We validated them. And when we lost our daughters to complications during delivery, we held their babies to our bosoms. We named them, bathed, dried them and introduced them to the warmth of our bodies through Kangaroo care. The babies cried as the cold left their bodies and they settled into warmth. We cried with them. And when the babies relaxed their fragile muscles and calmed down, we calmed down with them.

Our daughters organised marathons to preserve the dignity of childbearing. They became Her Excellency Margaret Kenyatta. They led the Beyond Zero campaigns. You see, we had passed on the gift of being nurturers to them. We would always be victims of our pains and turmoils. But we would not also just walk past them. We would find a way to manage them. The campaigns saw reduced maternal and child deaths. They saw a profound reduction in mother-to-child transmission of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Our daughters set up mobile clinics, medical safaris, and ran marathons. They wanted to reach every woman possible. They wanted to afford every woman possible a dignified child bearing experience. 

And when we slept, for once in a very long time, we slept like newborns. Because we knew that our daughters had built a sisterhood of safety for themselves. They could sleep without having to look out in the night for something that was prying at their existence.

Well, life for our daughters was not always easy. They were unavoidably human. When our daughters felt insecure about their bodies, they had one another to define their fear for them. They benefited from the analogy of relatability. Because our daughters become writers and artists. Our daughters had Roseline Mgbodichinma Anya Okorie write down the struggle of navigating their bodies for them in ‘Souvenir.’ They had Mofiyinoluwa Okupe to reaffirm their bodies in ‘Abundant.’ They had Lanji Ouku and Adelle Onyango to document the voices of survivors of rape and social injustices in ‘Our Broken Silence.’ They had Upile Chisala to reaffirm their #BlackGirlMagic.

They had Chioniso Tsikisayi to tell them that they were thinking of them when they died mysteriously in her essay, Of Post Offices that turn into Butcheries. They had Makena Onjerika relay to them the judgement that comes with their attempt at self-defence in her short story, When an Ogre Walks down the Street. They could see themselves in Kambili while navigating the psychological distress in their homes when they read Purple Hibiscus. We saw ourselves in Beatrice. In Kambili too. We could not escape the turmoil. Our daughters could not always escape the turmoil in their lives. Life has its surprises. But through these mirrors into the society, they came to know that they were not alone in their struggles. And that they could pull through collectively. 

They pulled out quotes, printed them on their shirts, hung them as portraits on their walls, and posted them on their social media walls. 

We watched them shave their hair. Not because it was a condition. Because this time, they wanted to. We watched them leave their marriages when they could not put up with the abuse. We welcomed them into our homes. We boiled water and ran hot towels on their bruises. And for the bruises we could not find on their skins, we let our daughters relay them to us. We patted their heads as they slept. We held their babies on our laps. We lulled them to sleep.

Our daughters slept to the music they had made on long nights. Because our daughters had become artists. They could sleep to Njoki Karu’s Nita telling them that they could walk through whatever trials they were caught up in with hope. They slept to Barbara Wangui’s I hope telling them that they could start to dance to the music in their bones. And they started to love themselves a little bit more. Our daughters slept to music from men who knew how to speak abundance into their femininity. They had Sauti Sol to serenade them with Isabella. Otile Brown and Harmonize to speak rhythm into their beauty in Woman. 

Our daughters grew an informed strain of resilience. They became athletes and sports women. Our daughters became Catherine Ndereva and won athletic championships. They became Mary Moraa and ran the 800m race. They became Faith Kipyegon and ran the 1500m race. They became Vivian Cheruiyot, Tobi Amusan, Fatuma Roba, Angella Okutoyi, Jane Wacu. Some of our daughters were differently abled, but their light and vision emanated from the inside. They became Crystal Asige and were nominated into parliamentary positions. 

We saw ourselves in the documentaries they made. We let them show the marks on our bodies because if our bodies could be used to lead an awakening, they could as well be theirs. We showed the world our tears in those documentaries. We let down our walls. We opened the doors to our homes. We sat with our daughters. We held pictures of the children we had lost to abuse. Those we had lost to suicide. Those we had lost to Postpartum Depression, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorders, Premenstrual Stress Syndrome. Those we had lost when they developed complications at birth. We smiled at how much their eyes, their noses, their smiles looked like ours. The documentaries won prizes. Grants. And the world knew about us. Knew about them.

We had started this awakening. And when we faced rebellion, we stood firmly on our feet. We took charge of changing the course for our daughters. When we kept alert that night, waiting for the news bearer to weep, when we waited to see the smoke, the signal that our daughters were ready to be brides, we too, were ready to become beacons. Our daughters would become the bearers of our light. When we made their grooms draw a line on the wet morning earth and swear not to cross it, we meant every word. When we pressed our soft knees on the hard gravel, we stayed that way for a long while. We did not wince.