Atrocious, but ordinary personal story of an Ethiopian wife in the Independent who never made choices about her life because of her gender to put it gently:
Nurame was in her bed when she was woken by an angry mêlée. In her family's hut there were grown men – an incredible number, 10 or more, all in their 30s, all standing over her father, shouting. They reached for her. At night here, where there is no electricity, perfect darkness falls, and everything becomes a shadow-play of barely visible flickers. But even though she was eight years old, she suspected at once what was happening. She had heard whispers that, when a girl is considered ready for marriage, a man will seize her, and rape her, and then she must serve him for the rest of her life. "That was the culture," she says. But it wasn't her culture: like all the other little girls, she didn't want it. "I started screaming and tried to run out of the hut," she says. "I hid in the trees – hah! – but one of the men found me."
She was taken back to his home, held down in front of his family, raped, and taken to be married the next morning. Dazed, she signed the papers, and waited for a moment when she could flee.
After three days, he finally left her alone in the hut. She ran for miles barefoot back to her family, wanting to return to her life, and to her childhood. She hurried through the door, weeping with joy. "But my father told me that now I had had sex with him, nobody else would want me because I was ruined goods, and I had to go back to him and be a good wife," she says. "My mother was very sad but she said it was true. I thought then, 'I have to do this. I have no choice'. I just prayed to God, 'Please help me, please...' I went back. Soon after that I was pregnant, and what could I do? Hah! Now many years have passed and I have six children. Life is hard for a woman. Hah!"
Many will argue that the ordeal of Nurame are exceptionally harsh and that she is an atypical Ethiopian wife and uncommon 'African' 'woman. That would be a way to dismiss the issue for what Nurame's case shows is that Ethiopian women and women in virtually all African countries are commodities and that the choices that they can make about their lives are limited solely because of their gender. To put it in more provocative terms, African manliness is close to godliness while womanhood is about objectification and the sexual gratification of the African manly king who has great needs. It is for this reason for example that Fela Kuti can write a song about "African women" advising them not to westernize and then marry 27 Nigerians at the same time as if they were sheep thus making the point that the issue is about submissiveness, giving up up individuality in the name of a weaponized and artificial 'africanity' and about respecting the so-called laws of nature and sacredness of an imagined "African" culture.
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