First Woman/ A Girl Is A Body Of Water – Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Hiya!

Always a pleasure to scribble a few things on here.

This review has been a long time coming but I’m glad that I’ve finally gotten round to doing it. I knew I had to do it around this time because of the 16 days of activism against Sexual and Gender Based Violence due to some of the recurring themes that Makumbi points out in her book especially regarding the myths surrounding very necessary conversations about empowerment, knowledge and access to information and education of the girl child.

Makumbi as always, has a way with words that gets you totally engrossed. Her prose and contextual application of her writings always makes me feel that more Ugandan literature needs to be explored. There’s so much unwritten and undocumented knowledge in our cultures and customs and in the minds of our ancestors that if not explored, will definitely be extinct by the next generation.

First Woman was published and released in September 2020 and has had remarkable reviews already. I couldn’t wait to have our own review on Resolute Scribbles.  

If you’re looking for raw, unfiltered conversation about culture, African Traditional Society and the life of a girl growing up in a highly masculine setting and trying to break the odds, this is your book.

****

‘Stories are critical Kirabo. The minute we fall silent, someone else will fill the silence for us.’

Nsuuta, one of the major characters in the book points this out to her ‘would be’ granddaughter, Kirabo.

Kirabo is the protagonists in this book and the setting predates to as far back as 1940, with the narration of her grandmothers life. Hers begins about 1975. Growing up as a raw, unrestrained and curious girl, Kirabo sets out on a quest to discover what it means to be an educated, independent and emancipated woman in a heavily patriarchal culture. As you can imagine, the road isn’t as smooth as she thought it would be.                                  

Makumbi’s narration of life in Nateeta, Bugerere and all the childhood discoveries and the love that Kirabo is surrounded with, depicts the actual Ugandan setting and the struggles that culture sometimes breathes into the children and the community. Makumbi’s vivid narration of the fear that was attached to living in the days of Amin and the repulsions that children had to go through, coupled with Kirabo’s strength and resilience was remarkable.   

Throughout the book, the narration of love and the sourness that cripples through over the years was relayed in the relationship between Sio and Kirabo as well as Nsuuta and Muka Miiro (Kirabo’s grandma). I love that Makumbi portrayed that love always wins in the end. The bitterness and the scars that are created with time, can’t mask under pain and hatred for long. In the end, love prevails.

The recurring theme of loss helped me process the fact that we can’t always seek to have our identity in things, people, communities, settings and environment. Kirabo, from the onset of her story, is shown to be in deep loss of having never met her mother and she spends the most part of the book looking for her mother, one who entirely wanted nothing to do with her, and it caused her nothing but pain, resentment, glumness and finally, rejection.  

Loss is a phase in life that we can’t get away from and sad as it may be, it happens when we’re definitely not ready to face it. Having the courage to face the giant and addressing the pain is very necessary to move past these situations. Covering it up and masking it will only pile up into unresolved bitterness and dejection, the same feelings that Kirabo struggled with for the most part of her growing up.  

Over and above, this book’s setting and historical context narrating the myths and stories that our fore fathers created concerning ownership of land by women in our different cultures, their gender roles and misconceptions of education and women, just went a long way in showing that there is still a lot of advocacy work that needs to be done concerning breaking the negative aspects of culture that we ought to do away with.

Regarding the seven days of activism against SGBV, I thought Makumbi’s triggering of this conversation was necessary to understand the deep rootedness of gender socialisation and the heavy dependency that women have on the male gender. In my opinion, there is need to empower the women who are stuck in these norms and are afraid to speak out against violations because they figure that their lives would come to a standstill once they do. In the various field visits and data collection processes that the organisation I work with carries out in multiple districts around Uganda, we find that most of the girls in rural areas are assaulted and forced to marry the perpetrators of their assault because their parents are paid off or they are persuaded to believe that these men did what they did out of love.

It’s on this basis that I believe these 16 days of activism has to address the myths surrounding gender socialisation and the need to ensure that women know they have the right to be protected through the justice system and by the police, from all these violations against them. But the community and society has a big role to play on this by having frequent conversation about the effects of these and the need to ensure the empowerment of these women.

In the last chapter, with the loss of her father, Kirabo realises that the women in her family, inclusive of her father’s wife, circled their lives around him and she actually states that they had made him a demi-god of sorts. She comprehended that the men in her culture were the cause of division amongst women. It was not the men’s fault per se, but it was the elevation that the women gave to the men that caused all this division amongst them. It’s no wonder that in the fourth part of the book; ‘I know why caged birds peck each other’ Makumbi explicitly narrates an engaging conversation of the characters on this very subject.

It shed more light on the deep rooted feud that most women face in the elevation of men in their relationships. The major take home from this is to ensure that as women, we ought not to find our identity in men and any other conceivable things, but in Christ alone. Because these earthly things fade away and the attention and satisfaction we crave from human beings can only be fulfilled by Christ alone.

*****

I’d say this was such a good read and it’s taken me over a month to conceptualize exactly what I’d review. But as I said, if you’re looking for raw and unfiltered conversations on things that affect women and especially young girls growing up in a rural setting, this book is for you.

I hope to get feedback from those who’ve read this marvellous book.

Cheers.