Happy Women's Day?

Yesterday was Women's Day, a national holiday. Many jokes all day, obviously the men are a little nervous about it. Some of them said that meant the women should do the work (like they don't anyway) and others said that they have to at least cook that day because men can't do that - it's not acceptable.

Well, it made me think about something that we find very strange here: co-wives. See the woman in the picture? Her name is Pamela (pronouned Pam-EL-a), she is one of the beaders from the Acholi Quarter. Those are the women who were chased from the north because of the war there. She saw a relative killed right in front of her in her house, and then she ran. She has 4 children, and then 3 more that belonged to her husband's co-wife, who died. (Also living with her are her sister's 2 children - that means 11 people in her house that is the size of our bathroom at home.) Pamela is pretty typical; you marry a man, and then at some point he decides he should have another wife, and you don't have any say in it. He just gets one, and that one is called a co-wife - sometimes there are several of them. One woman I met said her father had 24 children from 3 wives! Another friend of ours is the daughter of a co-wife, and she said her father sent all his children to the same boarding school so they had to be with each other; she didn't think much of that!

Two co-wives showed up at the same time last week at the bead sale and they sat next to each other reluctantly; there was ice in Africa then! But the typical attitude is that it is better to just accept the co-wife than rebel and be left without anything. The young women I have met disagree in their attitudes about it. Most say this just happens in the villages and not in middle-class Kampala, but some say they would have to accept it if their husband made that choice. And even when they say it won't happen, you can tell from their attitude that it might. Yes, it's 2007.

It's also curious that if you want to get divorced, you just have to say it to your partner (presumably, your wife) three times in front of witnesses and the deed is done. The men have the right to the kids, so sometimes the kids go with him and the wife is just left out in the cold.

One of the sad thing about this whole co-wife thing is that the children sort of get bunched up in it all. Many, many of these people have HIV/AIDS so there is a lot of death, and a lot of women who take care of other women's children. And then they can't afford to educate the children, and the kids look unhealthy, because, of course, they are.

So on Women's Day I was thinking of Pamela. I really, really doubt she had a holiday.