In Senegal, as in much of West Africa, the concept of women’s rights weighs heavily on the local population. The topic is debated in newspapers, passed between government ministries, dissected by European NGOs. Women’s rights are improving here, they say. Women are becoming a powerful economic and social force. The women of Senegal are on the way up.
The lived truth, of course, is a very different thing.
Women must dress modestly here or risk retribution. They are shuffled to the back of elevators; men push them aside to step out first. Men receive wooden benches for sitting at mealtimes. The women sit on the floor. When a German student staying with my host family offered me his bench one night, he caused a minor revolt. I didn’t take his seat—I knew my place—but even still he got a lecture from the father of the house.
This same father sits apart while the rest of us crowd around the communal plate. There are many of us—small children, students like me, his wife—and we all share the rice and fish. Some nights we only get a few mouthfuls apiece. The father, though, has his own table setting and his own portion of food. His plate is heaped with rice and vegetables and meat. I can hear the stomachs of the children next to me growl even when we have eaten what is offered on the communal plate. Sometimes the father has so much he can’t finish it all.
These are small moments. Wearisome and irritating, but insidious, and they work their slow way into your psyche and show you what it’s like to be a second-class citizen. Still, they are not grounds for anger. That comes later.
It’s a strange thing to hear a man hit a woman. It unsettles on some primal level, goes against the fundamental order of things. When a man hits a woman, all is not right with the world.
The first slap woke me after midnight. I thought I dreamed it, but then I heard sobbing and the hard thwack of a second slap, heavy and full, the sound a hand makes when it comes in contact with a cheek. There was more sobbing. I recognized the tone as Awa’s, the serving girl who works in my host family’s home. There was muffled yelling, and I recognized the voice of the father of the house. They stood in the courtyard just beyond my window. The father spoke in Wolof, so I could not understand what he said, but I flinched at the harshness of his tone. When he stopped yelling, he hit Awa again. She wailed in a voice that made my heart ache. I lay awake in my room until the voices quieted and dispersed.
Now when I walk the narrow alleyways between homes, I think about the women who live behind the iron doors. I wonder if they are respected and cherished, or if their anger is simmering, like mine.
