Active members of the church asked the pastor for help, but only when motherly and sisterly assistance had failed. Women sought assistance from the Obeah man (witch doctor) too, especially if there was discord between partners, or if repeated illness or accident made them feel that evil had been set on them. Many of the Zionist and other evangelist churches helped their congregation with shoes, for instance, and with feasting and ritual sharing of food.
Women rarely asked doctors, nurses or social workers for advice or help. They supported each other in times of trouble, and there was a network of reciprocal obligation.
Getting The Spirit
I went up into the hills to attend revivalist services – and was often invited to preach as well! And I talked to women about how they guarded against harm from the ‘duppies’ (ancestor spirits).
In the home it was each woman’s responsibility to protect her family against the duppies and to live and organise her household so that she attracted good angels. From the moment of a child’s birth, and even in pregnancy, the mother’s primary ritual responsibility towards the child was to guard it from the hands of the ancestor spirits – mainly those in the maternal line, who would come and take it away. She was the only one who can keep the family from harm.
Women were also responsible for all community rites. Men could not be relied on to do these things. They were called on to perform minor manual tasks, such as the weaving of palm leaves to cover the roof of a booth in which a dead body was laid out, or when a wedding party took place. But the woman had final responsibility to see that it was all done properly.
For all peasant women the main, and often only, recreations were sex and religion. Since sex proved hazardous, and came to be used for the most part to get support for children, a woman had to rely largely upon religion, and found expression in spirit possession for her creative outpourings, reaching beyond the routines of ordinary living. In revivalism she could leap away from the dreary self she knew and the cares of every day. ‘Life is hard’, but when she got the spirit it was transfused with glory.
Women formed the core of revivalist worship, and ran the church. Although a man was the main leader, and in different congregations was known as ‘Daddy’, ‘Father’ or ‘Pupa’, he was dependent upon women assistants who supported him, counselled members of the congregation, were responsible for church organisation and the distribution of charity, or occasionally, as in some Pocomania groups, the pooling of resources, and led worship. They were known as ‘shepherdesses’, ‘governesses’, ‘queens’, ‘queen doves’ or ‘sisters’ and often wore special dress, called ‘uniforms’. They propelled the worshippers into a state of ecstasy. The congregation was dependent on them to lead them into the experience of religious rapture through dance, song, ‘groaning’, ‘labouring’ and ‘trumping’ – testimony and speaking with tongues. Though most of the congregation might never reach the same heights, they got vicarious satisfaction from mystic union effected with the other world which sisters had entered on their behalf. Unity with the past as well as among the living was sought in spirit possession. They were the primary mediators between the divine and the human, the past and the present.
The process of ‘getting the Spirit’ – which was accepted by everyone as being very exhausting – implied a good deal more than prayer, hymn singing and testimony. It entailed physical participation in worship which could result in a transformation which was in complete contrast to the individual’s usual stance and gait. In extreme cases, as for example in the spirit possession which took the form of identification with a particular animal in Pocomania, physical ills were forgotten and the old and arthritic glided along like snakes.
This metamorphosis was triggered by dancing, hand clapping and adjustments in the rate, rhythm and level of breathing. These, in turn, were regulated by the reiterated beat of drums, ‘shake-shakes’ and other musical instruments and repetitive singing with a pronounced and simple rhythm, by a senior woman worshipper.
Ecstasy was above all a group activity. When cult leaders described solitary conversion, as did a revivalist father who told me the story of the sudden blinding flash of revelation that came to him in his youth when he realised that he must dedicate his life to God, they described a command from on high, an absolute certainty concerning the right course of action to be taken. This was quite different from spirit possession, which did not involve personal decisions and was essentially communal.
Only a few were possessed at any one time, and some women quickly became ecstatic. Others were spectators, and others active participants in the sense that they reinforced the rhythmic background of song, dance and music and other stimuli so that those possessed became more and more taken over by the spirit claiming them. As worshippers tired or attention wandered they dropped out of the ceremony, strolled to the outskirts of the group or outside the meeting house, had a drink of water or a bite to eat, suckled a baby, or dozed off, and came back with renewed energy. Exit from and entry into the ritual was casual, inconsequential and unregulated, and this informality enabled small children to enter the drama.
The dancing took place in a circle around ritual symbols on the floor and extended as others were drawn in. Round and round the worshippers went in the same direction. This led to giddiness and loss of balance.
The dance was exaggerated pelvic rocking, as in the ska, with alternating contractions of the abdominal and buttock muscles, extension and flexion of the lower spine, and probably also contraction and release of the pelvic floor muscles. This was accompanied by arm movements; arms were often raised, and fluttered as ecstasy became more pronounced, with deeper breathing. As the experience became further intensified the woman’s spine was spasmodically flexed and extended in convulsive-like movements, her head thrown back, and jaw dropped. At the same time the breath was forced in with great gasps through her open mouth, and out with a heavy grunt or deep sigh, or a cry of ‘Jesus!’, ‘Lahd!’ or ‘Saviour!’
As the beat of music and the rhythm of dance speeded up, she panted rapidly. Her arms extended, her rib cage was raised, her mouth opened, and deep chest breathing was reinforced not only by the rocking, swaying trunk movements, but abdominal pressure as she breathed out (like an opera singer holding onto a prolonged note). There was a rhythm involving rapid, heavy panting and her back arched. This quickly led to hyperventilation.
Talking About Sex
Sex is tumultuous. Just as the wind blows and the rains pour down, the mango bears ripe fruits and the hibiscus its blossom, the power of sex sweeps through human life, causing torment, joy, pain, but in whatever form it comes and whatever it brings, it is unavoidable and overpowering.
Jamaican vocabulary was rich in sexual terms. I learned that reality was often otherwise. Though spontaneity was uninhibited in early adolescence and may continue to be for men, for women it was soon modified by the cares of childbearing and rearing and the crowded conditions of peasant life.
Jamaican peasant women often told me that they get no pleasure in sex and could not ‘feel sweet’. It is all summed up as ‘him trouble me plenty-plenty’. As one woman said when I asked her about sex. ‘Whenever him feel that way.’ Whenever he feels? What about when you feel like it? She laughed, ‘Whenever you feel or not!’
Occasionally women told me they felt sorry for their men because they no longer enjoyed their ‘exercise’ as they once did, and sometimes they asked me how they could get excited again. So discussion often turned to the conditions of existence, the problems of too many children, sleeping not only in the same room, but often under or at the end of the same bed. Children who were still being given the breast at night – up to two years of age – slept next to the mother. Women sometimes said that they could not even turn over in bed without risking waking a child. Is it any wonder, they asked, that their men sought ‘outside’ women to ‘satisfy their nature?’
But it was not only the one, two or three room peasant hut or urban shack that was the problem. A
woman was often very tired after her day’s work with inadequate protein in her diet, consisting as it did in lean times of ‘rice and peas’, a dish of polished rice and a form of dried bean (like a small haricot bean) mixed with scraps of mutton or salt fish. But it was the man of the household who was given the choice pieces of meat, if there were any, and if there was no man there was often no money to buy meat. This was eked out with bush teas and a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk. Fresh milk was rarely drunk.
Water was scarce in the dry season, and women had to walk long distances to get it from the nearest standpipe or spring. It often involved an uphill climb. Clothes were washed in cold water at the spring, in a creek or in a tin by the standpipe, and rubbed hard against large stones to remove the dirt. Standards of cleanliness in clothing, at any rate for Sunday best, for adults and children alike, were much higher for Jamaicans than they were for many Europeans. Fuel had also to be carried from the bush for all cooking operations, and women did this with great bundles on their heads.
It was not surprising that a woman with a family to rear was exhausted at dusk. So the man ‘broke fence’ – if he ever ‘responsed’ for the woman at all, and probably ‘ran’ (left her) sooner or later. She then, finding life ‘hard’, sought another man for whom she could bear a child, on the understanding that he would offer some support in return for her services. If a woman was to ‘call the name of a man’ as the father and persuade him to ‘obligate himself’ for the maintenance of the child, she must be prepared to continue a sexual relationship with him as witness to the obligation. That is, by ‘obligating’, in the words of one woman, meant ‘to come for the money so he could have sex dealings’.
The man often agreed to pay the midwife’s fee but no more, or might give a few shillings cash down but refused to continue payments. Sex was something she engaged in for and on behalf of her children, a necessary duty if she was to feed, clothe and educate them.
When A Daughter Gets Pregnant: The Ritual Quarrel
On finding that her daughter was pregnant, a mother would start the ritual quarrel and ask ‘Who trouble you then?’ or ‘Who bother you?’ and question her to find out whose stomach it is. She would call the boy to visit her, or went off to him if he could be found and lived locally, saying she cannot hold up her head for shame at what has happened, and asks whether he will ‘stand manly’ and marry her. There is a public row, involving neighbours, acquaintances and relatives. She, for her part, will point at the girl and say that, far from bothering her, she has been bothering him and she can’t be responsible. The ritualised exchange is crystallised in a calypso:
Keep your daughter inside Miss Miriam,
That girl child looking for trouble.
If my boy child trouble your girl child
Doan’ hold me resp-ons-ab-le.
The girl would often be flogged by her mother or father or the mother’s partner with a strap. She was turned out of the house overnight. This was always described as ‘a quarrel’. Sometimes there was a quarrel but the girl was not turned out – ‘me maada still bear’. At this point other female relatives on the maternal side were also involved; the girl goes to her auntie’s or seeks the sympathy of middle aged friends or other relatives of her mother’s. After a few days the mother takes the outcast daughter back in the house again and there would be reconciliation.
When I asked what she would do if her daughter was pregnant, one married mother of 12, pregnant with her thirteenth child, got very excited, and the words tumbled out as she told me, ‘If you had been showing her right from wrong and you keep warning her, as soon as she get pregnant she have to leave. We must stiffen our necks, harden our hearts. You can’t go sympathising with everything that is wrong, but if she should get pregnant for a fellow that I don’t know about, then I would pardon her.’ That is, it was her responsibility to approve her daughter’s boyfriends and watch over her behaviour.
Most mothers I talked to told me that there was no point in quarrelling with a pregnant daughter, and the girls reported that their mothers were ‘happy’ when they conceived. One woman said – ‘Try to give her a good education so that she may not go as you. If you have a child and you do not married, you do not want she to come as you. I say, “Winsome (the name of her daughter) you see what you maada is going through. Please do not do as she. You maada is trying her best, please take you lessons”. But if she decided to do what you do – to take you footsteps – nothing stop her’. Another said ‘I would tell her that she is wrong but I would still have to keep her’.
The most badly hit was the socially mobile mother who was concerned to give her daughter opportunities that she herself was denied. Then the ritual rejection might have been enacted in bitter earnest. For example, a woman who was proud to see her daughter at commercial college discovered her pregnancy and to hide her shame immediately sent her away to her sister who was a nurse. She kept the girl indoors for six months, behind lock and key, until she went into labour. She took her once to the doctor, on her arrival, and after examining her, the doctor warned the pregnant girl that she had a gonorrheal discharge and needed treatment. However, nothing was done, since this would stamp more shame on the family, and she arrived at the public hospital in the early first stage of labour in a state of terror. Doctors could not examine her as she was trembling violently, screaming and on the point of collapse. I sat and talked soothingly to her and discovered that she was afraid the baby would be born blind. (The baby was fine.)
Taboos In Pregnancy
Taboos guarded the dangerous passage through pregnancy. A pregnant woman was in a state of ritual danger.
One of the most important prohibitions was that she must not look at a dead body. She could not be present when a body was laid out in ‘the booth’ at a ‘set-up’ for the dead, but must not look at it.
I was at a set-up one day and asked a pregnant woman why. ‘A reason is in it. There is a way’, she told me. ‘Yes! If you’re old perhaps you may get over because if you are young doan’ worry, because that child may not live.’ (The ‘doan worry’ means ‘whatever you do to avoid it’). ‘As well as, perhaps you may happen to lose your life because – what happen? Your body get cold. Energy leave you in bringing forth that child.’ There is a correct temperature for the body and any loss of heat and chilling is dangerous. Looking at the face of a corpse reduces the body’s natural warmth. This a healthy person can survive, but anyone sickly, facing childbirth, or liable to get chilled just after giving birth, may die.
Pregnant women must drink with discretion because water can drown the baby. They must not make too much preparation ahead of time or the baby will be still-born. They must not lift heavy weights nor carry another child because ‘it generally lean the baby to one side according to how you hold it.’ They must not drink soursop juice (from the fruit of the soursop tree) or they will have pain, nor stretch their hands above their head ‘because the baby’s neck will scorch. It will be stretched and when it come back it will get scorched.’ Don’t sleep too often. ‘Plenty of exercise and walk plenty, will have the baby quicker’ and an easier labour. A woman must be careful how she moved, too. It was particularly dangerous to double your foot under when sitting. She must avoid ‘much bending’ and stooping. A treadle sewing machine was especially risky, and women who must use one to do dressmaking and support the family told me that continued sitting at the machine caused backache. A pregnant woman must not eat coconuts ‘because it will develop the baby too fast’, ‘drink out of bottles or coconut or baby will have cast eyes’, ‘climb a tree, or the baby will slip from the womb’, nor ‘walk over soap water or it will give you a bad stomach.’ She must not step over a rope – for example, one that tethers the donkey – or a broom, or the birth may be overdue. She must avoid getting upset. A woman told me, ‘When I’m pregnant I don’t like to look on anything that is out of order. People say that your child if you look on anything and sorrow for it – that’s you know out of order – that your child w
ill come the very same. Suppose you went to Kingston now and see an old lady who have half a foot (leg) or half a face, and you sorrow for it, or in any way deformed, people say that your child generally come that way. Or if you killing a fowl and you sorrow for that fowl your children come with some part of the looks belonging to the fowl.’ So this woman never killed chickens when pregnant.
Heartburn, as in the folklore of England and France, was supposed to be caused by the baby’s hair; the longer the hair the more the heartburn. I met one expectant mother who was anxious that her child had no hair because she didn’t have any heartburn.
Duppies attacked pregnant women. Eclampsia was spirit possession. The duppies had come and taken over the soul of the sick person. So many eclamptic and pre-eclamptic patients had seen duppies haunting their ward in the maternity hospital in Kingston that it had to be moved to another floor of the building. (Among Hindus in India, too, eclampsia was seen as spirit possession and, as it was more common in the rainy season, it was believed that spirits seeking re-incarnation wandered abroad then and slipped into the bodies of pregnant women. In fact, their health probably does deteriorate during the rainy season. This also happens in Nigeria where this annual period of food shortage when crops can’t be gathered and the family only eats what is left around is also a peak time for eclampsia).
Positive advice was less clear. It was good to take ‘bitters’ (any bitter herb) particularly the plant cerasee in the form of bush tea. ‘Although it bitter you have plenty of mothers that love it. It help to make the child healthy; it keep the blood bitter.’ Cerasee is one of the most well known bush teas and used to treat hypertension. Expectant mothers should eat oranges, okra to make the baby slip out, and callaloo, a leafy vegetable dish, to ‘help the blood’.
A Passion for Birth Page 13