In my family, we’ve denied ourselves sensory pleasure—a Protestant legacy. We’ve rejected experience, restrained ourselves, wasted years severed from joy. My brother once chose to hold back; now incapacity stills him. He can no more ripple his limbs than can the Garry oaks, stunted trees that recoil from coastal wind. I can’t bear what has happened to him.
Refusal to follow suit has fuelled my commitment: to move, to thrive, to live. I’ve rerouted asceticism into dance—a discipline that remembers bliss.
COUNTERBALANCE
As the program draws to a close, my spirits falter. Familiar sentiments nag me: dancing this much is self-indulgent. I must hold myself in reserve for more important, serious things in the Real World. I must earn a living, advance in a profession, save for retirement. My shoulders slump as I enter the studio.
In class, we pitch in contraction over a bent front leg, the back leg in attitude. The move feels reckless and abandoned, but safely held by the tight abdomen. It yokes those two opposing human impulses: to risk and to be secure. Pitch yourself over the edge and hold on. It expresses my longing to dance full-time, yet maintain a teaching career. This wonderful move demonstrates that paradox does not paralyze. In fact, the Graham technique depends on such tension. As we reach and resist, our gestures gain definition. We don’t simply live with contradiction: it provides meaning.
CULMINATION
Last day at TDT. Barre class ends with leaping from the corner, and even after the signal to stop, people circle back to repeat. At the final moment I too race back, breaking a threesome into two pairs, so my partner and I cross last. The percussionist spurs us to jump higher and longer and to sharpen head and arms. We mirror his swell on the final jeté. The summer concludes with a drumbeat and us in the air.
In the early afternoon, in the oppressive heat of June, I begin my walk to Kihande—a small village outside of the town of Masindi in Uganda. The red dirt road from my house, barely wide enough for a vehicle, is lined with elephant grass that towers over my head and hushes in the breeze. After the bend, the road gradually widens and joins up with the main road leading from town to Kihande village. The roads are not marked, and I can take a number of different trails and paths; as long as I walk in the same general direction, I always arrive at my destination. I smile as I trek to the village—anticipating my afternoon and wondering what might be revealed on this day with the women of Agabagaya.
Agabagaya is a group of women I meet with for the purpose of a small research study I’m conducting for my master’s degree in women’s studies and education. I’m interested in exploring the ways in which women share knowledge to support their families and communities, and in examining the types of power—although often unrecognized in the public sphere—women hold within society.
My interest stems, in part, from my own childhood experiences. My mother had a strong network of women neighbours when I was growing up in the suburbs of Winnipeg in the 1970s. These women collaborated to share insights, to save money and to reduce their workloads. They owned kitchen appliances collectively: my mom had the only canner on the block, midnight blue with white speckles; Joyce had the only meat grinder, used for making fancy ham fillings for Christmas hors d’oeuvres. When my mom’s raspberries were ripe, she picked them, froze some and then invited the neighbour women to help themselves. Joyce shared her herbs and Trish snipped plant cuttings from a new variety of geranium she had acquired. The women shared sewing patterns, sauce recipes and apple-preserving techniques.
When the three neighbouring women returned to the work force on a part-time basis, they worked on alternate days so that we kids could still come home for lunch. On Mondays, we all arrived at Joyce’s for homemade chicken soup with noodles as wide as our fingers. At Trish’s on Tuesdays, we’d have ravioli, from a can, no less—unheard of in our house. And in our kitchen, on Wednesdays, the neighbourhood favourite was served: tuna melts, creatively turned into high wires as we stretched the cheesy bites across the table between us, letting the melted mozzarella hang and swing in the air. For many years these women, my mother and her two friends, cooked for us, cared for us, scolded us and taught us. And now in Kihande, a village twelve thousand kilometres from home, I witness this same collaborative spirit among the women of Agabagaya.
By the time I reach Kihande, forty minutes after starting out, my shirt is wet where my backpack rests. Sweat trickles down my inner thigh under my skirt, my head is hot under my hat and my sandalled feet are red with dust. Although weary, I am genuinely happy to see the smiling face of Shakillah, the chairperson of the group, as she comes down the path to meet me. She tilts her head as a broad smile crosses her beautiful brown face, as though she is sharing a secret with me. As I approach, she gently embraces my hand with hers and the lengthy greeting begins.
“How are you?” she asks slowly and intently.
“I am fine, Shakillah. How are you?”
“I am good. How is Masindi?” she asks, as part of the greeting is to ask about the place from where you have just arrived.
“Masindi is good,” I answer.
“And how is your friend Dominique?” she inquires about the Canadian friend I’m staying with while living here in Uganda.
“She is fine,” I reply. “She is at work today but she sends her greetings.” All this time the handholding continues and we stay comfortably connected as we begin our walk up the narrow path. When we arrive at the meeting place, each woman greets me in much the same way, shakes my hand and then adds, “You are most welcome here.”
Today we gather in a cool grassy spot in the schoolyard on Harriet’s large straw mat. Jamiila and Shakillah are sitting side by side, singing the Agabagaya song as Shakillah records the lyrics in my notebook. Although there is a mild breeze, the women occasionally dab their faces and necks with handkerchiefs. They sit with their legs outstretched in front of them, barefoot and relaxed. Jamiila’s baby plays contentedly with the grass that tickles her chubby legs. Occasionally, a chicken clucks by, inspecting and stabbing the ground intently, and when the hen does not move on, it is subtly shooed away by one of the women.
I greatly admire these women and their commitment to each other and to their group, which began informally and then gained official recognition from the Masindi District Office three years ago. Their purpose is clear and simple: they want to eradicate poverty in their village. And the women work vigorously in a multitude of ways in an effort to achieve this goal. Being members of Agabagaya means that the women contribute to a cash cooperative every other Sunday. The bulk of the funds they collect is given to a different woman each meeting and so, over a six-month period, each member of the group receives a lump sum payment once. How the women use the money is up to their individual discretion. Harriet paid for materials to add a room onto her home; Epiphania used the money to pay the school fees for her children; and Joy purchased clothes in Kampala and then sold them to the villagers in her front yard.
The surplus funds collected at each meeting remain in the group pot and are used to make purchases that benefit the group or to generate an income for them. Currently, the women have purchased and are raising one hundred chicks to be sold once they have matured. They own a cow for milking and they grow mushrooms, which they plan to dry and sell at the market. The women do not own land as a group, so each “project” is housed at one of the members’ homes: the chickens at Shakillah’s, the piglets at Dorcas’s and the organic compost at Epiphania’s.
The women of Agabagaya, all of whom have some formal education, continue to further educate themselves in areas such as farm management, first aid and organic gardening techniques; therefore, sometimes the group spends its surplus money to pay for the women to attend workshops or courses. The women ensure that their children attend school, and they have organized Runyoro literacy classes on Saturdays for villagers who are interested in learning how to read and write in their local language. One of the members of the group, sixty-seven-year-old Aidah, who cares for six of h
er orphaned grandchildren, runs a nursery school in a simple brick building in her backyard for the villagers’ preschoolers.
The women of Agabagaya labour endlessly within their homes and communities and yet many of them are also employed: Harriet is a waitress at a local guest house, Lois is a high school teacher, Dorcas is a controller, and Shakillah owns a small sewing shop.
The children of Kihande attend school, run and play with other children and help out with chores and housework. They delight in knocking mangoes out of the trees, singing songs to each other and playing with simple, often homemade, toys. After school they come home and work alongside their mothers, preparing meals and fetching water. The children often gather near us when we meet, curious about my presence. It took days for me to figure out whose children were whose—the Kihande women allow their children to be cared for, monitored and disciplined by the collective. The children, in a sense, belong to all of the women.
I understand that these women’s and children’s lives are not perfect. They are faced with issues that are not prevalent in my world: the devastating effects of AIDS, the ongoing threat and treatment of malaria, inequitable access to education and an unsettling and sometimes brutal political situation. But what impresses me the most is not just the way in which the group cares for their children, but also the strong commitment to collaboration that these women have established in so many aspects of their lives. Collectively, they provide emotional, financial and educational support for each other. In Kihande, as in many other parts of the world, the burden of household responsibilities—child rearing, food production and preparation—rests with the women, and these women have found a way to share the load, to prosper not just individually but also in ways that benefit their greater community. Undoubtedly, they could not achieve alone what they are able to do as a group.
I recognize the worth of the bond the women of Agabagaya have created because I experienced similar benefits from my mother’s relationships with the other neighbourhood mothers. Their focus, like that of the women in Agabagaya, was their children and their families. And as children we had space to roam and unscheduled time to play. There was joy in our simplicity: coming home after school, eating carrots that we pillaged from the garden or snacking on buns still warm from the oven. And yet these women, my other mothers, also made time for each other emotionally and socially.
• • •
I can’t help but reflect on my own life as a grown woman in light of these two collectives. I too have a circle of supportive women in my life—women who give me strength, courage and support. However, the relationships I have with my women friends have little to do with daily survival—with actually bettering our families and enhancing our communities. In contrast to the women of Agabagaya, our relationships are an embarrassing privilege of middle class—we golf nine holes, eat at Thai restaurants and meet on the occasional Wednesday evening in the middle of winter to enjoy a latte and share a slice of cheesecake. We go out with our own cars and our own bank cards, leaving our partners—and for some, our children—at home.
Our survival and our children’s well-being do not depend on our collaboration. Like the women of Agabagaya, we socialize, laugh and share daily problems, but we are careful not to overstep certain boundaries—like those of parenting. We don’t generally share our resources, work collaboratively for the betterment of our communities or openly consider the long-term possibilities of our friendship. Although I value and am grateful for what we have (and I know my women friends are too), in our increasingly individualistic society, there are boundaries to our friendship, territories that we do not enter and ground that we do not tread. Our focus is often on the sharing of our personal successes, struggles and career and family milestones, not on a concern for the wider community.
And yet, as I go on with my routine life in Winnipeg, having completed my studies and returned to work. I hold on to Agabagaya’s story carefully, not wanting the memories to fade, and greatly aware of the possibilities that the women of Kihande village have allowed me to imagine.
• • •
I prepare to leave Kihande just before sunset in an effort to get home before it grows so dark that I can no longer see my way on the unlit roads and paths. Tradition dictates that one or more of the women will walk me partway home, sometimes holding my hand as we proceed. In the beginning, the women insisted that most of the group walk with me, often taking me on different roads and pointing out important landmarks. As time went on, however, fewer women came along. I took this as a sign of acceptance, of no longer being perceived as a guest. Now, only one or two women accompany me each time, and I silently celebrate feeling less like a visitor who needs formal hosting and more like an equal, a friend, a member of their group.
Tonight, after sharing a huge traditional meal that some of the women prepared, we talk about an incident at one of the local schools where a girl had been reprimanded for not complying with the dress code. After debating the different sides of the issue, the topic of conversation naturally shifts, as conversations do, and Lois sings for us a song she wrote. Eventually we are all singing and laughing and dancing. There is always a lot of laughter with these women and being with them gives me great comfort and a sense of familiarity. I feel overwhelmed and in awe of their kindness, their generosity—and their ambition. I dread leaving, but the room is growing dim as the sun begins to set, and I know it is time to go.
Sally walks me from her house across the road and then stops. “You know the rest of the way from here.” She encloses my hand in both of hers and smiles. We can hear the faint voices of the women singing, interrupted by splashes of their laughter. Sally begins to step backwards, eager to get back to the house to join them.
“Greet Dominique when you see her,” Sally calls to me over her shoulder. “I will,” I call back, waving. As I meander down the road past the barefooted school children walking to the pump with jerry cans to fill with water, I watch the sky change colour, from azure to shades of indigo near the horizon. Birds are calling and a boy on a bicycle speeds past me ringing his bell, signalling the children to move off the road. I am aware of the smile that I wear and of the feelings of contentment that rise within me as I continue to walk on, the rest of the way home—alone.
part two
A CLARITY OF VISION
My husband and I take our three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, Maeve, for a walk. It’s cold and we’re bundled up: toques, neck warmers, felt-lined boots. The ground is frozen. There’s no snow and a bitter wind, so we head up along the edge of the field, duck into the shelter of the woods and visit a stone firepit we made last summer. We squat by it, pretending to be camping. She loves this.
“Pretend we’re the Gypsy family,” I say.
“We’re cooking rabbits,” she says. “We caught one, and smacked him till he was dead, and then we put him on a stick, and now we’re cooking him.”
Later, we go up to the highest field. Our feet crunch frozen reindeer moss. There’s a pale sun, presaging snow. Maeve is stumping gamely uphill, holding Peter’s hand. We stop to admire the view: far below is our farmhouse with its cluster of barns, beyond the meadow is the church, and across the road from the church is an old one-room school-house. It’s been converted into a home, and Maeve lives there with her parents and little sister, Bridget.
I kneel beside her to point out these landmarks. She’s ripping off her mittens, stuffing them in her pockets.
“Maeve! What are you doing? You can’t take off your mittens!”
“My hands are having hot flashes,” she insists indignantly. She waves her hands back and forth, fingers spread. I feel her hands. Indeed, they are sweaty hot.
• • •
When she has hot flashes for real, I’m happy to think, they won’t be a shock to her, as they were to me. “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” I said, constantly, to my friends, at the onset of menopause, feeling as if I’d entered the strangest territory, having crossed a boundary I never
knew existed. My mother told me nothing, since she says she wasn’t aware of menopause, although she may not have realized what it was that was affecting her. I remember how, when I was twenty-two, she’d spend a day in bed for no discernible reason. Or fly into sudden trembling rages—once, even, hurling a bowl of mashed potatoes at my father. (It wasn’t the best china, she explained later.) My mother-in-law told me about the time that her daughter asked for information on menopause, having chosen it as a subject for a school project.
“I was mortified,” my mother-in-law told me, in a lowered voice, distressed by the memory. “I don’t think I’d ever spoken that word out loud.”
Women still lower their voices when voicing the word menopause. Over the years, I’ve heard older women say, “She’s going through her change,” looking at each other significantly, their words reverberant with hushed momentousness, like so much else to do with women’s lives. And I realize that within myself is a voice that whispers, even now: Shame, embarrassment, weakness, mortification.
This time in my life began, like secrecy, with the presence of absence. Nothing happened; and then, one day, I realized that I had passed a few months with no period. I was as shocked by the lack of blood as I was when I was fourteen and found my underpants stained with brilliant red. Both events elicited confusion. At fourteen I thought—where is my tomboy self? The girl who could beat boys at arm-wrestling, jump off roofs, ride bareback? Furious, I lay on my bed curled around the clutching pain of cramps. And for the next thirty years, I struggled with a slippery sense of identity. I felt continuously at odds with my body, the one thing in my life I was enraged at being unable to control. I was not glad to be a woman.
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