The Third Gender

Peace Corps volunteers are an enigma to the Burkinabe. We carry around big packs all the time not on our heads, but on our backs; we drink water from strange bottles called nalgenes that make the water appear to be multicolored; and we slather ourselves with sunscreen that many Burkinabe think is "whitening cream" (one woman asked me if she could use it so that her skin would be white like mine...I had to explain that it is not to make my skin white, but to prevent it from turning red). We are indeed a strange sight here...but in the smallest of villages in Burkina Faso, like the one I live in, it is not my appearance that is the most bewildering, but my blurring and even crossing of the extremely rigid gender lines. Gender roles in my village, and many small villages throughout Burkina, have a slight resemblance to the invisible lines drawn at middle school dances. "Girls on one side and boys on the other..." Women spend their entire day, from the first crowing of the rooster around 4 or 5 am, right up until the moon becomes the only light for miles, at W-O-R-K. They have an endless list of chores and tasks that make me tired just thinking about them. They pound millet for literally hours on end; they prepare all of their family's meals with their faces directly over a fire that chokes me just standing close to it; they scrub their laundry using only their hands, no washboard; they sweep their sand floors hunched over using bundles of straw for a broom; they make countless trips to the pump, filling impossibly heavy bidons of water that they lift and carry effortlessly on their heads; they work in vegetable gardens that they plant and cultivate completely on their own, yet still work in the fields during the larger cultivating and planting season; and they do all of this and so much more when they are pregnant or have a baby strapped to their back and five screaming kids at their side. Men, on the other hand, have a slightly different daily task list. While their wives (I mean "wives" literally because men in my village can have up to four wives according to the rules of the Koran) are busy running the entire village, men right now are participating in the "repose" season. As I live in a village of herders, some men in village spend the day with their animals off "en brousse" which entails taking the sheep or goats out to find food, then finding shade and relaxing until they are ready to herd them back home in the evening. The rest of the men in village sit under trees or hangars drinking strong green tea and having "causeries": french for "chatting." They salute people who walk past these causeries and in typical African greeting style ask how their day is going, how their animals are doing, how their family is doing (in that order), how they are feeling during this "froid" season, how they slept last night, etc...salutations are the bulk of verbal communication. Occasionally one of the men will doze off and people will continue to talk around him until he wakes up and rejoins the conversation. When they run out of tea, they will send a child to the village boutique to buy more, along with cigarrettes and charcoal to keep the tea hot. They do not seem to notice the women busy at work around them, as they are too deep in conversation, or too deep asleep. While it is the women who carry the bulk of the family responsibilities and work load, the decision making is left entirely to male members of the family. There is no sort of power struggle between men and women, women are simply expected to be completely subservient to their husbands. They are often promised to men two or three times their age when they are only 12 or 13 years old. One girl in my village is only 10 but already has a husband lined up for the moment she reaches the "procreation age." She had no say in the match. Women have no say in practically any decision directly affecting their own life or health. When a woman is pregnant or goes into labor, cultural norms dictate that she is not allowed to seek a doctor's or even a village midwife's help without her husband's permission. Because he holds the power to make the decision, husbands often prefer that their wives give birth at home to avoid paying doctor fees. I do not think it is necessary for me to explain what kinds of problems this can lead to... Coming from a country where women have fought and won against this kind of oppression, I have a hard time being culturally sensitive to this aspect of Burkinabe culture. While I try to tactfully argue with Burkinabe men that women deserve to be given more respect, and indeed have earned respect through their hours of backbreaking labor to keep the village afloat, it is difficult to do so without being offensive. There have been several instances in which I have had to bite my tongue and fight hard against the urge to spew a string of obscenities telling the men what I really think of their attitude towards women. One such instance occured last week on a visit to a satellite village to distribute medications to combat "filariose" or elephantitis - spread through the same mosquito that spreads malaria. I sat under a tree with a member of the Coges, the local health group that works in conjunction with the CSPS, and placed two, three, or four small white pills based on height in the outstretched hands of people of Ouresso. A large group of women had been waiting patiently, most of them with their children, and they had just gotten to the front of the huddle (there is no concept of a line here) when a group of adolescent boys showed up and shoved their way in front of them. I bristled and said "les femmes etaient ici premierement!" but the Coges member just handed them their medications and said, "en Afrique les hommes sont respectes." The women were completely unfazed by the incident, as they are used to this kind of treatment, but I could not shake this sense of injustice. These same women go back to their houses and prepare food for these boys, clean for them, and take care of every behind-the-scenes aspect of their lives, yet the boys can offer them only the disrespect of cutting in front of them in line. Being a female volunteer, I was a little concerned about my own treatment, as I would not stand for a Burkinabe man telling me how to go about living my life here, but I now know that I should not have worried. Female volunteers are not treated like the females here, but constitute an elusive "third gender" that fits somewhere between the male and female dichotomy... Female volunteers are respected by men because of our American status, and can interact with them on the same level as the other men in village - meaning that if I want to sit and "cause" with the sleeping and tea drinking men, which no woman in village would dare do, I can. However, there are slight exceptions to this seeming unconditional respect: very traditional village elders will not even shake my hand because I am a woman, so without trying to be disrespectful, as that will surely get me kicked out of village, I just try not to spend too much time with them. I discovered another exception when I went to mosque for the fete de tabaski: my double X chromosome forbade me from sitting near the men, so they placed me, somewhat symbolically, right in between the group of men praying up front and the women praying behind them. Right between the two groups in this third gender role seems to be the ideal place to be for me. I am given respect and my opinions hold a great deal of sway, but I am able to use the fact that I am female as a way to try to bridge the gap between men and women in village. Interactions between men and women seem to be very one-sided, as a woman would not dare voice her true opinion to her husband, but women quite bluntly lay out their opinions to me, for which I am extremely grateful. I am able to hear their point of view while at the CSPS during prenatal or nutritional consultations, or even while pounding millet and working in the gardens with the women (okay, okay, so really just working in the gardens and observing the millet pounding...I am terrible at pounding millet) which helps me to better understand women's needs in village and how they are or are not being met. In the very same day, I am able to hear the point of view of the men sitting and drinking tea, and even in some cases, relay information that I have heard from the women. I am working currently with a man named Ishiaka in my village to try to restart a village savings and credit club. It has been in village for years but has never been fully functional, as you cannot have a savings and credit club with neither savings nor credit. I recently proposed the idea of expanding the club to include women, as many women in village had expressed the desire to engage in small commerce. He sort of mulled this over, and has not yet said yes or no or really anything, except a contemplative nod...but the fact that he did not directly reject it gives me hope. The attitudes about the inferiority of women have been here much longer than I have, and I know that it will take much more than just me to make any sort of real change for women in Burkina. But perhaps in my village society of "girls on one side and boys on the other..." an intermediary of the third gender variety can start to get people dancing.