Tears in the Kingdom

Sanibonani!

I realize I've tapered off considerably in the blogosphere, which is basically a crime against humanity. But it's probably because my life here has become "normal." Everything that seemed interesting at the beginning is a lot less interesting now. So, like many people in the early 2000s, I've put my blog in the back seat.

The difference between me now and 20-something me is that my blog still might be interesting to its readers. Therefore, I'm going to try to do a better job of feeding it.

My conversations at support group often come back to gender roles, as you might have noticed. We often contrast the life of a Swazi woman with the life of an American woman. Whether it's them mocking me because I don't cook meat at home ("Nonhlanhla, you are lazy to cook!") or me telling them I couldn't marry a Swazi man because I don't like to work so hard ("These Swazi women, they are strong!"), a lot of our conversations get at the heart of the women's issues that interest me in public health.

We recently discussed the "teka" concept, or traditional Swazi marriage rites. Stop me if I've already written about this -- oh, you can't? Then here we go.

When a Swazi man wants to marry a Swazi woman, he typically gets approval from his family and the bride's family. Then he has someone (usually a neighborhood boy or relative) throw a hunk of meat on the doorstep of the woman's family. This is an indication that the marriage is on.

The next step is for the man's relatives to come to the bride-to-be at 3 a.m. and take her to their homestead. They put her in the kraal, where cattle are kept, where she remains, topless. The women of her future husband's family then insult her until she cries. I think I've discussed this before. But I'd never figured out why the woman must cry before she's officially married. I asked the support group women, and this is what one said:

"The woman must cry because it is her last chance. After that, her life will be hard, but she cannot cry about it."

That was fascinating. I'm not sure if it's the agreed-upon cultural reason -- I've also heard that she's crying because she's leaving her own family -- but the women said the tears are a sign of a challenging life to come. It's true that women bear the brunt of the work in terms of cleaning, cooking, raising the children and working the fields. The men work as well, some of them extremely hard, but the gender roles are clearly defined.

I've been here 16 months and haven't seen a Swazi adult cry. I haven't been present at any births or funerals, so I can't speak to those, but I've never seen anyone break down at the clinic or when speaking to me about a problem. It's a generalization, of course, but Swazis don't tend to show a lot of emotion in public. That's fair -- I don't either.

I asked the women if they ever cry.

"I cry every day," several said.

They asked me if I ever cried. I told them I'm not a big crier. I've cried twice in Swaziland, I think. Once was because of the loss of a loved one back home, and the other was related to personal stuff over here. But I didn't cry during the stressful adjustment period when I first got here. I'm not sure where that comes from. I'll cry at movies sometimes, and I tend to tear up at weddings, but it's not my go-to emotional response. Maybe I fit in better than I think I do.

As they tell me all the time here: "Ah! Now you are a Swazi."