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Chapter 4-The Woman's Role

The women in the village are very important. They have absolute rights and control over the granaries of food both at home and in the fields. Once the field has been cultivated the woman is in charge of the food. The women are also in charge of all of the domestic animals. Nobody can sell a cow without her consent and blessing. If you ignore her and do it by force, something bad will happen. This right is given to women in order to protect the family and the children. This balances out irresponsible fathers who drink or beat their wives. The Lwo community recognizes that there are some fathers who would squander the family’s wealth, so the woman is in charge of the food and animals.

When it is time to cultivate the fields, the women and their daughters remain at home to cook food for the men and male children who have gone to work in the fields. The women make a meal to be eaten before the work day begins and then they take food to the fields for the workers.

After this, the women and young girls begin to clear rubbish from the fields. In the afternoon, the young girls are sent to look for green vegetables from the fields or in the wild. The young girls go to collect firewood from the wilderness, and water from the river. The women join their young girls to begin preparation for cooking the evening meal which includes preparing the green vegetables, making a fire for cooking, grinding the finger mil-let, grinding sesame seeds, washing the infants and getting water for their husbands to bathe.

They then begin to cook by mingling the finger mil-let flour into food (kwon). The mothers help the young girls cook if they cannot do it themselves. When the food is ready, it is served to the men, youth, and male children at the wang-oo, and to the women and young girls and infants in the court-yard in front of the grandmother’s house.

It is easy to see how hard a woman works in the Lwo village. Her work continues until midnight. Because the women work so hard, the Lwo have a saying, “You cannot kill a woman with one spear.”. This means that women have extra strength to do more work than men. When the men finish in the fields, they sit and enjoy themselves, but the women continue to work.

June 21, 2006 |

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