A couple of days later, my mother and I returned from my grandmother’s village to the capital city, Freetown, where my mother lived.
And listen, my mom and I were getting reacquainted with one another. When you haven’t lived with your parents for a while, then go back to their house, it can be challenging.
My mother was not feeling me. She didn’t appreciate that my nose was pierced and I didn’t have hair—I was bald.
Apparently I was really loud.
She would say things like, “This is not the daughter I raised.”
And I’d be like, “But, Mommy, this is who I am. I’m independent. Accept me.”
We would be just back and forth, back and forth. It was awkward. But every Sunday we would have dinner together, and we tried to get to know one another and understand each other.
One Sunday we were having our usual mother-daughter dinner when I got a call from one of my aunts.
I picked up the phone, and my aunt said, “Grandma Don-Go.”
I could feel my mother looking at me, worriedly, and so I turned to her and said, “Mommy, Grandma Don-Go.”
Grandma is gone.
My mother quickly stood up from the table, and said, “Okay, go to the spare bedroom, open the second drawer, pack everything that you see in there, pack your bags, and let’s go.”
And so that’s what I did. I went to the spare bedroom, I opened the second drawer, and I found all this white material—linen, chiffon, cotton—and I recognized that my mother had been preparing for this day when her mother would go.
I quickly packed everything that I saw in a bag, and in twenty minutes my mother and I were on our way to my grandmother’s house.
The only thing I really remember from that night is how bright the moon was when we pulled up to my grandmother’s house, how it lit up the entire street, which was usually filled with life and joy and noise. But that night it was so quiet.
We arrived, and the minute we entered my grandmother’s house, my mother dropped her bags to the ground and let out a howl that could only come from the depths of her being.
Her mother, my grandmother, was gone.
My aunts rushed to my mother’s side, and she sobbed in their arms. I just stood there and watched.
My aunts took my mother towards my grandmother’s room, and some of my aunts went in, and then my mother went in. But as I was about to enter my grandmother’s room, one of my older aunts came and shut the door in front of me.
I was confused.
I said, “Auntie, what’s going on? I want to go inside. Mommy is inside. I want to participate in washing Grandma’s body. This is the most intimate and important part of our tradition. Why did you close the door?”
My aunt just looked at me and said, “Fatou, I cannot let you in that room. You’re not a society woman.”
I knew what she meant. She meant that I hadn’t gone through bondo. Bondo is what we know as female genital mutilation or circumcision.
I hadn’t gone through bondo because my grandmother was a Chief Sowie—a sowie is a female leader who does the initiating of young girls into the society of bondo. And she had decided that my sisters and I would be the first girls in our family and in our community not to go through bondo.
But her decision meant that I was now on the other side of the door. I could not enter.
I saw that my aunt would not relent. And for the first time since coming home, I felt like an outsider. I had to walk away, trying not to make a scene. But I was a little sad and disappointed.
The next day was my grandmother’s funeral, and in the morning the entire community came to pay their final respects.
They had washed my grandmother’s body and laid her in the center of her living room. She looked so regal and beautiful and at peace, wrapped in white.
I went to her bedroom and sat for a moment, trying to feel her presence, perhaps for the last time.
I was lost in my thoughts when seven young girls, no older than ten, all rushed into the room, wearing big, colorful skirts. They were decked out in white clay masks, and they had so much energy—they were the happiest people at the funeral.
And for the moment there, they lightened the mood, and so I just watched them play.
A couple of minutes later, one of my older aunts walked into the room and said to the girls, “Hush. Get yourselves together. We have to go.”
I turned to my aunt and said, “Auntie, what’s going on? We’re about to bury Grandma. Where are you going?”
She said, “Listen, in order to bury your grandmother, we need to take these girls to the bush and initiate them so that Grandma can rest in peace.”
What could I say to that? My grandmother was a Chief Sowie. In our culture, in order for her to rest in peace, these seven young girls must go to the bush and be initiated. And I wanted my grandmother, who I loved so much, to rest in peace.
So what could I do? In that moment I recognized that I really didn’t have any say or power in that space. And so, even though I stood there silently and watched as my aunt took the seven young girls away to the bush, it did not feel right.
A couple of hours later, I was told that we were ready to bury my grandmother, and so I walked outside with the entire community. My mother, as per the ritual, walked toward my grandmother for the last time and sprayed perfume on her body, turned her back, and walked away. I stood there with everyone else and watched as they hoisted my grandmother to her grave.
And in that moment I realized something about the place I come from:
It’s strong.
It’s bold.
It’s brave.
This is the place that my grandmother came from, and my grandmother, a sowie, a chief in this society, had made the decision to give me this gift of not going through bondo. A gift that allows me so many different choices. A gift I would want for those seven girls. For every girl, really.
Her decision meant that wherever I decide to go in this world, whatever I decide to do in this world, I will be a different kind of girl and have a completely different life. A different life that I can pass on to the next generation of women in my family.
* * *
FATOU WURIE has nearly a decade of international development experience, focusing on African women’s health policy and innovative platforms for gender equality. Fatou consults with UNICEF HQ on gender and innovations and has served as Africa Regional Advocacy Lead for the MamaYe Campaign to end maternal mortality. Fatou is also the founder of the Survivor Dream Project—a local nonprofit aimed at building robust psychosocial services for Sierra Leonean women, girls, and youth. An Abshire-Inamori (Ethical Leadership) Fellow and as the first African Governance Initiative Scholar at the Blavatnik School of Government (University of Oxford), Fatou was the first woman of color to lead the Oxford Women in Politics Society. A storyteller at heart, Fatou uses storytelling as a tool for advocacy policy on gender-equity issues, often speaking on platforms like The Moth and at diaspora workshops for humanitarian action and mobilization (DEMAC) across Europe.
This story was told on September 18, 2017, at the Appel Room at Lincoln Center in New York City. The theme of the evening was Global Stories of Women and Girls. Director: Sarah Austin Jenness.
My brother and I were born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, during Jim Crow. In 1961 my brother got involved with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. He became a Freedom Rider. At that time I had no idea what a Freedom Rider was.
I was only thirteen, but my brother was nineteen, and this became a very serious movement for him. The Freedom Riders were involved in the integration of the interstate transportation system across the South. And wherever there were the Colored Only and White Only signs in the bus stations and in bathrooms and restaurants, they would challenge them.
This was very dangerous for them, because the Ku Klux Klan did not want this to happen. So they were g
etting beat up and arrested. They got hosed down. The buses they rode got bombed.
I loved my brother, and I always wanted to do everything he did. But I was too young for all that, so my friends and I got involved by doing sit-ins locally. Now, this was fun for us, because it gave us the opportunity to walk into restaurants and shops that we had never been in before.
For instance, there was a restaurant in our neighborhood that we used to go to almost every day after school. On one side it said COLORED ONLY, on the other side it said WHITES ONLY.
Well, the colored side was kind of small. It had a counter and a couple of booths and a jukebox—we could put a nickel in there and hear our music.
If we wanted to get something to eat, there was a window with a doorbell, and we could order sodas, and hot dogs and french fries on paper plates.
But as you were standing at the window, you could see into the other side. It was big, with lots of round tables covered in beautiful white tablecloths and place settings. White people were seated and being served dinner.
And this was just how it was.
Like when my mother would take us shopping for school clothes, before we left the house, she’d say, “Barbara, go use the bathroom.”
I was like, “Mama, I already used the—”
“Go use the bathroom again.”
I didn’t understand that, until one day we were downtown in a store. She had picked out a few items. I had to use the bathroom, and she got very upset with me because she had to put those things back. We had to leave that store and go to a side street where there were colored businesses, use the bathroom, go back to the store, and start over again.
And while we were in the store, she had to know my sizes, because they would not allow us to try on clothes or shoes, and so if we bought something that was too small or too big, they would not allow us to bring it back.
When we left the store, Mama would grab my hand, and I’d say, “Mama, I’m a big girl, you don’t have—”
“Shut up, gal.”
When a white person would approach us, Mama would pull me off the sidewalk into the street to let them pass by—they didn’t want to brush up against us.
So I did understand what was going on, and how we were being treated, and that it was wrong.
But I didn’t understand what the civil-rights movement or the Freedom Riders could do about it.
This was our life. This was how it was. This was what we accepted, you know?
One day several years later, I was walking home from downtown with my friends, and as I was coming up my street, people sitting out on their porches started yelling, “Barbara, Barbara, you need to get home! Your mom got sick, and she was taken to the hospital!”
I’m like, “Hospital?” We never went to the hospital! Mama always had home remedies.
I ran home, and I tried to find someone to take me. But I couldn’t find anyone, so I ran to the hospital.
When I got there, Mama was sitting in the waiting room of the emergency room with the friend who had brought her there, and she was very distraught. She looked like she was going to pass out. She was clammy, and she had a cold paper towel on her head.
She said, “I’m trying to keep from vomiting again.”
Her friend told me, “She vomited a washpan-full of blood.”
I’m like, I can’t believe that. A washpan is big.
So I said, “Well, how long have you guys been here?”
And he said, “We’ve been here since two o’clock.”
I looked, and it was about five thirty.
So I went up to the desk, and I said, “You know, my mama’s been here since two. She needs to see the doctor. She needs to lie down.”
The young lady said, very rudely, “We don’t have a bed for your mother, and there are other people here who need to see the doctor first.”
All I could do was go and sit down and wait with them.
As I’m sitting there, I’m seeing people being called up to see the doctor. Now, some of them might have been there before me, but most of them came in after, but they were being called first.
They were all white.
So about nine thirty or so, they called Mama.
I was glad. I thought, She can lie down, and she’ll see the doctor.
So we’re waiting in the treatment room for the doctor, and the nurse came in with a wheelchair.
She said, “I’m sorry. We’re going to have to put your mother outside the door for a while, because we have someone else who needs to see the doctor.”
I was like, “No. My mama’s been here since two o’clock. She needs to see the doctor.”
Well, I was a teenager, so they ignored me. But when they went to get her up, she vomited, and she almost filled that room with blood. So now nurses and doctors were coming from everywhere. She needed blood transfusions. They took her up to the fifth floor.
We went looking for her, and, as I was passing by a treatment room, I heard a burst of laughter coming out.
I looked through the little crack in the door, at the doctors and nurses, and I said, “That’s where Mama is,” because no matter what was going on, even if she was sick, Mama always had something funny to say or do to make you laugh.
We were waiting to go in and see her, but the doctor came out, and he said, “It’s very late. We’re trying to get her admitted. Why don’t you all go home and come back tomorrow?”
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to see Mama. I wanted to hug Mama.
I wanted to say “I love you,” because we were a family who never said that to one another. I never remembered saying that to my mama.
But he wouldn’t let us in, so we left.
The next morning we came back, and she was critical. We were outside her room again, waiting to go in and see her and say “I love you.”
The doctor came out, and he said, “We’re preparing your mother for surgery,” so we couldn’t go in.
When they rolled her out on the stretcher, I could see just a glimpse of her face between their bodies. Her eyes were swollen and red with tears, and I got this big, hard ball right in the middle of my chest.
We went down to the second floor to wait for her to come out of surgery, and we waited and waited.
Finally the doctor came out, and he said, “I’m sorry. Your mother didn’t make it.”
That ball in my chest just burst out of me.
I started screaming, “You let my mama die! YOU LET MY MAMA DIE!”
I cried, and I cried, and I cried.
I cried for days.
But it was at that moment that I realized what that civil-rights movement was all about.
I realized why my brother and the Freedom Riders were challenging the Colored Only and White Only signs, why they were riding the buses, and why we were doing sit-ins and protests.
Because this was our struggle, this was our fight.
This movement was about equality and freedom.
This was a fight for life and death.
* * *
BARBARA COLLINS BOWIE was born in 1947 in Jackson, Mississippi, where she endured the oppression of those times throughout her childhood and her adult life. Barbara got involved with the civil rights movement at the early age of thirteen, engaging in many sit-ins, inspired by her brother, recently deceased Freedom Rider Jesse James Davis. Barbara became a licensed vocational nurse in 1969, starting out her nursing career in the neonatal ICU at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Medical Center. Later, while working for the Center for Healthcare, she finished college, becoming a licensed social worker. She became a published poet/writer and established the Bowie Foundation “Arts in Focus” after-school program, devoting herself to helping youth realize their artistic abilities early in life and to use the fine arts as an outlet and an alternative to negative behavior. The Dr. Bowie Scholarship Foundation, named in honor of her late husband, Dr. Jes
se Bowie, has provided over twenty years of performing-arts after-school and summer programs, educational and community events, scholarships, and many other services for youth and their families in Bexar and surrounding counties.
This story was told on April 7, 2017, at the Majestic Theatre in San Antonio, Texas. The theme of the evening was All These Wonders. Director: Catherine McCarthy.
I grew up on a little farm in the middle of rural South Australia, with my three older brothers and my mum and my dad. It was a pig farm, and it was one of those pig farms where the pigs are in these tiny pens.
When I was six years old, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I snuck up to the pig shed, and I set free all of the pigs. I ran back to my bedroom, and I jumped into bed.
This wasn’t some sort of animal-liberation thing. I was only six years old. I wanted to wake up and look out the window and see pigs on the tractor, pigs walking into the kitchen where a pig was doing the dishes.
I wanted to see pigs everywhere.
But instead I awoke to my dad shaking me, and he took me out to the pig shed.
And none of the pigs had moved.
Dad said, “See? They want to be here. I hope you’ve learned something.”
That’s the sort of thing that my dad would say all the time: “I hope you’ve learned something.”
My dad was this very dominant man, a very serious, stern, proud, and impatient man.
When my brothers and I grew up, we had to work on the pig farm with him, and my dad was the kind of man who had to have a hand in everything we did.
You know that kind of man: you’re doing the dishes, and Dad pushes you out of the way and starts doing the dishes to show you the proper way to do it.
And he was everything in my life in this tiny little community where we grew up in South Australia.
But Dad wasn’t just a pig farmer, he was also my schoolteacher. And I don’t mean a teacher at my school, I mean my teacher. So I saw him every single day at school.
The Moth Presents Occasional Magic Page 14
