Growing up in the Somali Diaspora

The unimaginable weight of female expectation...Pt 2

Disclaimer; This essay should not be taken as indictment of my race but rather as my lived and observed experience of one group of women.

It’s difficult to articulate what has always gone unsaid and even more difficult to communicate the overwhelming sense of pressure to act in a certain way. Where this pressure derives from can again easily be traced to patriarchal institutions where in the pursuit of power one gender can be alienated and oppressed.

This alienation and oppression can present itself at a macro and micro level weaving itself into the fabric of different cultures and communities.

For example, something that I have always questioned from a young age would be that despite preparing, cooking and serving the food – Somali woman would wait in the kitchen until the men had finished eating and then dine on the leftovers. This may seem like a subtle thing to comment upon but it is a dangerous behavioural pattern to follow. Food is, of course, an important component of life and it can be, and often is, a pleasure rather than a necessary ritual. Excluding women from this shows the many ways in which Somali woman are treated like second class citizens.

One of the main reasons women eat last and in the kitchen is that apparently women are not supposed to eat in front of men. There is a long list of prescribed acts that women can and cannot do in front of men.

Women cannot laugh and once my cousin told me in all sincerity that if a man were to look at me I ought to “lower my gaze”. Ignoring my incandescent rage at this - it seems exhausting to me - being policed to this extent.

Alongside our agency we have been objectified to the point of becoming mere docile subjects. A lot of these acts that are forbidden to carry out in public are highly sexualised. A women’s laugh is erotic, and the dastardly man cannot control his temptation. ‘Come hither’ eyes or not, a women’s face is suggestive, and a poor man cannot be held responsible for his own actions. In this narrative (most often propagated by men) a women’s actions is not her own but rather has a direct negative consequence.

In the Somali Diaspora divorce figures are high and absentee fathers have sadly become the norm. My own left the UK shortly after we arrived leaving my mother to bring up 5 children in a cockroach infested house in North London before we moved and gentrification took over most of the streets in Islington.

I know my father’s version of events well, he hasn’t revised them much over the years and his side of the family do much to keep his tale alive. According to him. my mother was a cruel woman and his children were insolent and influenced by his ex-wife.

In the wider community it was believed that my mother, despite suffering years of domestic abuse in silence, was to blame for the breakdown of her marriage. There is no Somali word for ‘home-wrecker’. ‘Cursed’ is what they called her. It’s amusing how despite having no responsibility over the domestic household, the patriarchal head of said household can still feel overwhelmed and victimised.

There is an unimaginable weight of expectation on Somali woman. Dealing with the post-traumatic stress of the Civil War, living with often abusive husbands, raising bi-lingual children in a different land whose customs they have had to quickly adapt to. The list is endless, and the kitchen has become a place of solidarity as well as one of exclusion. Much like in the 1960s, where West Indian and Caribbean women would use the Hair Salon as a place to gather and discuss their shared experience – many Somali women use the kitchen. I’ve spent many years growing up perched in the corner, with both of my eyes on my book but my ears on the conversation wondering why it seemed like being born a girl was like drawing the short straw. However, as mentioned previously, I was immensely fortunate and never made to feel like anything was out of my grasp. In my adult years I often think my life would have turned out very differently had my father stayed and his influence had taken precedence over my mother’s.

When I ask a female relative why Somali man behave the way they do I’m told it’s because of their background. Somalia is largely an agrarian society. There are little written records and most folklore and shared memory is told through misty-eyed word-of-mouth. I know one thing however, and that’s that the Somalia Diaspora still operates using the ‘Separate spheres’ gender theory where there are things that fall into the woman’s remit and (far fewer) things that falls into the man’s. For example, it may have made sense for the woman to stay at home with the children back in Somalia whilst the admittedly stronger man went and dealt with the land. However, in the UK this is no longer needed, and if I can speak with my tongue-in-cheek it can be argued that Deliveroo administered the coup-d’état to men’s power in this respect. As society has changed around the Somali Diaspora, internal customs within the community have not.

I am anxious to add that Somalia has had a troubled and tumultuous history. Benedict Anderson in his book ‘Imagined Communities’ describes a nation as a ‘socially constructed community’. Somalia, in recent years, hasn’t had the space to develop as and now with so many Somali people dispersed as pockets across the globe there are many conflicting factors that have further complicated the idea of a “national identity”. Irrespective of this, Somali women are still facing a grave injustice and perhaps with my generation that has had the privilege of a more formalised education will change come.