>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> Good afternoon. My name is Marieta Harper, Area Specialist here in the African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, and I want to welcome one and all to today's program. First, I'd like to introduce Dr. Peggy Pearlstein, our Acting Chief of African and Middle Eastern Division to give you a welcome here. [ Silence ] >> Good afternoon everyone. I'm delighted that you are all here for this program today sponsored by the African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division. Our Chief, Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb is away today and so I'm serving as her surrogate. I want to welcome all of you and then I will turn over the program to Marieta Harper who will introduce our speaker. And Marieta is the-- let's see, Marieta is the French and Central West African Specialist which also includes the Sahel area. So Marieta, we'd like to hear from you. >> Good afternoon again. [Laughs] My name is Marieta Harper, Area Specialist here in the African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division and I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Dr. Antoinette Tidjani Alou from the University of Abdou Moumouni de Niamey in Niger. She has a very lustrous and full bio and I'm very delighted to share that with you. Presently, Dr. Alou is a visiting Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Center for African Studies University in Florida, Gainesville, Florida. And she's generally the professor of French and Comparative Literature at the African Studies and gender studies at the Universite Abdou Moumouni de Niamey in Niger. And she also is an affiliate faculty in the French Literature for the Universite d'Abomey-Calavi in Benin in West Africa. [ Pause ] The [ Pause ] At present, Dr. Alou has several manuscripts but it's in preparation and the first one is, "One Life is not Enough," a transatlantic personal narrative and it's in review. We'll publish this at the moment. And then, she's in the process of completing her-- another book titled "The Warrior Queen" and "Politics of Memory." All this 2012 as well as she's doing a publication on poetry called "African Interiors through the Voice: A Collected Poetry" is its title. She is a fantastic independent translator of many publications. I'm going to give you the highlighted ones that I know of. The most recent one is the rigorous qualitative, the empirical constraints of social anthropological interpretations by Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan in the EHESS-Marseille and LASDEL, Niamey. She's translated edited volumes on 2005, Niger: Emerging literature and modern oratory-voicing identities, a special bilingual issue of Tydskrif vir Letterkunde. My language, I think this is a German language or-- >> Afrikaans. >> Afrikaans. It's a little long. 2005, she is contributing editor of the Woman Writing Africa Volume II on West Africa and the Sahel as published in New York by the Feminist Press of the City University of New York. She's from any articles and distribute in brief is for 2012 entitle "Of Home and Promise Lands, where do African and Caribbeans living in the Africa belong?" Forthcoming in the book to Africa-- African-American in West Indies, the Indians returned East and their communities, the 18th-- to the 21st century as published in South Africa. And then another title back to Africa, Ms. Madi is autobiographical notes on the text and subtext of popular culture. It will be forthcoming out this-- later this month in global South. And in 2011, there was the obituary of-- entitled, "Bon Voyage, Monsieur Glissant!" another publication in Afrikaans, the-- 2010 Le Boise feminine Nigerien called the [inaudible] Equiterre. In an encyclopedia the terms artist. It's published in Paris by Antoinette Roque and it's worth coming. Well, it has been published. Another title is "Ancestors from the East, Spirits from the West. Surviving and Reconfiguring the Exogenous Violence of Global Encounters in the Sahel." It's a Journal des Africanistes. Another one, sexuality, identity, and lecture analogue feminist through the kitchen window. It's in the publications of War Saviors and it was by Jean-Christophe de Lumiere. [ Pause ] The-- there are several more titles, listing of at least 29, okay. And with that, I will just say in a present, Dr. Alou is the President of a Program Planning Committee of ISOLA at the Congress at the University of Lecce in Italy and she is the Vice-President of the International Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa. And last but not the least, our President of the International Society for Oral Literatures of Africa for 2010 to 2012. Dr. Alou. [ Applause ] >> Thank you very much Marieta. I would like to thank the persons who have allowed me to be here today with you and to share a few thoughts about Nigerien women. I'd like to thank Dr. Peggy Pearlstein, Acting Division Chief for the Africa and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. My thanks also to Marieta Harper, Area Specialist of the African Section of the African Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress. I'd like also to recognize the Fulbright Foundation for having allowed me to be here in the United States in the first place and to Laverne Page for having initiated this contact. Thank you, all of you for being here. I know it's a lunch hour and it's very kind and generous of you to actually take your time out to come, to share and getting to know each other better, to come and to share about what I have titled "The Secret Faces of Women from the Nigerien Sahel focusing on Agency, Influence and Contemporary Challenges." [ Pause ] Before I start my presentation, I do need to say a little word about myself. I am a Nigerien woman of a special type. I'm a binational. I am a Nigerien of-- I'm an African of Jamaican parentage and education. I am a Nigerien citizen as well as a citizen of Jamaica where I was born and grew up. I did my postgraduate studies in France where I met the man who was to be my husband. I have lived and worked in Niger for the last 20 years continuously and I have worked for the last 12 years or so on women culture from Niger. I therefore take my place here today as a Global African whose adult life, work experiences, struggles, hopes and dreams have all evolved in Niger, among in Niger and people of whom I consider myself to be a normal everyday citizen. Some key words, secret faces. Secret faces because Niger is not a well-known country and Nigerien women are even less known. Agency-- by agency, I refer to the capacity that Niger women have to maneuver, control, some degree of control, more or less depending on the woman, depending on the social class of their lives. For the power to control their lives, for the possibility of rising their own identities and for the capacity of taking control the capacity of-- at least taking control of the spaces that are allowed them to say who they are and to develop themselves as best as they can. The Sahel is where Niger is among many other countries, we'll see a map in a moment. It's this zone that's like something of a bridge between the Sahara and the more tropical part of West Africa. It is a semi-arid region con-- in which are located some of the most developmentally challenge countries in the world. It obviously, geography and climate do not help. Nigerien women are more than mere statistics but they are also more than mere statistics, that is the word mere is the French word for mother and they are more than mother statics but they are more than just statistics to begin with. They are women of a little known country that is remembered from time to time for dismal news items. We forget that they are accessed in and with a history of power in agency and that they are also creative agents with a voice and a personal sensibility. And that as a gender population, they face the challenges that most of the world's population both men and women face elsewhere. The country is very little known. People often confuse Niger and Nigeria so I will say Niger to make the French consonants clear, perhaps helping to identify the country a bit more clearly. People are always confused about how to say the nationality. People from Niger are Nigeriens. And it is a very particular sound in English but you cannot say Nigerian because that refers to another country, Nigeria. The country is a subject of heart-rending statistics. Recently, there has been a buzz on the internet diffused by the Save the Children report on women and children in the world. Diffused and relayed by the BBC and then taken up by the internet. And this particular report proclaims that Niger is a worst place on earth in which to be a woman and a child. Other news items of Niger are equally dismal. Whenever Niger is in the news which is not frequently then it's about famine, food shortage, coup de etat with visual images of poverty, underdevelopment or false scoops like the uranium scoop in the period of the Iraq war where we were supposed to be-- we were falsely reported to be selling uranium to Iraq. And then after that, we go back to the oblivion that the western media usually consigns us to. So Niger not Nigeria. There is a map there where you can see the country in West Africa and Nigeria is to the north. Here is a map of Niger in the region. Algeria to the north. We have Mali to the west. Other surrounding countries are Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria to the south and Libya. We also have a border with Libya. So that is where Niger is situated and most of the countries in this band of West Africa belong to this bordering region that is called the Sahel. That's an image of the Nigerien flag. A romanticized view of a desert landscape, the kind of thing that you can see in tourist images although Niger is not really a favorite tourist destination, but the desert has this certain kind of charm and it has been viewed in this kind of way, you know, these wonderful tropical lights and unending rippling dunes and romanticized images of the country. There, we have a symbol under this mosque which is a symbol of Niger's long-standing, its Muslim identity. I will not say Islamic because that means something totally different. So Niger's long-standing Muslim identity. To get to the statistics, some facts and statistics, the count-- we have-- the country has over 5-- 50 million people. The official language is French. The life expectancy, our life expectancy is 52 years and the mortality rate is one of the highest in the world. The country is landlocked. It is hot, often presented as one of the hottest countries in the world. So we're one of the hottest countries in world. Also, presented as one of the poorest countries in the world. And other keywords presenting Niger in a rather dismal light are subsistence farming, desert, drought, locust and famine. So, the country profile is usually quite devastating and you could read online things like this profile that I've taken from a BBC website. A vast, arid state on the edge of the Sahara desert, Niger endured austere military rule for much of its post-independence history and is rated by the UN as one of the least-developed nations. Okay, that's some of what these dismal statistics say and faces like these are put on websites like Save the Children, where we have young Nigerien mothers and children waiting to be helped, other such images. The statistics are therefore, there and I would propose that there are things to do with the statistics and there are things not to do with the statistics. One thing to do is to face them squarely. Another thing is to drive for development. But I think it's also extremely important to remember the indigenous wellsprings of power, agency and resilience that are part of Niger's identity and part of the identity of Nigerien women. I think we need to use these wellsprings, these foundational wellsprings of power and agency and role models of women made at home as inspiration for action, so that we maybe able to develop out of our strength and not out of cliches and stereotypes that are projected about us with more or less accuracy. What we should not do with the statistics and which-- what I propose not to do with them is we shouldn't deny them. But we should not claim and diffuse them as the whole story about Niger or Niger's women. And we should not forget the faces behind and beyond the statistics. Also, I think we should not disregard important stories that the statistics cannot tell. Some of these important facts that statistics ignore and we may wonder why is that in Niger, women have equal pay for equal work, that the country has policies fostering breastfeeding for working mothers. Allowing them to arrive one hour later than other workers and to leave one hour earlier so they may breast-feed their children and therefore, help them to be as healthy as possible. That the country has an extremely good record for giving extensive maternity leaves to mothers. And that it also recognizes Sarraounia Mangou as among its national heroes. So it also recognizes the women who have founded and strengthened our identity as a country that does not allow itself to be crashed. That the country has women in high positions as ministers, diplomats, and in various careers for the previous Nigerien diplomat, Ambassador to Washington was a woman for more than 10 years on the different regimes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Niger was a woman, Aichatou Mindaoudou. Niger has done a lot to foster the education of women to lower the marriage rate of girls. And has ratified most international treaties and policies of non-discrimination on basis of race, gender, religion and so on. These things are never said and then they are the faces of women from Niger that we never see. Faces like Sarraounia Mangou in a reinvention of Niger's refusal to be crushed by French colonization and reinvented by the Nigerien novelist Abdoulaye Mamani and later by the Mauritanian film maker Med Hondo, presenting the life, the epic resistance of this warrior queen who has become somewhat a national hero in Niger as recognized by the Charter of Nations of 1987, when President Seyni Kountche, who is not always remembered for good things, drafted with the help of historians, a charter meant to create national heroes and among them was Sarraounia Mangou along side other resistors of colonization like Sultan Amadou Kouran Daga of Damagaram and Alfa Sedoo. We don't see pictures of women like Amadou who is there, women at the wedding ceremony going about their everyday business. Women like Hassha Rabi lording it over the extended lineage of kin and relatives and family by alliance or these older heads just hanging out and having a chat, living their lives in an ordinary way or new mother like this one, or women having a drink like these two, or again, Sarraounia in Med Hondo's film with the [inaudible] telling her, "I worship you for you are my Lord". Epic reconstructions of the history, therefore, remind us of brilliant pages of African resistance to colonization embodied in heroines like Sarraounia but also in other countries like Queen Paku, Nehanda and N'Zingha. But also before Islamization, Queens like Amina, Tawa in a-- at the time when there was no Niger or Nigeria but a larger area is divided into politics along different lines but with shared identities. So, it is good to remember that Nigerien women are actress in the history. And they are actress with agency that they belong to a lineage of women who for centuries belong to a space where it was ordinary to be queens, queen mothers, Ambassadors, Minister of the Court, Ministers of Women Affairs and so on. And we retained this knowledge of a very recent history less than a hundred years ago to many titles that have come down to us and this-- it is good to remember that the women of yesterday are role models for the women of today and that our role models are not only women who are westernized or women who have a certain aura in the international global scene and who we might do want to imitate. We have many women at home that we would do well even today or even sometimes especially today to imitate. I say this because it is clear that women have lost their power, an agency in the public sphere since Islamization, since Westernization, since Christianization. So, progress for us is often in the other direction. I am a specialist of literature and I would like now to allow the voices of women to express themselves about who they are through the verbal arts. I have noted that they are creative agents with a voice and sensibility and that they express themselves through verbal art forms, oral art forms, what we call oral literature. This includes songs, stories, proverbs, working songs, lullabies, name poems. Niger does not have a tradition of women who are involved in the more highly recognized genre of the [inaudible]. The heavy words, the words of epic and genealogy, this is the capes in Mali for example where the Jeli Moussa and the [inaudible] are women who actually are involved in this genre. The women in Niger are minors of what we call the lesser jobs, more domestic poetry and so on but we will see in a moment what they do this, what they use this to do. I propose-- I to show that in their oral work, in their literary writing, women from the Nigerien Sahel, take a stand, name their world, indulged their imagination, break taboos but they also perpetuate tradition of course while proposing novelty, opening room for maneuver, exercising humor, satire, creativity and social commentary. Many initiatives, and scholarly initiatives have allowed us to access this text and I'd like quickly to recognize some of them, Fatima Mounkaila recently retired from the University Abdou Moumouni has been an important actor in uncovering oral culture, women's culture and she has recently published a wonderful, three volume anthology of women songs and poems from the Sahel. There are people like Abdoulaye Mamani who through his novel show Nigerian women in a different light, film makers like Med Hondo that I've mentioned but also more contemporary artist of the spoken word or rap-- female rap artist like Zed M from Niger. I'd like also to recognize and mention Maria [inaudible] one of the few female filmmakers in the Sahel who is from Niger. And the women writing Africa project of the late 1990s to 2005 of the feminist press that did much to include and diffuse in the global space, the voices of women from Niger. I would also like to mention the song [inaudible] which is a new NGO created in Niger to foster knowledge about Nigeriens women, about Niger and women but also to foster the way they are not only actors with knowledge but also producers of knowledge and culture. So, I'd like to recognize the [inaudible] and also initiative that Fatima Mounkaila and I spearheaded for 6 years at the Abdou Moumouni University, this was a working group, "Quality Litterature, genre et developpement and that added a lot to my work on and my awareness of female culture in Niger. More recently, there is a film project that I am working on with Jean-Marie Teno, a well known Camaroonian filmmaker and our projects goes in the same direction of showing the faces of African women in another light, unveiling them not in the sense of disrespectfully removing their privacy but allowing us to see them as agents, as actors, as women with ideas, knowledge, humor and private and personal lives. These are things that we never see with the statistics that I mentioned earlier. So, I will be presenting three types of text, one is a zamu or a name poem, the other is a small extract from working songs, the third set of text will be contemporary works in French and the last text I will present just before I read it which is the extract from my own personal narrative confronting my mother with a Nigerian woman who I find to be powerful and exemplary in many ways. So, the zamu are praise songs, domestic praise songs by mothers, based on the given name, derivatives or official names of their children they praise the valor and validate the individuality and personhood of their children. These are domestic poetry, but I think that they play the important role of a woman naming her world, naming her child and validating her child as individual, important and so she takes on the naming role that is usually attributed to Adam, here it is Awa, the word that we used for Eve who is in the role of she who names. This poem is called, Hassan. [ Pause ] One moment. [ Pause ] Okay, I will only be able to read an extract from it unfortunately. Hassan is a name-- the name that is usually given to a male twin. So, if there are two boys it will be Hassan and Hussain and if it's a boy and a girl for example it will be Hassan and Hassana or Hassan and Hussaina. It's important to say that because this is a poem by a mother of twins and she does not address both twins but only one of the twins, Hassan stating his individuality and not just a part of a half of a person but a person, an entire person. Hassan the twin, master producer of pure white cassava. For the twin, a skimpy serving of creamy millet is not enough. What he enjoys is a calabash full to the brim with the spoon floating and bouncing on the top. Hassan the twin, when Hassan walks into the village powerfully armed, the daughter exclaims, "He has come to see me." The mother exclaims, "She has come to see me." When Hassan arrives powerfully armed. Hassan does not have to flatter the mother of his beloved. Whether the mother likes it or not, he will marry her daughter. Hassan does not take his wife's name from house to house. He does not throw dirt in her face. He does not say to her, "Come on let's fight." Hassan is not an ant of a man, the ant-man harasses his wife. He harasses her on the sly. Hassan is not a cook-- couscous cocker of a man. Whenever the couscous cocker goes out, a trail of criticism about his wife follows him. Hassan does not say to his wife, "Come on wife, let's fight, if that's what you want, let's fight." A helpful son, a handsome and powerful stallion Hassan does not go to Gurunsi without thinking about his mother. He brings her from afar, gifts of the finest clothing, clothing for grand occasion. Short tunics, layered tunics, barazza [inaudible] to be worn over the Danza Bachi. When Hassan goes courting and leaves, trouble breaks out. The mother says, "It is for me that he came?" The daughter says, "It is for me that he came." They fight with each other over my baby. So, this is a mother's song. It is full of humor but it's also full of pride, full of recognition for the child and the name songs of course, the name poems are based on the name and they work on-- they work out of a mother that exist. And then each mother, when she spontaneously-- this is spontaneous piece by the way, this is not like something that was written or composed like the child could have done something that his mother liked, gone an errand, come back quickly and she starts singing and praising Hassan. And that, this is a spontaneous but very elaborate piece of mother poetry and mother praise. I really like the humor in it, the woman who is saying, you know, my son is so wonderful that every woman likes and young women like him. But even women my age like him. He is just great [laughs]. Work songs like the pounding poems are text that women used to work out room for maneuver in difficult situations when they live in the house of their husband's extended family. This is a difficult situation for the daughter-in-law because for once, the mother-in-law who lived this experience in her time has become the boss. And because she is the boss, she can let somebody else's daughter experience what she experiences. So, this is a case of social reproduction where women in their bid for power sometimes do this on the backs of other women. Now, work songs like pounding songs become spaces of what we call in Niger, lapao indirect. Indirect speech where I pretend to be a singing a song, I am not talking to you, I am not talking about you, I am just singing a song. Now, what's interesting about pounding songs is that pounding millet in a mark-- in a very physical kind of activity and it's such the woman's entire body moving. Her butt, her breast, her arms, her legs and because this work is very difficult, she often offsets the difficulty by singing a song. Sometimes, several women are pounding together and the movement of the mortar is used as a percussion instrument to rhythm the song. Now, these songs are often songs of insult. Insult aimed at the-- targeting the husband's family and especially the husband's mother. In this song that I will read it short, extract from-- the woman in question has given a name to the posterior part of her anatomy, she has called it Sabata and she asked Sabata to do the job of insulting her mother-in-law for her. So, we will have to do this together, because this song has several parts. There's a voice of the bride, there's the voice of the father-in-law and there is a refrain, insult her. So, when I pause, you all have to help me by saying, "Insult her." So let's try that. >> Insult her. >> Okay. If I do-- If I do ins-- what my-- if I lift my finger, then you have to do it three times, okay? So, let's try before we do it. Okay. This is an extract, therefore, from where the bride is speaking to her father-in-law and she's saying, "Kylu's father, I'm not addressing you." >> Insult her. >> I'm talking of Kylu's mother. >> Insult her. >> I'm talking to that old hypocrite. >> Insult her. >> Little bit of millet brand I scrounge from here to there. >> Insult her. >> Has made my arms bigger than those who have shivs galore. >> Insult her. >> "Reisheda," she's speaking to another woman. "Hold my baby Na-i for me." >> Insult her. >> So that I can insult their grandmother, the old devil. So that I can insult her and tear her to bits. >> Insult her, insult her, insult her. >> Now this is the father-in-law. "Kylu's mother, insult her for me." >> Insult her. >> That sheered, shameless bride with a razor blade tongue. >> Insult her, insult her, insult her. >> "Kylu's father, I'm not addressing you." >> Insult her. >> I'm talking to Kylu's mother. >> Insult her. >> The woman who is busy breaking people's marriages but holds on to her own. >> Insult her. >> Now this is the mother-in-law. "Why call me Kylu's mother?" >> Insult her. >> "Go ahead, call me Bevita." >> Insult-- insult her. >> My name is Bevita. >> Insult her. >> She's not supposed to say her mother-in-law's name, you see. You don't say your in-law's name. You don't say your husband's name when you are a proper woman. So the mother-in-law when she says, "Don't call me Kylu's mother," which is the kind of euphemism that we use or if it's that the husband then, you would say, let's say, "Kylu's father," if I'm Kylu's mother. I won't say your name out of respect. So the mother-in-law is saying, "You know, since you are, you know, since you are doing this, why bother about calling me by the respectful euphemism? Go ahead, say my name since you don't respect me." And this is a very-- a great fun piece but it is an important piece because it speaks the way women in these texts that are supposed to be minor, actually go beyond the taboos. Taboos that say, "You should not speak to your mother-in-law," taboos that say, "You should not denounce social order that oppresses you," taboos that say, "You should not talk about your body because in Niger, you do not use words for mentioning anything below your-- or beneath your wrapper." Nigerien women who go to the gynecologist will complain of having problems beneath their wrapper. Gynecologists must figure it out. [Laughs] There's of course contemporary poem in French. I will read two-- a short piece from [foreign language] in this self-published anthology [foreign language] speaks of eros, love, and sings transgression. She is Niger's first female sociologist. She was born in 1938 to a Malian mother and then Nigerien father. She graduated from-- she obtained a PhD in 1970 in Paris and worked until she retired as an international civil servant, specializing in women's rights in Africa, Asia, and Europe. This poem is taken from [foreign language] love songs for the Sultan, and this one is called Taca. It's important to situate Taca in its-- the cultural context because in this poem, [inaudible] conflates the prayer beads, the Muslim prayer beads, we called it the Tasbih in Niger, with the women's interior often erotic wear, the hip beads, when she invites her lover to come and pray, recite the holy verses of love on her hip beads. Taca, a row of Czech or Slovak beads, a row of crystal beads awaiting your prayer, a row of crystal beads for the Sultan, awaiting his recital of the sura of love while his fingers play on my row of crystal beads. Often times, this crystal-- these beads are not crystal beads at all, they're waxed beads and they're imbibed with perfumes. And, they are part of the erotic intimate apparel of women from the Sahel because you do not talk about what is under your wrapper, then you should not talk about erotic apparel or aphrodisiacs or love making and certainly, you should not commit the sacrilege of conflating prayer beads with your hip beads. So this is a very bold poetic statement, provocative poetic statement by Shada [inaudible] especially since she explicitly uses mixed reference to not just prayer but to the Quran when she says, "The Sultan will recite his sura of love." The sura are the verses from the Quran. So this becomes an erotic verse saying, "It also becomes a poem in which a woman from Niger places love on a very high pedestal." [ Noise ] The following poem is-- goes even further in this direction. It is by a young poet of the younger generation, her name is [inaudible] and in this poem she goes not only behind the veil but beneath the wrapper to use the female body in this most intimate spaces as a metaphor for working out, for a woman working out her destiny in the world. This poem is called "The Vagina of Destiny." I would like to read just one stanza from the original french and then the poem is quite short so I will give my English translation of the poem. [ Foreign Language ] The Vagina of Destiny. I pray a suspended path in they vagina of destiny. I harvest the book of indecency. The wind blows through the blank pages, the fragrance of truth decomposes in moist essences. Lassitude weeps the tearful eye, illusions are putrid. The book of honey crumbles in asymmetry of epileptic organs. I unveil myself faceless, invisible. A rhythmic flame dancing the hymn of uttered poems. The interesting thing about this poem is that, while it's doing something new, while it's doing something in the order of transgression. It's also doing something old. It's also doing something that reconnects with our oral tradition and our metaphors for love. For example, when she says in the third stanza, the book of honey crumbles, honey is one of those words that are linked to the sweetness of love in our culture and when the book of honey becomes another way, a more euphemistic way, a more Sahelian way of speaking about the private parts of the body. But she goes right back to what she was doing before when she says that, it's in asymmetry of epileptic organs that the book of honey crumbles. The poem closes on woman as Prometheus when Melie Lelil working through the tunnel of destiny, couched in women's word-- words, says of herself, she is a rhythmic flame dancing the hymn of uttered poems. The final text is an extract from My Memoir. I will ask you to bear with me while I try to give a reasonably good reading of it. I think that this text is an example of the ways in which women from Niger have been able to export their influence into the international global space. Where their everyday lives served as models for other women, Global Africans like myself. In this extract, I present a woman to woman encounter which is imaginary. It is a woman to woman encounter. It's an encounter between Niger and Jamaica. It's an encounter between Tante Rekia and my mother. Tante Rekia is aunt of my best friend Ramatsu and when I was revising my personal narrative, Ramatsu told me about her aunt and the life she had lived and how she had chosen her loves, her marriages, her seasons of childbearing, and her seasons of old age. But with lots of power, decisiveness and a sense of self which is what we call agency, isn't it? And in many ways, my mother was also a very strong woman, she was a wonderful mother. She had a sense of agency but as concerns her life as a woman, she was not at all like Tante Rekia. And when Ramatsu told me the story, I decided to do something with it because I think that my mother would have and many women, many of us would gain a lot from taking a leaf out of Tante Ramatsu's-- Tante Rekia's book. At night, my mother pray, so extract from One Life is Not Enough, a transatlantic personal narrative. At night, my mother prays laying on her back, kneeling on her knees, by day she seize-out ejaculations as Catholics call short invocations of the most High as she tries and tries, standing up in the struggle of the supra. Savior divine lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, angels have mercy, have mercy, have mercy, savior at the cross I stand. Does my mother ever dreamed of a land flowing with milk and honey, of the ambrosia of a people of shepherds, essences of sustenance and sweetness. Where is the sweetness and beauty in my mother's life? One night, I sleep on her knees. Does my mother see a vision of a woman her age with superior laughing eyes, standing above her kneeling form? A woman who walks in beauty and power but who says the real beauty, the real power is inside? Does she hear the woman mock her gently, saying that she, Queeny, my mother has not lived. She was known only two men in her life and even then, not quite for did she really know the first? Does the hanger on who has waited for hours cracking jokes, sniffing the aroma of the stew pot, know the taste of the food if he is not invited to stay for dinner? Who is this woman? Her oval, yellow brown face framed in a veil of transparent, white cotton edged with lace. Who is a woman from-- who is this woman from a land far away? A land which is foreign and not foreign, a land of Africans like herself unlike herself, why does this woman... Why does this woman smile so? Her black eye is brilliant, her braids shining and maintains that she, Queeny, has not lived, has not lived by half. That she may speak of children but not of men or love for what does she know? Who is this liberty-taking woman who has something to do with her daughter, Princess but what precisely? The woman says that they are the same age. She says her name is Rekia says that she, Rekia has lived until she became tired of living, until she lost the taste for men, 9 children and 9 husbands. All 9 children with the first husband. 9 children one by one, no twins, no miscarriages, no stillbirths, all with the same man, do you hear? A great task accomplished, accomplished in 162 moons. After that, Rekia by her own will and through her own knowledge closed her womb. She was done with bearing children and done with her first husband too, 16 years is a long time. After 16 years, the marriage has lost its savor like the trash of [inaudible] sugarcane held in the mouth too long. She spat it out. She had lost the taste for that marriage or rather it had lost its taste. There was no sweetness there. What is the use of spending 16 more years finding out whose fault? She married again. She had lost the taste for a particular man but not for love. Her second husband was sweet as sweet a man you could never imagine. But after a few years, he was no longer sweet, she left him. People gossip, people always gossip. [Foreign language] The mouth is made for speaking. Let it do its work, for good or for evil. Men also made remarks. They came, they courted, they begged, praising her beauty, ignoring the words of their mothers and their womenfolk. She chose another then another, a third marriage, a fourth, a fifth. Sugarcane chewed too long becomes straw in the mouth and she's not a horse. The fifth man was a wonder but he died wonders ever cease. She mourned him for a full year beyond the demands of custom. She became lonely in the cool months of Harmattan and started to develop bad thoughts. Another man came to console her. He was heavy set and serious but divinely elastic in the hips with a way of shuddering in the moment of delight that was tantalizingly communicative. They were man and wife for three years. He wanted children but she was done with childbearing, she had 9 children. And he had children by his former wife. She released him, they remained friends. She married a sixth, then a seventh, then an eighth husband. Time goes by so quickly, the hardest part of the journey is the first step. After a short while, you marvel at how far you have gone. So it is my sister, so it is God's truth. The road of life is long and not long, a day of love lasts a thousand years and a day of love lasts less than a day and pain never ends 'till it's over and after pleasure, there is more pleasure. The seventh husband took her to Abidjan. He worked long days, played cards until late and then became a devotee of the Awka and spent all Sunday worshipping his gods of fire. Had she not had her fill of religious types like her second and fourth husbands who prayed to Allah all night? Murmuring the sacred suras of the Quran beyond knowledge, beyond sleep in the quest of visions and prophecies ordered by their clients? The second wanted to ride her at noon after she'd worked all morning and the sun was high, a bad time for copulation if ever there was one. She left her seventh husband to do his work on the docks of Abidjan by nay-- day and go back to his cards, by night she returned home. Her eighth husband, blessings upon him, took her to Mecca, the doorway to paradise. But soon paradise [inaudible] in the room at night. She prepared herself with special herbs, sat over burned perfumes to fumigate her femininity, pounded spices for his food, spices that make men strong and valiant. She consulted the Boka. His previous wife was working with the spirits to bring their marriage. She let her have him for what is the point of running after one man or hanging on to another? Is not the world full of men from Madawa to Mecca? She married again for the last time. One hot day in April, this man started an argument about the price of provisions. She told him that a beautiful woman does not stay beautiful eating gari and oil alone. Gari is a food brought to Niger in the memorable year of famine, the Girigiri as the Germans name it, and oil the oil that he gave would not even fit to be rubbed into the sole of one feet. Had he looked at her before talking such foolishness in the heat of the day? He too wanted children, what's insinuating that she was eating only to nourish the salanga, the pit latrine. Plowed her body furiously in his obsession to plant children there although he already had three children by his previous marriage. The fool, did he think that making children was like planting yams? He did not know that wise women have always known how to make children and how to prevent them since the world was young. And did they not negotiate their conditions at the beginning? She had not buried one iota in her bargain but he had forgotten perhaps that counted on the fabled inconstancy of woman. Well, she was not to be plowed by nay-- day, by night and not by day in the middle of April. A man who cannot feed his woman and keep his word is no man. Besides, she was 52 and no longer interested. She understood this when her fantasies were those of her dead fifth husband, a wonder of a man. She left to Madawa and went to Niamey to live in her brother's house. Joined with his wife in learning the Quran and Macaranta and rested her case. Now, the recitations of the sura of the Quran light her way in the night. There is a time for every purpose under the heavens says Rekia adding as an after thought, but you're my sister, you do know about the love of children. More in fact that I-- than I do but then, there is a time for everything, a time for passion, a time for peace. We must make our peace with ourselves before the end of the day. So says Rekia before fading into the night, "My mother takes in the session of boasting in silence." She does not answer Rekia. It takes restraint not to give this feisty woman a piece of her mind but she was so tired, too tired to state her claims to share of life experiences, her claim to her own joy and her own pain. She is too tired to take stock, to make an inventory, to name life's seasons as they have rhythm and rhymed in her past. It seems so pointless now to weave a deliberate pattern from the days of preparation, the days of initiation, the days of joy and those of disenchantment. [ Pause ] Life goes on. Yet, one spits out a taste that will not subside. [ Pause ] The challenges before us, this is my conclusion. Niger's statistics present serious challenges before us. I have tried to show I hope convincingly, the statistics do not say the whole reality, that they do not show the faces of women, that they do not tell of their creativity, their agency, their sense of humor, their boldness, their possibilities and that what statistics cannot do or tell in the voices of women themselves their own experiences. We should not deny statistics. What we should do I think is to work to improve the realities that these statistics sketch. We should also, I believe honor our efforts and recognize the role that we have traveled negatively and possibly, and positively. And the how might be by choosing our models and sources of inspiration from among our own mothers, foremothers and ancestors, choosing our role models made at home. We could also face those challenges before us by being models and actors of change or self. And finally, I do believe that the voice and the word are important and we could also finally face the challenge before us by narrating our own reality behind the veil. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. We have about five minutes for any questions you may have of Doctor-- >> Questions or comments? Yes? [ Inaudible Remark ] Well it is-- yeah, it certainly works in the civil service. It certainly works in all cases of formal employment. Outside of formal employment, it's hard to say that talk about equal pay for equal work especially since outside of the civil service, outside of international institutions, businesses, commerces and so on. Then, work is often gender defined so women are doing certain source of work and men are doing certain source of work. So it's not possible like to compare in that case is it? [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Yeah. >> And we probably united with our sister completely and it probably-- >> I understand it's troubling you, but my focus as a literalist scholar was with the power of the voice that is expressed in this poem. I was-- I found it remarkable that a spontaneous piece could be so elaborate, it could be so beautiful. I found it interesting that women not only-- that women name their world and I think my take-on on gender issues is that the world of women is not made only of women, women are mothers of daughters and sons and there should be no prohibition about women talking about their sons as about women talking about their daughters. It happens that this praise poem which is so eloquent is a woman talking about her son. There are other praise poems that are just as eloquent. I thought it was very interesting though that the woman, the mother was able to pick out the individuality of this particular child because this child is a twin. So, the praise poem is about focusing on one individual child and weaving a song of praise based on his name. She could have talked about his brother, his twin brother. >> But you said she was a-- the sister. >> No, no. I was saying that Hassan is the name of a child who has a twin. And if the child was a twin with two girls-- with two boys then it would be like Hassan and Hussein or if he was with a brother and sister twin as it happens in non-identical twins then the girl would have been called Husseina. She didn't speak in this particular praise poem. It's the mother praising her son and praising her son in what I think are beautiful terms. And I think mothers have the right to praise their children of whatever gender. And I also think that mothers of twins have a right to praise one twin and not the other because this is a moment of time in recognizing the specific identity of one child be it male or female. >> Yes, but I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I understood that they are twins. >> No, no, no. >> One boy and one daughter. >> No, no, no. We know nothing about Hassan's other twin because the poem is all about Hassan. >> It is beautiful. >> Thank you. >> But when the mother praised a daughter in the same strength and beauty in a sense would it be the same? >> Oh yes, oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes. Except that women would be praised in other terms. A woman would've been praised for her beauty for example like in these praise poems, women are praised for their beauty, women are praised for their noble bearing, women are praised for their power in the domestic's fair, women are praised for their aristocratic descendants and so on. One of the typical praise poem for women is to say "you are, you are a noble women, the daughter-- you are a daughter of a chief, a mother of a chief, you have been engendered by a chief and you engender chiefs yourself." So women-- the praise songs for women, for Mariana, Pacita, for Amina but this particular praise I like it and I also use it because it was already translated into English and it was also published. So it's a text that is out there. Yes? [ Inaudible Remark ] Well thank you for that remark. I think this whole problem of duality is really important and I think it, it points up a moment in our history that is to my mind linked to patriarchy. When you go back to the past, to cosmologists of the past there were no male or female, no Iraqis. In fact, the gods exist-- existed in couples. They were paired. And this high male singular god, this other that makes us all inferior of others is, is a recent invention. Any way I do thank you for that remark. Yes? >> [Inaudible] any thoughts [inaudible] capital of Niger-- African [inaudible] the capital of Niger? >> Any special thoughts about the capital of Niger? >> Yes you have any thoughts [inaudible] about-- >> What sorts of thoughts would you like? >> I mean impressions of the capital-- >> Of Niamey? Oh the capital of Niger. Oh the capital of Niger is Niamey. Niamey is a pretty special space as capitals go. It is very-- very sparsely populated. Not really, the capital is really spread out. It's an international space. The space of meetings, lots of people from other, places in the region come there. People from Benin, people from Nigeria, the colonial-- period brought, Nigeriens of other regional descents. From Togo, from Benin, elsewhere, it's a very special place. It gives the idea of being a sleepy kind of town. A series of related villages rather than really capital city, life is easy going. Slow, there are few traffic jams, too much traffic to the liking of those of us who like it even slower, the way it used to be but it's not the night, the swinging town like Abidjan and it doesn't have the night life that you would have in Ouagadougou for example. It's very different from Bamako as well. I think to get the special flavor of Niamey, you really ought to come and I do extend a personal invitation. >> Okay, thank you so much for your-- thank you so much for your questions and comments and I think we need to give a round of applause for our speaker. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.