Gender and Culture in the Bakweri Community
The Bakwerians are found at the foot and the slope
of mount Cameroon. The Bakwerians like any other tribe has a culture or
tradition which to a greater extend stands as a guardian principle to the
gender relationship.
The Bakweri culture of today has been one of a great
evolution. This is to say the Bakweri culture of today is not like that of
yesterday even though it still has some gender discrimination but it is
different of that of yesterday. Before I begin with the with the gender
relationship of the Bakwerians, I will like to talk on the gender diversity
amongst them. The Bakweri man was entitle to wrapper and shirt or sometimes tie
the wrapper round their waist passing it through his body and finally a scarf
round the neck. This goes equally for their male children while a Bakweri woman
puts on the Kaba with a head scarf and their female children follow suit.
The men often sit together and share
ideas like family issues, hunting strategies, cultural issues etc. There did
exist another group of men; those who could sit and talk on cultural issues
(the elders of the land). They belonged to the village council or traditional
council/court. Then, the young ones (boys) would go outside and to play or sit
and talk about common issues affecting them. The women (old and young) had
little or no time to discuss because they were always in the kitchen and at
times they only ask for permission before visiting.
Now talking on a gender relationship
between the Bakwerians in relation to culture, a Bakweri man could hand his
daughter into marriage from the time of birth as soon as the husband of any age could starts paying the bride price
of the girl and when she comes of age, she is then sent to meet her husband. In
this regard, the girl child during her upbringing was always around her mother
doing some house cleaning or some house hold chores. The girl child was not allowed to go to school
because she was seen as a liability or at times as an asset. It is with such
reason that they were been given out for marriage at early age. If a girl was
allowed to school, it would be a temporal education pending on the time when a
suitor will seek her hand in marriage.
Again, girls were never been allowed
to socialize with boys. This could be seen from the fact that some of the girls
were married women while others were been prepared for marriage as such they
were always busy with their household chores. With such reason girls had little
or no right to challenge their elders especially men. This was to train her to
be submissive to her husband.
Women were never allowed to inherit
property from their father if there is a male child in the family. But at
times, girls will inherit property from their father if there happen to be no
male child in the family or could still inherit their fathers’ property if they
had no child but if they have the woman inherits behind her children.
Women, when in their matrimonial
home are never allowed to participate in public affairs as they are only
allowed to focus only in private sphere. When it concern farm work, the woman
does the tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting and transportation.
Women were not allowed to eat certain
meat due to some cultural laws. These laws mostly affected the pregnant women.
Because they believe that if the pregnant women eat Sleeping Deer, she will
face difficulties during delivery. They claim it will be as a result that the
child becomes week and sleeps in her mother’s womb. Women were never allowed to
watch certain traditional dances reason been that the baby may look ugly like
the masquerade.
The Bakwerians never gave a woman
the chance to become a member of the village council and neither could she become
a chief. Women were never allowed to go hunting neither were they allowed to give
ideas to men. If a woman loses her
husband, she was never given the opportunity to remarry out of her late husband
lineage but from her late husband lineage.
The Bakwerians on the other hand
believe that the man is the bread winner of the family as such; he could get
married at any time. This required the boy child to be around his father at all
times as he joins his father to learn masculinity. Thus, the boy child assists
the father after school and at times only during weekends because the boy child
has to school since he belongs to the public sphere.
The boy child had several advantages over the girl
child in the Bakweri land because he inherit properties, open to all cultural
activities, could go out to play when convenient for him, he had the right to
all choice of meat. He can participate in the private sphere if he wishes to
for example, carrying of water and splitting of wood. More over a boy can
become a chief and can be a member of the village council. A boy can marry his
brother or kinsmen wife.
Even though men had the above differences from women
they all suffered the same consequences if they loss either partner for example
if the woman/man loosed the spouse, at the time when there were no mortuaries
the surviving spouse were forced to sleep on dry plantain leaves holding a
knife and concoction on the other hand until the spouse is buried. After burial
he/she then began the mourning process with blue cloth for nine months after
which she is been taken into the bush with her hair been shaved including her
pubic hairs. This process is been carried out with the help of other widows or
widowers for men. After this, he or she then puts on the black sack cloth which
she alone decides the time to be taken off depending on the bond which they had
with their loved ones.
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