Imagine a home where one man has several wives. You’d be mistaken to think that the man is the “head” of the household if this home was among the Ekoi/Ejagham. Historically, the head of the household is the chief wife among the Ekoi, she called the shots and encouraged her husband to marry more women…
Back to Hausaland and fascinating things I learned reading “Baba of Karo”. We’ve covered marriage, divorce, and cheating spouses, now it’s time to talk about sex. Disclaimer though, tsarance kind of isn’t sex and tbvh, I found the institution slightly disturbing when it hit me how young the girls who participated in it were. In…
Moving away from “Baba of Karo” and Hausaland, last month I read “In the Shadow of the Bush” by P. Amaury Talbot. He was District Commissioner in colonial Nigeria and wrote anthropological texts on people of the South-South region. His work is extensive and covers not just culture and society, but jujus, witchcraft, flora and…
When people around me are going on about how divorce is such a problem in “our generation” and modern times, I’m quick to object. 🗣🗣🗣 Divorce has always happened! Basically, wherever women had the right to divorce, they took it. In the region that is now Nigeria, it was easier for women of certain ethnic…
One of the reasons I started writing about history on this blog is this; I wanted to really show young Nigerians that the ancestors were more or less the same as we are today. Nothing is new under the sun, and stories like this one from “Baba of Karo” really illustrate this point, read more…
Friends can make or break you and one of the major themes in “Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa” is just how important bonds between women are. Baba gives us a glimpse into the complex social constructs that went into these bond friendships, there’s jealousy and betrayal, but there’s also support. Kawaye…
Within the first chapters of reading Baba’s life story, it becomes clear just how important the exchange of gifts was (and probably still is) to the institution of marriage among her people. Now, we know that across several communities in the African continent, part of the marriage involves the groom paying a certain amount to…
I’m back again after neglecting this blog for a while. The thing is my process of updating requires a lot of time. I read books, take notes (by hand), type them up on my laptop before I start writing articles. Day jobs and trying to make money get in the way of this greatness…but I…
‘Who was…?’ a series that explores the African women who pop up in history yet remain mysterious. I think it was from the ladies of Old Oyo post that I started remarking on the powerful women in West African history. It should come as no surprise that in the Hausa city-states, women also occupied positions…
In the days past, in parts of “Western Sudan”, a female slave was worth two male slaves. In the slave markets of Kano, the worth of a female slave was measured by her breasts. Girls with developing breasts could be sold for 100,000 cowries. Women with firm, fully developed breasts cost 80,000 cowries. If their…