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…
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…