Women - Farmers of Africa - Produce Milk, not Spare Ribs

“Women are the backbone of Africa” said world music diva Angélique Kidjo on 20th September 2014 in an interview on the TV channel France 24. Yet many foreigners do not see it! The development agencies are guilty (even today) of neglecting women. Foreign experts favor cash crops grown by men, mostly sold to bring profits to foreign companies. There is a permanent bias in bureaucracies everywhere against the main food farmers of Africa, and in favor of their husbands.

Angélique Kidjo is a world music star – here she is winning a Grammy Award; the singer from Benin in West Africa is also a female icon and a leader of Africa’s magnificent fashions and fabrics.

Angélique Kidjo (who comes from Benin in West Africa) also raised the Jewish legend of Eve and the apple, the Judeo-Christian creation myth, in order to dismiss its interpretation as making women guilty of sin. Malian women have no time for sin: they are too busy being the managers of their households, the farmers and food-providers, the traders and negotiators, the educators of their children, the finance and food organizers and cooks who tell their husbands what to do, and reward them with food if they do it! Guilt, the apple and the serpent have been used for centuries by Jewish, Christian and Muslim men to control and denigrate women. The West African creation myth is different: it puts women in the center of economic production as well as reproduction, and keeps mothers ahead of men (fathers) by showing them to be the heart and soul and backbone of Malian society. Women in the African creation myth are not the product of Adam’s spare rib. Not at all!

The Fulani creation story begins with God The Creator, who is called Guéno in the Fulani language - although these days many Fulani use the Arabic name Allah. Death holds no fear for Africans. Destiny has already determined when we shall die. If it is our day, we shall pass over and our spirit shall be reborn in another member of the clan. Modern science confirms that this is in fact a very accurate description of what happens. The DNA of my son and grandson is virtually indistinguishable from my DNA. When a grandson is born, I am very literally reborn in his DNA. But first of all, the Fulani story of creation reminds us that we are alive thanks to our mothers, and thanks to the milk we drank from their breasts when we were babies.

““IN THE BEGINNING there was the cow,” say the Fulani.”

“Guéno the Eternal created the World from a drop of milk. First Guéno created the cow. Next He created a woman. Finally Guéno created a Fulani man. He placed the woman behind the cow. He placed the Fulani behind the woman. Thus was created the first cowboy. Glory be to Guéno, the Eternal Creator of all things, to Him who created chaos and light. From a drop of milk, He created the universe. From the act of milking a cow, He created speech. That is why children are able to talk, and to tell stories. You must always tell the truth and take care of the cattle who give you milk. You have just heard the truth from my mouth, the story of how Guéno created the World. Allah-o akbar! God is great.”

The Fulani produce milk and meat from vast semi-desert savanna lands. Red cattle are found in Mali.

I like to tell the Fulani cowboy story and emphasize the importance of women when I teach 3rd Graders in Virginian schools, to boost the self-confidence of girls and to offset the “phallocracy” of macho American society with its infamous glass ceilings.

There is something rather horrible about the Jewish story that Eve was created from Adam’s spare rib. This creation myth puts women below the status of men, founding a pattern of discrimination against women and their manipulation by the Judeo-Christian churches – and I include in these the Muslim mosques that follow the same legends and the same prophets, and impose the same male control over women. Americans often forget that Jesus was a Jew who wanted to reform Judaism; and 600 years later Mohamed was a Christian who took Unitarian Christianity to Arabia, in order to reform the corrupt and pagan society that he called derisively jahiliya. Only later did Mohamed have revelations from the Archangel Gabriel (Gibril) that evolved into Mohamedism, or Islam.

This wonderful book describes a modern pilgrimage in the steps of St John Moscos and his companion Sophronius, who wandered through the Christian monasteries of Byzantium at the very moment when the Unitarian Christianity of the merchant-preacher Mohamed was becoming known as ‘Mohamedism’… and before the new religion of Islam, which was originally a sort of 7th century reformed Christianity adapted to-and-by Arabian society, became a reality.

Contemporary travelers in the Levant like John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist who wrote a wonderful 7th century travelogue, considered early Mohamedism to be just one more of many Christian sub-sects.

The legend of “Adam’s spare rib” is a real put-down for Middle Eastern and European women. If you add in the guilt that afflicts women who are blamed for Eve having accepted an apple from the serpent, you realize that Christian women are born into a position of permanent repression by men. No Christian ever blames Adam. We do not ask why Adam accepted the apple. Eve’s greedy, gullible, thoughtless consort showed no better judgment than his wife. And the serpent, was he not also male?

Instead of these Old Testament stories demeaning women in nomadic Jewish tribes, I prefer to dwell upon the importance of Women and Mothers in Malian society. I relish the fact that – when he created the world from His drop of milk - Guéno the Creator (who is called God, or Nga, or Dieu, or Allah in other languages) placed the Woman before the Man. To the 8-year-olds in my Virginian elementary school teaching, I say: “This story shows why Mothers are considered Goddesses in Mali. Malians know that your Mother gives you life. And she gives you life twice over: once when she births you, and a second time when she feeds you as a baby with her milk. Without your Mother’s milk, you would die; but with it, thanks to that milk, you have grown strong and healthy. So now, kids, I want you to promise me this: when you go home tonight, you will hug your mother and say: ‘Mom, I discovered in class today that you are a Goddess.’ Will you do that for me?”

One day, when I had finished entertaining a class of 3rd Graders, preparing them for their SOL exams about Mali, I heard a 9-year-old girl say to her little friend: “So I am going to be a Goddess when I grow up.” Smart girl!

Another time as I waited in line for the cashier in the Kroger supermarket, an unknown woman said to me: “Dr Poulton, I just wanted to thank you. After your visit to her Third Grade class, my daughter came home and told me I was a Goddess and it made me feel great!”