Inexhaustible. There are many words to describe the writer Mariètou Mbaye Bileoma (1948, Ndoucoumane, Senegal), better known by her pseudonym Ken Bugul: lucid, funny, provocative, rebellious, approachable, critical, free, modern… Without a doubt, what is most striking is her contagious energy. “This year I am turning 75, but I feel like I am still starting to live!” she affirms before an audience of more than 80 people in the rural town of Gandiol, in the north of Senegal.
Invited by the Senegalese association Hahatay in the framework of the activities of March 8, International Women’s Day, the writer is happy to be able to share time with the youth. “Unfortunately, I belong to a generation of writers, like Boubacar Boris Diop, who are requested more outside than inside the country, and few educational actors invite us to get closer to the new generations,” she laments.
For two days, she shared spaces for reflection on the role of women in society, the potential of the textile sector, and presented her latest book, Le Trio Blue (The blue trio) just published in January of this year by the publisher Presence Africaine and that still does not have a translation into Spanish.
The writer used her great skills as a speaker to debate at length with the different audiences on writing, feminism and other social issues, both local and global, that challenge us. “I think that society is very compartmentalized, we have to talk more with people from different generations. I consider myself very contemporary. It is not up to the youth alone to create the world of tomorrow, it is up to all of us, and it must be the fruit of frank dialogue”, explains Mbaye.
It is not up to the youth alone to create the world of tomorrow, it is up to all of us, and it must be the fruit of a frank dialogue
Ken Bugul
After the screening of the documentary film about his life, Ken Bugul personne n’en veut, of the Swiss director Silvia Voser, Mariètou Mbaye began to speak. His first message was to women: “Do not see yourselves as vulnerable or victims” he urged, inviting them, instead of placing all their hopes for the future in the hands of their husbands, to dream of working and defining their areas of self-interest so as not to depend on no one.
Amid jokes, cultural winks and provocations, the author, who has developed her work in the French language, now chooses Wolof to express her thoughts in a more accessible way. She recognizes the undeniable role that women play in the economy and in caregiving, but she urges them to demand more from men, defining them “as a few more children in the house who have to be taken care of”. He addressed numerous messages to the few who were present, recommending that they reflect on their relationships as a couple (“if life is going well for you, your husbands should show you their pride”), their responsibility in raising children (“if your wife He hasn’t come home yet, aren’t you capable of bathing your children? of making them dinner?”). Silence, shy head nodding and some snorting was the reaction of the male audience, to the cheers and applause of the women, all from a rural environment quite hostile to them, such as this fishing area in the Saint Louis region.
Faced with the inevitable question of whether or not he is a feminist, Ken Bugul not only does not claim the label, but also rejects it: “I am not a feminist, I am African. Here we women have always been jamb –warriors, brave, in the Wolof language–”, he sentences. He comments that he finds funny the questions that he is regularly asked on his trips to Europe or the United States about these “imported concepts that do not adapt to the Senegalese reality.” “We are a thousand times more emancipated than Western women, but they want to victimize us because we don’t recognize ourselves in their languages,” she explains.
She confesses that, being the last daughter of an 85-year-old blind father and a mother who abandoned her in her earliest childhood, “she grew up without gender education.” “I was not aware of my status as a woman until much later. It’s in the book Cendres et Braises (1994) where I investigate my identity, my condition as black and as a woman, until I understand that from where I want to develop myself is from my position as an individual. It’s the people that interest me.”
And he expands on the explanation: “It was the settlers who brought patriarchy to our countries and established a nuclear family model of reference that they have sold us as an egalitarian model, when in reality it promotes the submission of women.”
Ken Bugul’s views on polygamy, while by no means central to his work, have always aroused curiosity ever since the book Riwan or the path of sand recounted her experience as the twenty-eighth wife of a marabout spiritual leader. In Gandiol, she took care to deepen the defense of this matrimonial practice: “Don’t be afraid of polygamy”, she suggested to the audience, “because it is a tool for many women as they do not have to deal exclusively with their husbands and can then develop personally. Of course, do not accept it as an imposition: whoever is not comfortable in that type of marriage, who can not stand it, let him go! ”, She said between applause.
We are a thousand times more emancipated than Western women, but they want to victimize us because we do not recognize ourselves in their languages
Ken Bugul
In the room, a man pointed out to him the possible inconsistency between his rejection of thought imported from the West and his constant desire for freedom, so apparently contrary to the concerns of Senegalese society. In response, the writer referred to the duality in which she has been educated. Born when Senegal was still under French colonial occupation, Mariètou Mbaye grew up in a society that, on the one hand, idolized a Western model of life; on the other, she exercised a tight control over individualities. This duplicity, clearly reflected in the film by the filmmaker Voser (which has subtitles in Spanish) continues to be for many the author’s point of criticism.
However, despite not recognizing herself as a feminist, she confesses that she is particularly interested in women’s rights, and that her male characters have served to value female characters, as occurs in the work Rue Felix-Faure (Editorial Hoebeke, 2005) where a Djibril Diop Mambety hidden behind the character of Djib serves as an excuse to draw attention to four mysterious veiled women.
Poverty and perverse system
In his latest book, Ken Bugul proposes a story with three male characters: one from the West, one from the East and one from Africa, all three victims of the same “perverse system”. “There is always talk of the suffering of women, but little of that of men, which is a lot in this society, which gives them the exclusivity of hope,” he says. “Unlike them, they can’t dance a leumbeul to let off steam”, he joked to the laughter of the public, alluding to a female dance in which the whole body is shaken sexually. “Our young people feel humiliated, they are neurotic,” she says with crushing frankness, masterfully mastering the art of giving one lime and one sand. “The evil of our society is the inconsideration and the obscene relationship that has developed with the material,” she reflects, clarifying that it is not something unique to Senegal, but rather that it is the result of the capitalist system.
The thinker believes that although there is talk of poverty in Africa, “the misery experienced in the West is even worse, because it is a mixture of poverty and loneliness”, and highlights the “extraordinary capacity for resilience” shown by migrants Sub-Saharans arriving in Europe. “Migration is a fundamental right”, she states.
In her new work, the author –although tremendously poetic– also makes a harsh criticism of Senegalese society, which she took the opportunity to delve into. “We are the ones who create our own restrictions. We educate our children following capitalist and Western models, renouncing our traditional practices and the rural way of life, family home and neighborhood help. We see childhood as possession, something totally alien to our tradition,” she comments. “I am often told that today’s Senegalese youth no longer have any role models, that they are devastated. It is not, or at least, it is in our hands that it is not”, he argues, inviting both mothers and fathers to get involved in the education of the little ones, to leave the comfort of television and return to the word, change urban summer camps for vacations in the town, “living with mosquitoes and the inconveniences of the rainy season. Nothing will happen to them!”
The trio of characters in her latest book allows her to examine male friendship and how, in many cases, the migratory experience changes gender roles, forcing men to perform tasks to which they are not accustomed. “Senegalese living in the diaspora cook maafe (traditional recipe consisting of rice with peanut sauce), which is the dish of the emigrants: they use it to strengthen their brotherhood in exile, but unfortunately they do not do it again when they return to the country, since it is not well seen let a man cook.”
writing transforms
When asked about where he gets the inspiration to write from, Ken Bugul delves into the idea of the present: something he hears on the radio, sees on television or on social networks, something that moves him. “He Lately he has conducted writing workshops with young people, from preschool. I invite you to think about current issues, because I believe that youth must be educated to analyze problems and propose alternatives for the future, even if it is through fiction”, he comments. His next workshops will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, at the end of March.
Writing has worked for her like a therapy. In most of her works, many of them autobiographical (the trilogy The crazy baobab (Dance of the Sun), Riwan or the path of sand (Zanzibar) and Cendres et Braisesbut also From l’autre coté du regard or La Folie et la Mort) writing has helped him “solve his individual problems.” “I felt like I was carrying an excess of life that I had to somehow evacuate, and writing helped me do that,” she says. He considers writing as a solitary job that helps those who carry it out, but which can also generate changes in those who access it through reading.
There is always talk of the suffering of women, but little of that of men, which is a lot in this society, which gives them the exclusivity of hope
Ken Bugul
Anyone who knows her knows that the pseudonym she chose, Ken Bugul, literally means “the one nobody wants” in the Wolof language. She adopted it when her publisher forced her to camouflage herself under another name, as a condition for publishing her first novel, The crazy baobab (1983), tremendously controversial due to the issues that this Senegalese woman addressed at that time. “The one that nobody wants, not even death.” It is a nickname that protects, given in Senegal to girls born after two abortions. After the two intense days in which she met more than 150 people (students, school teachers, university teachers, young working women and men, sociologists, journalists) someone decided to rename her: “Ñépp bëgg nañu la” (the one that everyone wants, in Wolof) collecting the impressions of a room dedicated to the messages of the inexhaustible septuagenarian.
Before leaving, a professor asked her about the topics of interest in the “twilight” of her career… The great lady sighed. “Everything published so far were drafts. Now I’m starting to write.”
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