Daughters of Africa Arise

When Reverend Awadiya Bulen laughs it is a full body affair.  Her white teeth flair and exude joy against the backdrop of weathered, ebony skin.  While her hair is simply pulled back, her posture does not hesitate to lean in.  Her spoken Arabic is “tamaam” (perfect), her English is quite good, and of course she speaks her mother tongue, Bari.  She can also read both in Arabic and English, a feat not accomplished by many men in her own culture.  She is a member of the second graduating class of the Arabic track at Nile Theological College (NTC) in Khartoum.   She pastors a growing church in Juba and helps with the Women’s Desk of the presbytery.  This last Monday I invited Rev. Awadiya to share with my Contextual Theology class, asking her four questions – What is it like to be a woman in your culture?  How do you see God?  Who is Jesus to you?  What does it mean that Jesus saves?  

Rev. Awadiya shares winsomely with our class!

Before sharing some of Awadiya’s story and response, let me first frame my purpose in inviting her.  As we have been studying Contextual Theology, in these final weeks I have narrowed the focus to help us look at theologies which can help my students craft a contextual and local theology for South Sudan, the subject of our final project.  Thus, we have been looking at theologies “from below,” namely from marginalized and exploited groups in places of conflict and pain.  We have taken time to study Liberation Theology, birthed from the poor and oppressed masses of war torn countries in South America.  Germane to Monday’s gathering, we looked at Africa Women’s Theology, studying a book by the same name by Mercy Amba Oduyoye (Oduyoye:  2001). 

In her book Mercy helps her reader get a fuller picture of what life is like for the African woman.  She describes her context in Africa as one of struggle and injustice.  She describes how women are taken for granted, marginalized, given secondary roles, blamed for what does not go right, forced to implement decisions they did not make, and how they struggle to have their humanity recognized as such (30).  African women are programmed to live for others (e.g. children, family) and they live to please men.  She cites the proverb “There is no woman as beautiful as the obedient one.”  While their world has been shaped by men, women have learned compassion and solidarity.  They are at the center of self-giving on behalf of others; they hurt with those who hurt and rejoice with those who rejoice (30).  When the child is in pain, he or she first runs to the mother.  Betty, one of the women Oduyoye interviews, uses such words as “subjugation,” “powerlessness,” and “subservience” to describe the plight of African women, realities which, from an anthropological and cultural level and even from a message implicitly communicated by Western churches, prevent women from “fully apprehending the truly good news that Jesus Christ’s coming has brought especially for women” (56). 

Rev. Awadiya does not hesitate to echo these macro themes voiced by Oduyoye and to paint them in vivid, living colors.  She described for us how she, like most African women, only eats once all of the men and children have eaten, which usually means that she does not eat (all the food is gone!).  Being the wife of a prominent pastor in Khartoum, their home was always filled with visitors, some of whom would live with them for extended periods of time.  She told us how over the years they probably had fifty people live with them at different times, many from different cultures and tongues.  As the wife and mother, she was obliged to cook and care for everyone staying in their home.  At one point they were hosting four pregnant women, each giving birth in rapid succession as Awadiya looked after them while being pregnant herself; a family member expressed concern that Awadiya would lose her own child!  Awadiya describes working so hard each day that her body would tremble in the night and when her husband suggested she eat, she replied that she was too tired to eat.  

Students listen, react, and respond with thoughtful,
honest questions and comments

Although this description might feel like caricature, it is often the case that African men will sit under the tree most of the day, talking with visitors, while women bear the brunt of all domestic and child rearing activity.  Awadiya even contrasts how Arab women have it better than the Africans, “They work all day but after 4pm they can relax with the family.”   Rev. Awadiya’s husband died in 2014; she remains a widow.  Though she technically “belongs” to the family of her husband, they have done nothing to look after her needs, in fact, two of the brothers of her deceased husband now look to Awadiya to support them, feeding them and conducting household responsibilities on their behalf.  If there is a death in the family, as there recently was, Awadiya is obliged along with all the women of the family to do all the cooking for the “bika” (wake) and mourning and burial period.  Practically speaking, what that recently meant was she had to miss a workshop and she was not able to prepare herself for visiting our class.  Though Rev. Adawadiya has lost her husband, she flashes an amazing grin and says, “Jesus is my husband!”  She says that some women who still have their husbands are not as lucky as she is.    

One of the significant images we looked at during our time together is Jesus as liberator.  A principal hermeneutical key for African Women’s Christology, according to Oduyoye, is the Magnificat, when the humble teenage Mary describes how God lifts up the lowly and brings down the proud (Luke 1: 46 – 55).  To strengthen this point of God lifting up the lowly, we read a poem by Rachel Etrue Tetteh, describing her faith journey –

I heard of the Good News, now ours
Requiring men and women to hear, read and spread
The Gospel of what Jesus had done for humanity…
His ministry included women freed to make a choice
to follow Christ whose love
includes all men and women…
Daughters of Africa Arise (Tetteh 1990a: 229)

Oduyoye surmises that ‘freed to choose’ serves as the principal factor African women refer to when describing an encounter with the Living Lord, Jesus Christ.  “Jesus,” Oduyoye writes, “is the antidote to [women’s] ascribed positions in church and society, the cultural contexts in which they experience the Christ in their lives” (58).  As one of my students commented, “things won’t change overnight, but there is possibility for change.”  Another student wonders, “How can we find compromise between faith and culture?”  In both cases, whether it is slow change or compromise, African cultures will continue to wrestle with this Jesus, the Liberator, the One who came to free all persons and peoples at all times and in all places, including our dear sisters, the subjugated women of Africa. 

Daughters of Africa Arise.