16 Days - Day 5: “Sensibilisation”

While Yamoussoukro chiefs meet in splendid regalia, this woman draws water to do laundry. Photo: Ann Jones There they are, seated in plastic lawn chairs, wrapped in splendid woven cloths of many colors.  Those in the front ranks are crowned in black pillbox hats adorned with brilliant medallions and topped by elephants of finest gold.  The chief in the center, resplendent in robes of royal blue and yellow, wears a long golden chain bearing a big golden crocodile which seems, when the chief is seated, to sleep upon his lap. I am bedazzled.  But Tanou, after politely acknowledging both the chiefs’ invitation and their splendor, takes charge.  She describes the IRC’s work in Cote d’Ivoire, and then she turns to the GBV program and its particular concern for women. The kind of violence against women I’ve been talking about in my postings doesn’t come from thin air.  Using women as a tactic of war, or a piece of the spoils, is only to be expected from men already in the habit of thinking of women as “things.”   So what, Tanou wonders aloud, do the chiefs think about the lives of women?

The mood of this strange photo evokes the vulnerability of women.  National law prescribes strong punishments for rape and other forms of violence against women, but few cases ever reach courts of law.  Instead, chiefs rule.  Typically they find the woman at fault and the attacker blameless. Photo: Kouassi N’Guessan Francoise Women’s lives are very difficult, they say.  Much more difficult than those of men.  Tanou asks, “Why is that?”  They offer philosophical quotations from Houphouet-Boigny, the founding father of the country.  When gently pressed, they come up with “poverty,” a handy, all-purpose explanation in Africa.  Tanou notes that men live in poverty too, yet as the chiefs have observed, their lives are not quite so hard. But women have many children, a big chief says, as if they did so all by themselves. Tanou asks with a disarming smile, “Who decides how many children a woman will have?” The chiefs have to laugh.  One says, “Of course it is men who decide.  But it is women who must educate the children.” “Ah,” Tanou says, “It is good that you recognize the capacity of women to carry out this important task.”

Old chiefs like this one and his younger assistant joined the discussion of women’s “problems”: the myriad forms of violence that are part of women’s daily lives. Photo: Ann Jones In the space of half an hour, she has shifted the chiefs’ talk from political platitudes to what goes on in the bedroom and turned their truisms inside out.  One chief removes his crown and stows it in a plastic bag. But traditional chiefdom is not to be confused with backwardness.  These men want to advance their communities.  Tanou draws them out to name women’s “problems.”  Battering.  Rape.  Forced marriage.  Inadequate health care.  Excision—or what we call in the west FGM: Female Genital Mutilation.  Banned by law for a decade, it is still practiced and still the most taboo topic of all.

After Yamoussoukro chiefs were introduced to the IRC’s GBV program at this meeting, they invited the local IRC GBV team to work in their quartiers. Photo: Ann Jones

Do the chiefs know, Tanou asks, that they can send survivors of all these “problems” to the Social Center for assistance and counseling? Free. The chiefs see that Tanou can be useful.  When she wraps up the discussion an hour later, they’re calling for meetings like this in every neighborhood.  As soon as possible.