Gender

Even though I am originally from Iran, which is considered as a Muslim country and there is a huge gender difference in everything from politics to the domestic life, I was still quite surprised to see a few things in Uganda that were not so gender sensitive. The interesting thing is that every time I pointed out these gender issues, many Ugandan women looked at me as if I was way too “westernized”.

My first day in Kampala, I had to walk by my self in the city’s busiest section. I was suppose to go with the driver from our office who seemed like a very nice guy. When we parked the car to walk to the central bank for me to exchange my money, it was interesting for me to see that the Driver was walking 10 steps ahead of me and every 100 steps he would look back to see whether I was still behind him or not. Although I had see this before in Iran, but still I found it interesting since it was definitely a cultural practice. While I was trying so hard to keep up with him, I was also very scared because I thought that since I was a white girl, I was probably going to be verbally harassed by all the men who were hanging out on the street shouting for people to buy something from them. This was definitely my assumption. I was quite surprised to see the very few times that I was verbally harassed by men in Kampala. This was definitely against my assumptions.

One of the most fascinating gender differences that I noticed was in the concept of marriage amongst the local Ugandans. When my housemate told me that her father had 4 wives and has have kids with 4 other women beside his wives I was shocked. Iran, which is a patriarchal society doesn’t even have that. It was challenging for me to understand it at fist. But they talked about it as if it was something quite natural. I also came across a few young ladies who were in their mid 20s who were proposed to become the second or third wife of a wealthy man in their neighbourhood. At first I thought that it was normalized. Alice, my housemate, told me that her mom raised 3 children that were brought by her father whose mother she did not know who they were. When I asked Alice how her mother felt about it, she admitted that her mother was always very sad. But she never really had a choice to say anything. I went to their home once, and I must admit that I didn’t get to see much of Alice’s mom since she spent so much time in the kitchen preparing food for us and of course the head of the household who was Alice’s father. I tried to help her in the kitchen so she could perhaps join us for a nice talk; she felt insulted almost and asked me to go back to the living room. Alice later told me that her mother feels like she owns the kitchen and no one should interfere with her business there.

I guess it all comes down to what makes people happy. If I had the life style that Alice’s mom has had, I don’t know how happy I would have been. But seeing her so happy and upbeat reminded me how we are culturally diverse and how we must learn to accept our differences.