A Story about a Family
By Bih Wancho
Once upon a time there was a woman called Vera. She was a prostitute. She had three girls called Yayo, Mangdeze and Yango. Their mother called for them and was advising them of which of her children had separate fathers. The first daughter was called Yayo and she asked her mother,
"Mama, are my junior sister and I of one father?"
"Yes," said the mother.
"Mama, you are a liar. [Some day] you will send us to our father."
Yayo called her sisters and told them:
"Mama is advising us but she is a prostitute. Let's decide not to stay with Mama anymore. Let's beat Mama and send her out of our grandmother's house, because she has a very bad way of life. If not, we shall see something in this house."
The third daughter said to her sisters:
"Grandmom told me that if Mama doesn't stop prostitution, we should come and sit on top of her grave and sing a song:
Prostitution is not good.
If you do that you will have a bad life."
And their grandmother appears in front of them. Their mother has escaped to go and see her husband, and their grandmother gave them 200 000 CFA to buy food and eat, then disappeared from there. They came and packed their mother?s dresses and burned them.
Their mother has been out of the house for five months, not coming to take care of them. One day a woman was dressed as a boy and discussed with [Mama] to have sex and she accepted to sex. Their mother first removed her dress and the woman who dressed as a boy said
"I am a girl."
And they started fighting and the mother of Yayo had wounds and she ran to meet her children and they drove their mother away and she went to the forest and stayed with a dog in the same house with a dog and slept with the dog. And she was chased to have sex and she told the dog
"We'll have sex."
And the children married and lived happily with eachother. Then their mother died and they did not go to bury the corpse.
Editor's Commentary
Though there is not much that Bih Wancho does well in my class other than disturbing, she has managed to produce a short story, for the occasion of International Women's Day, that not only gives a child's perspective on decision-making and agency amongst women, but shows a broad understanding of the complex struggle between generations, making trenchant criticism of the current adult regime while investing cautious optimism in the younger generation. Also, the story is artistically bold. As with any talented author, Wancho's readers come away from reading with few answers, but mostly questions, dilemmas, and personal paradoxes. Her treatment of prostitution, miscommunication between the genders, and esoteric sexual practices is nothing if it does not instigate and challenge the societal taboos she faces. In fact, it was the very revolutionary character of her work that offended the decencies of various publishers, who have refused to make serious consideration of her work.
Wancho's criticism of the current generation becomes markedly acerbic through her use of symbolism, drawing on the mystical elements of classical Arabic fairy tales. For her, magic symbolizes the possibilities that the world holds for young girls, such possibilities having the foil of quotidian reality. Grandmom, the story's djinn, is a magical, munificent matriarch of the story, represents the contrast between a child's idea of how the world should work and the mess that adults have made of it. While the grandmother provides the children with important advice that helps to shape their views on life, she also provides for them materially, two things that their mother has spectacularly failed to do. The complete absence of middle-aged leadership caused by the flight of Mama and one of her unnamed husbands, and the fragmented family's ability to abide it, is Wancho's way of noting that society's least appreciated members are those who do its important work. The political implications of this episode are beyond the scope of this writing.
