Word: tribalized
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Against the mythical concept of the African woman as a spiritual force is the harsh truth that millions of women in Black Africa still endure purely tribal lives of childbearing, drudgery and subjugation. From Dakar to Dar es Salaam, they can be seen, like beasts of burden, carrying enormous loads of food and firewood on their shoulders and heads. But it is also true that in the decade of social upheaval that has come with political independence, African women have begun to leave the villages and the townships to step quite suddenly, with hardly a flicker of their ebon eyes...
...golden mace presented to her chieftaincy by Queen Victoria, and an elaborate bathroom in which everything from bidet to bath salts is pink. She is accompanied on her official rounds by an official elephant-horn player, who blows great blasts to announce her arrival and departure. She conducts her tribal court with dispatch and dignity. At a recent session, she quickly settled the case of a man who was accused of beating his wife because the woman did not want him to marry her sister. As both husband and wife wailed, Madame Honoria briskly dismissed the man with a warning...
...years since independence, African women have discovered that although they have gained the right to vote and to seek positions of leadership, the rigid customs and dictates of their tribal societies have not kept pace with the times. The nomadic Turkana women of East Africa still perfume their bodies over fires of scented wood. The Hausa wives of northern Nigeria still amass huge fortunes in the form of thousands upon thousands of Japanese-made enamel bowls, which they cram into their huts, causing at least one Hausa husband to complain bitterly: "I don't even have enough room...
...customary law to modern society. The tension is over how and why old customs should be obeyed." Many tribes still practice clitoridotomy, or female circumcision, as part of the initiation into adulthood. A few tribes stitch together the labia of girls at puberty and unstitch them only after marriage. Tribal inheritance systems can leave a wife with little or nothing when her husband dies. A bride price ranging from about $40 to as much as $4,000 is still exacted from a prospective bridegroom by the bride's father, but the custom is slowly declining. Tanzania...
...Radio Peking as "the front paw of India's revolution," the Mao-quoting Naxalites pose a fifth-column threat in any new Sino-Indian conflict. They have already staked a violent claim to the allegiance of the docile peasants. In 1967 they masterminded a short-lived but bloody tribal revolt at the foot of the Himalayas near Nepal in the region of Naxalbari-from which the group takes its name. For six weeks bands of peasants armed with guns, spears and knives roamed the countryside, brutally killing "class enemies"-usually wealthy landlords and moneylenders...