Young Somalian woman and I spent a few hours sharing our stories on a long train trip recently. Nothing like totally open conversation between complete strangers to get your perspective and have a good laugh . Nothing like a long train journey to get beyond the chicken feed that makes up too many of our 2 minute conversations; Thanks Naomi (not real name). We both live right out in the bush and it takes hours to get home from the big smoke.
This week I had the privilege of openly sharing with a young woman who had spent her child hood in war torn Somalia, but at 29 had now lived most of her life in Victoria.
Despite being brought up in a strict Muslim household, she was like most women of her age in Australia ,she had rejected the idea of celebacy and celebrated in words at least , the freedom of singleness. It wascelar though that she wanted children and was downright afraid of the commitment of marriage, having broke relationships off many times.
Like most women of her age and attitude though, I was afraid for her. I was afraid for her because her attitude was not one that clearly built towards the dreams of an independent identity and bringing up children .
Her girlfriends, it turned out , not unexpectedly from their point of view, were having children deliberately without a man by their side( like 33% of women in Australia today) All that freedom didn't look like much progress to me . With all her obvious talent, wit and good sense a good partnership of any kind seemed better than being "Outnumbered"( that scary but true TV series) .
"I don't think you would be saying that IVF is the way to go when you have only that pram in your hand " I said; She laughed. She shared with me the terrible names that young women got these days for being easy and it hurt because I knew it from the men's side . The sexual revolution is a con that only brings both parties down ( "All women are whores and All men are bastards") I knew that for both young men and women who had been taken in by the con there was , without faith , a high risk that this lowered view of each other could keep both the young man and woman of today apart .They have less reason , they think, to get married, so they don't ..
Her younger sister did what daddy wanted and got an arranged marriage. At 14, Naomi wasn't going to have any of that and told her father so - they haven't talked since.
Her aunties, on the other hand, were legally partnering one man and making the most of it , each getting a necklace when the other one did . Hearing the options of marriage in her culture I kind of went a bit quiet for a while- that is - about advocating a high view of marriage . Mind you , by asking, I got her to admit, by reflecting on the good times, that even though being a wife of many might not be much fun , marriages and family of any married kind, wasn't all bad .The trick is to better appreciate how it can really work, not just name it as a "solution" for either side . Infact, the more she talked of these 2 wives , the more we both realised that we and others would enjoy being in that household , most of the time . Sisters and brothers of the same age to play with and the man more or less under control ( her point of course ). Is the real and undeniable appeal of Islam in the West growing because their family rules are better for families and women in particular?
" One woman is definitely enough ,I said " reeling from the revelation about the identical 2 gold necklaces . We both laughed loud enough for most of those in our long carriage to hear us . She was trying to tell me that the women had it bad, but I thought the man didn't get out of it easy either .That's marriage for you - not always rational and not always about freedom, but freedom to be and freedom to give your best . Isn't that the sort of freedom that we all need?
Obviously its easy for either side to see the down side of marriage and for our kids to hesitate about taking any sides.( After talking, I did better see her point about hesitating and breaking off when relationship things started to get serious because according to her its not " clear" why one should "do it " anyway)
I tried to encourage her to see that faith was one thing that can make commitment really work- taking things from just the obvious , risky and scary to the edge of the possibly impossible and then onto... the impossible and truly amazing itself . We'd been talking a lot too about how men and women are different and she about how Somalians saw themselves differently from other neighbours . There were years of invasions and cross breeding with Arabs ( rather than Africans ) and all sorts ( my version ) so, as she said , " they were kind of used to saying yes to whomever thought they were in charge at the time". This political and name dropping side to religion, like in Western culture ( but in a different way) obviously stops many average people taking the radical Jesus and the really radical idea of a just but loving God seriously. Heavy religious name dropping can just seem to add badly to all the mumbo jumbo - especially the pathetic rationalized excuse making and blinkered dismissal of real issues and questions that goes on when religion is only a reason to not think .
Like many young people , she was tending to see her destiny through the eyes of nature and its limits; Genes , hormones and history. We talked and laughed about testosterone and adrenalin and, from my point of view the temptation for girls to see their nature as specifically nurture . Its easy to latch onto one gift or tendency we have and forget the others available and necessary to keep things in balance .
Men want a role in nurture and its not wise or rational to dismiss the natural differences and diverse potential contributions of male and female ; I said to her that I thought it was the silly simple sexist ideas like "Its my job to nurture" that was turning men away from helping and seeing their potential in parenting, across the board . Some silence perhaps .
I moved on to mention that the book on my seat with a picture of a face with her small nose ( yes we shared that- very typically Somalian ) and my big ears on the front cover, was a great book updating our understanding of genetics . I showed her the map of the most likely land bridges that had spread the human genome across the world . I didn't tell her though that she probably had the most variation in her genome because she came from where it all started . Such information can prevent you from being humble - always a good thing in my mind... to remain humble that is; Something in me wants to dominate or control though.
I'll finish the story later ......if you ask me too ,.......gotta go for now . Have a good day
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Yes, I want you to. Thought of writing a book?
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