Harmful widowhood practices in the name of culture
I have a personal piece for you maybe just after this post. I want to be able to connect to everyone who reads through my blog. That opens up for honest conversations. That is what I want to see. Watch out!
Culture is undoubtedly defined as the unique differences of a particular community. It is the way of life of a group of people. It is the basic guideline for their existence.
Culture is usually transmitted through either documentation or oral tradition by the same community. The latter has being discovered to be a more effective method when deployed.
By the way, widowhood is a great tragedy that befalls a married person as a result of the death of the spouse.
Widowhood practices are observed by almost all the ethnic groups in Nigeria. The culture of widowhood has being since time immemorial and it is equally transmitted from generation to generation so part of culture.
Due to the certain cultural imbalances in this widowhood practices, the tradition is much more harder on widows.
Widowhood involves different degrees of hardship, deprivation, emotional instability, socio and psychological trauma. I'm going to use my most familiar region as a case study.
In the Southwestern part of Nigeria, the ordeal of a widow begins just as soon as the death of the husband has been announced, its starts with the in-laws immediately requesting for a list of the man's property and bank accounts.
Thereafter the widow is made to observe series of rites and perform rituals to mourn the death of her husband.
As a part of the ritual include seven days confinement in a particular room, though people would have access to her, she will put on black or dark cloths and in most cases, she'll have her hairs shaved off.
The widow is not allowed to go out, take her bath or change her clothes, she is to sit on bare floor or in the best scenario a mat, only few influential widows are being provided with better conditions depending on the kind of relationship existing between the widow and her in-laws.
The duration of wearing dark clothes ranges from three months to one year, depending on some cogent factors such as the culture, religion and family's position on the matter.
However, there are some unarguable factors that influence these inhuman widowhood practices in every part of the country which include poverty, influence of male-dominance, illiteracy, poor socio-economic status of women. 1
The widows of Nigeria have undergone untold hardship and maltreatment in the name of customs and traditions. These customs and traditions have long lasted despite the provisions of the Nigerian basic and organic law.
The inhuman tradition of which at the death of a man his wife is made to drink the water washed off his corpse to declare her innocence; makes her sleep with another man against her wish in the name of cleansing etc is degrading and makes the woman vulnerable.
Such a tradition is not only archaic, anachronistic and obnoxious, it is also wicked, callous and barbaric to say the least. 2
For widows to be liberated, educating and awareness programmes should be given to sensitize them. It is a challenge to the society, the government, parents, women leaders, religious and opinion leader to sensitize widows and the generality of women about the negative impacts of widowhood. 3
Help our widows.
Emerge!
I think they should work to built a better society.
I've heard some horrible tales on this practices. Well, with literacy and civilization, these problems are becoming less rampant.