The Woman with the Artistic Brush

Life History of Yoruba Batik Nike Olaniyi Davies

Kim Marie Vaz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317453918
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Nike Davies is one of the few African women known internationally in contemporary art circles. The Woman with the Artistic Brush traces her life history and illustrates the strategies developed by women to mitigate male rule. Presenting a critique of the woman's place in contemporary Yoruba society from the perspective of a woman who lived it, this book covers Nike's life from the time of her mother's death when Nike was six to the culmination of her dream in the creation, against severe societal odds, of a center for arts and culture that has over 120 members. Along the way, The Woman with the Artistic Brush details how Nike ran away from home and joined a traveling theater group after her father tried to arrange her marriage, subsequently married and joined in the polygynous household of a noted artist from the popular Osogbo school, and finally broke clear of that situation after suffering sixteen years of domestic violence. The Woman with the Artistic Brush is another superb contribution to the Foremother Legacies series.

1

_______________________

“Come and Buy Leaves!”

My mother, Mary Jogolẹ, was a strong and hard-working woman. She was a weaver, with her mother, and made gari, a favorite food in Nigeria.¹ She embroidered pillowcases and tablecloths. She always said, “I want you to have good clothes. I want to work hard even if I don’t have more than two of you. I want to make sure that you are well cared for.”

The day she died, she just lay down, saying she had a headache. Ehiring the night family and neighbors called me and said, “Come and look at your mother.” I looked and was surprised. I didn’t know someone could just die like that. It was very painful. I didn’t know what to do. I just cried. When the mourners came to the house they all cried. That is our people’s custom; they just keep you crying for a good five days.

When my mother died I didn’t know what killed her. She just went to sleep and never woke up again. In my village there was no hospital. The villagers believed that an enemy killed my mother. In my society, when we did not know what caused a person’s death we suspected that the person had an enemy. We believed this because there was no good medical care. But as I grew up I learned that enemies couldn’t kill a person unless they poisoned you or used something to spoil your blood.

I went to stay with my grandmother, who was called Ọranuiyawo. She was the second to the last wife of her husband. She was hardworking too. During my year with her, she always petted me and made me feel good. She cooked all my meals and made sure I had clothes on my back, but she was in a lot of pain; she kept saying that all the children from her late husband were dying—one every year. Ọranuiyawo was one of fourteen wives. Her husband had been the king of the town and was entitled to many wives. He kept marrying more, trying to have a son. Only his last wife had a boy. After the death of their husband, most of the wives went back to their parents’ house. When I went to live there, just four or five wives were living in the late king’s house. My grandmother was not happy at all. I think she died because she worried a lot about my mother’s death. She was very healthy, but she cried constantly. I stayed with my grandmother, but I visited my father. I did not live with my grandmother permanently as I was supposed to because my father’s house and grandmother’s house were close by.

My grandmother died one year after my mother, and my grandmother’s sister, the senior member of the family, took care of me. On the day of Ọranuiyawo’s death, the women relatives made me a big meal. I did not understand. I kept asking for my grandmother. They told me that she had just passed away. I asked how she could pass away just like that. My grandmother’s sister consoled me, saying not to worry, she was my mother now and she would take care of me the way my grandmother had. But still, I couldn’t feel really comfortable with her as I had with my grandmother. They buried my grandmother in the palace. I remember that while some were digging the grave, others were dressing her up.² They dressed her in gold chains and nice clothes. She was placed where everybody could see her. The good cloth that she had never even worn was buried with her. I thought that they could have given some of it to me. I did not have any clothes to cover myself, and the ants were just going to eat it anyway.³ In Yoruba society, the family waits before dividing the deceased’s property. By the time they divided my mother’s and grandmother’s property, I was left with only one wrapper. From this point on I began to suffer.

My father, Nicholas Ojo, did not want to remarry, and many people thought this odd. He had had only one wife in all his life. One woman thought that maybe he was impotent. Others accused him of not having enough money for the bride-price. Still others said that no woman would marry him because he was too wicked. In fact, he is a bit hard on women.

My father used to work for the king, and the king rewarded him by giving him my mother. The king could have given him either land or money for a bride—just one, but not both. My father already had land. He had planted cocoa and coffee, but it takes a while (sometimes more than ten years) for these crops to yield a harvest. He was making a little money from his farm, but the crops brought in very little. My mother did not want to marry a farmer. Her father had to force her to marry him. She was not happy, and my father always referred to the fact that there was not much love between them.

To bring in extra money, my father made marriage baskets. It took him five days to make one. He used the money to pay his taxes. Taxes were high, and some men who could not pay theirs left town and stayed at their farms. If they had come back to town they would have been arrested. Things were better when my mother was alive because she sold her weaving. Any little money she made was used to prepare soup to make sure we were fed. We got only one outfit a year when my mother was alive.⁴ When she died, I did not get even that.

I was seven years old when my grandmother died. My father still had not remarried, so I went to live with my great-grandmother, Ibitọla, in Jos. My great-grandmother was very healthy. She ate a lot of vegetables and worked on the farm.⁵ When she was a young woman she left her husband to start a new life, so she moved to Jos from Ogidi. She had not wanted to marry the man in the first place. In her time, when women married, they were told by their parents, simply, “Tomorrow you are going to your husband’s house.” Ibitọla protested. She told her parents that she would never go to bed with the man because he already had three or four wives. Her family arranged to have her taken to the man’s house by force. Her husband’s friends helped him to rape her. They held her legs and body tight while he entered her. She left her husband then and went back to her father’s house, but everyone told her she had to marry again. She decided that she would never agree to marry someone in her village, so she left three months later. For a time, she lived with a man from Ogbomọṣọ. After some years, she still had not had a baby, so she went to live with another man, from Ogidi. My grandmother was born from that relationship. Ibitọla and the man from Ogidi stopped getting along, however, because the man brought another wife into the house. My great-grandmother went back to the man from Ogbomọṣọ, who eventually got another wife when my great-grandmother started getting old.

When a Yoruba woman begins menopause, her husband thinks she cannot go to bed with him anymore, and he uses this as an excuse to take in other wives.⁶ The woman, however, still wants to be close to her husband. He tells her, though, that if she had intercourse with him, she would become ill. His semen would stay in her belly because her period would not be there to expel it. This is a man’s idea. Men think that a young woman will make them young again, and women just accept it.

My great-grandmother came to Ogidi when my grandmother died. The women relatives prepared a lot of food for her, adding meat and fish to the soups. I ate with her and was so happy. I said to myself, “I am going to follow this older woman anywhere she goes.” She said, “You are my great-granddaughter and I am going to take you to Hausaland.” At that time I had never left the village. The day she told me I was going, I stayed up all night packing. I really had nothing to pack except a little basket my father had made for me. With the wrapper I got from the division of my mother’s property Ibitọla made me a dress; that was all I had. I had no shoes; I always walked barefoot. Ibitọla also made me underpants from a wrapper and used rope to tie them on me.

I was on top of the world when I got to my great-grandmother’s compound in Jos. In my village there was no electricity, but there was in Jos, not only electricity but so many vehicles and people dressed in different ways.

I was so excited, and I had many new experiences in Jos. My great-grandmother cooked for her husband twice a week. She boiled meat and then gave me some of the bone to chew. Her husband said, “You are teaching this girl to steal. If you give her meat now, and later on you don’t give her meat, she will steal it from the pot.”⁷ My great-grandmother said, “I have to look after her. She needs [the meat] to make her teeth strong.”

The local children taught me to speak Hausa, and the local people loved my great-grandmother. Her neighbors prepared food for me just because I was her great-granddaughter. Ibitọla was a weaver, and she made me a loom out of a calabash to teach me. It took me a while to learn, but after two months I was allowed to work on the regular loom.

For extra money, my great-grandmother collected leaves and put them on a tray; I would sell them. I went around the village with the older people, saying, “Come and buy leaves!” Most of the people who bought the leaves were those selling cooked food.⁸ All cooked food was wrapped in leaves because there was no plastic.⁹ The trays we carried on our head were made from wood. They were very heavy. My tray’s weight was three kilograms. After a while, the hair in the middle of my head stopped growing, and I became bald. The place where the tray rested was like a big callus. It looked just like the arm of those who play the talking drum—right above the player’s wrist there is a thick black line. No blood goes there, but the callus goes away when they stop playing the drum.

Children were ashamed to have to sell things to the public.¹⁰ It meant that their mothers could not afford to care for them. When someone wanted to buy what you were selling they called you over. They might begin to abuse you and insult you. They might send you away because they felt your product was too expensive. If you got upset easily or lost your temper quickly, you would not be successful, because people always tried to reduce your prices. Some sellers elevated their prices so the buyer had to wrangle with them until they agreed on the price. I was always ashamed to sell things to the public, but I had no choice. People would say, “Come, leaf seller.” A whole load of leaves would bring 5 kobo. If the leaves were small the buyers would hold one in their hand, look at it, and then send you away without buying. I always made sure my leaves were large enough to be satisfactory, and I did not inflate my prices. That is how I avoided the abuse. I never liked to argue too much, and I was always ashamed of this work. Even so, I have sold things all my life. When I finally went to live with my father, he would tell me to sell the animals that he had killed on his hunting trips and bring him the money.

My great-grandmother called me aside one day when I was eight years old. She said, “Your mother died at a young age and I don’t know whether she had you circumcised.” She looked between my legs and gasped. “This is dangerous,” she said. “You have not been cut. We have to do it.” She called the people who made Yoruba tribal marks in Jos.¹¹ They made me undress and lie down flat on my back. The man who performed the circumcision was about sixty-five years old. He looked at my clitoris and commented that some are long and some are short, “but we still have to cut them.” He pulled my clitoris and cut the tip off. It started bleeding. He used his fingernail to tear the skin. Then he used a razor to cut the remaining part around the edge.¹² I was screaming, and he scolded me saying that little babies don’t even cry. Imagine watching somebody cut your body and having them say, “Don’t cry.”¹³ He said the wounds would heal in five days, but that was not true. Every morning after that, I sat in warm water. My great-grandmother applied charcoal and other medicines to the wounds. She poured palm oil on cotton and wiped it over the cuts. It took between one and two months to heal. Every time I urinated I felt so much pain. I use to hold my urine for an entire day at a time.

Most girls were circumcised when they were about to marry or when they were about two months away from giving birth for the first time. The theory behind this was that the wound would heal together with the vagina after birth. The pain from birth and the pain from the circumcision would go together. If there were many girls to be circumcised, they were put in a house together and circumcised at the same time.¹⁴ I was circumcised early because my great-grandmother said she did not know whether or not she would be dead before I grew up and was about to marry.¹⁵ She wanted to protect my future. If a woman was not circumcised, it was believed that no man would marry her.¹⁶ Also, my great-grandmother did not want me to have bad luck when I had my first child. If the head of the baby touched the tip of the clitoris, the baby would die. We so much believed this.¹⁷

After some time, my great-grandmother and I traveled from Jos to Ajowa, where my father’s brother lived, to attend my father’s mother’s funeral. The funeral ceremony of my father’s mother was a big affair. My father’s mother belonged to the group that worshiped Imalẹ—a female earth-spirit in Ogidi’s traditional religion.¹⁸ We buried my paternal grandmother on the third day after she died. Some time after the burial, we held a wake. On that day, the people in the village carried a coffin throughout the village, crying out, “Now is the time for you people to see she has children.” Her children and their whole families had to come out of their houses. The villagers danced and introduced each of her children. They said, “This is grandchild number so-and-so.” The purpose of this tradition was to show that after death there was still something to celebrate. The people said, “She did not die without having children. Come and see her children.” The group that worshiped Imalẹ believed that anybody who died who had been involved in the group’s rituals should have these traditions carried out.

During the celebration my father gave me 10 kobo. It was so much money; I didn’t know what to do with it. I bought eight sugar cubes for 1 kobo. I gave the sugar to my friends and told them I was also celebrating my grandmother’s death. My father’s brother bought cloth and gave each child two yards. All the children had to be in uniform. The adults took out a carved wooden staff and danced around it on behalf of the deceased. We sang, “Our mother died. She is gone forever and she will never come back again.”

Her contemporaries performed the traditional dances. A group of women gathered together and wore ọjas on each of their wrappers. They did not wear headwraps; instead they wore their hair loose. The members of the secret societies performed their own dances. Then the masquerade began.* The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of my father’s mother painted their bodies red with osun,† which comes from a tree and is used to make people’s skin light. It does not bleach the skin, though; it has no soda in it. All the children who had not reached the age of marriage were completely naked. We put on lots of beads. On regular days, girls who were grown up covered their breasts, but on the day of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• A Recitation of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba
• Note on Orthography
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Map of Nigeria and the Surrounding Area
• Detailed Map of Nigeria
• 1. “Come and Buy Leaves!”
• 2. No Man Will Pay Bride-Price for Me
• 3. I Went to Learn about Life
• 4. The King of the Poor People
• 5. Iya (Mama) Labayọ
• 6. Co-Wife: My Friend and My Enemy
• 7. I Will Not Mention My Enemy’s Name
• 8. Strong Women
• 9. The Woman with the Artistic Brush
• Appendix: Muniratu Temilade Bello
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index