Ethiopia.
The only country on the continent that was not colonized
A place of fields,
Plains of grains,
Expansive yellows blending into sunrises and sunsets.
Ethiopia.
Teeming with Black bodies, masses moving through streets
With mules,
Carts and cars,
Smells of spices and sweat.
Intermingled.
Ethiopia.
Home to Lalibela, a sacred site of 11 rock-hewn churches
The vision of one man, born amidst honey bees,
Who took his hammer and chisel, day after day,
Week after week,
Month after month,
Year after year,
For 23 years, digging out churches from solid masses of stone,
Creating a sweetness of holiness,
A flavor lasting for 900 years.
Ethiopia.
Where Queen of Sheba birthed a nation
Where Emperor Haile Selassie ruled lands and lions
Founding a university at his palace after
Walking the golden fields and
Paying parents to send their children to school
So that minds could be trained, instead of hands for picking grain.
Ethiopia.
Red, yellow, and green
Shining like a 1000 stars
The humming of prayers rising in the early dawn
Welcomed me, like a child, back to her mother’s womb.
Benin.
A place of pythons and palaces.
Slavery and Survival.
Benin.
Millions of motorcycles
Like Motocross races,
Racing down the highway, streets, and by-ways,
Weaving between women with babies on their backs and
Loads on their heads.
Benin.
Villages on stilts
Boats with fishermen and fisherwomen,
Weaving through water,
Powerfully pushing long wooden poles
Moving goods and people between home and the market.
Markets full of food,
Goods and grains,
Colors and cloths.
Rainbows
.
Benin.
Home to a statue of Queen Tassi Hangbe of the Dahomey Dynasty.
Leader of an all-woman army
100 feet high,
Gun in one hand,
Sword in another,
A look of determination and purpose.
Courageous.
Fearless.
Reminding me that women have been
And should be
warriors.
Last month, I took a trip to learn about leadership, kingdoms and queendoms, men and women from Ancient Africa, who led transformational change. Being blessed in so many ways, including receiving an American Council on Education Fellowship to explore leadership, I thought I might explore what lessons I could learn about leadership from an African culturally centered lens, as opposed to a western-male oriented leadership lens. I am not only talking about leadership in the corporate, business, or higher education world, but also leadership in one’s own life, for every leader should start by looking within and becoming the leader of one’s own life. I had the opportunity to visit Benin and Ethiopia, speak to students and faculty and also to a cohort from the Young African Leaders Initiative, started by President Obama.
My visit to Ethiopia and Benin occurred just as the Middle East War was beginning. Yet, I was enveloped in conversations in Ethiopia about its own wars and conflicts between ethnic groups. In some areas of Ethiopia, the government had shut down the internet, wifi, and electricity, supposedly to punish the rebels, yet ultimately suffocating civilians and citizens, just trying to survive.
So many countries are at war: ethnic conflict, often, conflict between people and power. These wars, across the globe, are obscuring headlines about the environment and wildfires in Canada and Hawaii; floods in Libya and Afghanistan; and earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Mass shootings in the United States are headlines for two days, yet the suffering of those impacted is for a lifetime. The current state of the world often makes me ask the question: What am I doing? What should I be doing? What can I learn from the stories of those whose stories are often silenced?
Some stories are written down, but many traditions share their stories through oral history. We learn them from the mouths of those who have been trained through the years. Some stories have to be experienced with one’s own hands and eyes, and legs and feet. Some grounds are meant to be walked upon, barefoot, to feel the still vibrating energies of spirit. Some looks of desperation are meant to be seen eye-to-eye, human to human, soul to soul.
I knew that Ethiopia and Benin had powerful histories of women’s leadership and of African dynasties. As a child of a father from Sierra Leone, Africa has always had a special place in my heart. In fact, Ethiopia was part of my own oral history. My parents often told me this story, like my own origin story. When I was 5 years old, in 1972, I, apparently, was acting grown and sassy, being womanish, outlandish, wilful, and perhaps as some who say, misbehavin’, engaging in behavior counter to the dominant hegemonic and perhaps patriarchal expectations, probably acting the way I should have been acting as a powerful little Black girlchild in the world. However, my way of being in the world, at that moment, enraged my father. Towering over and peering down, he shouted at me, loudly, in a British-tinged Sierra Leonean African accent. He shouted so loud, in my sanctified imagination, that his voice almost shattered my soul: “Who do you think you are?” With tears streaming down my face, I answered: “Queen of Sheba.” Seemingly out of the wild, out of nowhere, I claimed to be the biblical, powerful, beautiful, and wise queen of an ancient African nation. This story, almost lore, was often shared with me by my parents, like a joke, accompanied by hearty, and maybe even haughty, laughter: “How dare a little girl say she was Queen of Sheba?”
Who is Queen of Sheba? “The story of the Queen of Sheba appears in religious texts sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Described in the Bible as simply a Queen of the East, modern scholars believe she came from the Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia, the Kingdom of Saba in Yemen, or both. Their main clue is that she brought bales of incense with her as a gift; frankincense only grows in these two areas. Both countries claim her as theirs. Given that they are separated by only 25 kilometers of water, both could be right. In these tales the Queen of Sheba is a seeker of truth and wisdom and she has heard that King Solomon of Israel is a very wise man. She travels on camel to Jerusalem to meet him and test his knowledge with questions and riddles. With her she brings frankincense, myrrh, gold and precious jewels.”
Ethiopians believe that Queen of Sheba is an Ethiopian queen, Queen Makeba, who met King Solomon in the 10th century BCE. In the Ethiopian story, she conceives a child, Menelik, with King Solomon. When Menelik visits his father, he is given the Arc of the Covenant – that holds the Ten Commandments, and he returns with the Arc to Ethiopia where it remains today. Menelik is considered the first in an unbroken line of Ethiopian kings through Emperor Haile Selassie, whose reign ended in 1974. So, like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Queen of Sheba is revered and respected and throughout Ethiopia, there is art and iconography about Queen of Sheba and her journey and role in Ethiopia. She is also referenced in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian texts: “Sheba, despite the mystery of her origins, presents us with a valid memory of women who managed to carve out high-ranking positions for themselves in worlds dominated by men. Her “hutzpah” in “testing”—that is, challenging—God’s chosen king with riddles is in no way out of character for such a monarch.” https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/queen-of-sheba-bible
In my forthcoming book, Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back her Superpower,
https://www.amazon.com/Blackwildgirl-Writers-Journey-Take-Superpower/dp/1647426324/
(available for pre-order) I explore the repercussions and implications of my assertion that I was Queen of Sheba. I argue that because I knew the secret of my soul and claimed it, spoke it, and owned it, and because the world is never ready for young Black girls, “Blackwildgirls,” who know that they are queens, the world metaphorically dethrones, dismembers, and buries her. Yet because Blackwildgirls can never fully be silenced, their adult selves, Blackwildwomen, undertake treacherous and difficult underground initiation journeys to reclaim and resurrect their crowns and their superpower—the African queen spirit of knowing, sensing, dreaming, and divining. In Blackwildgirl, I share my search to find and reclaim my Blackwildgirl superpower.
The image of Queen Tassi Hangbe in Contonou, Benin represents, for me, an image of Blackwildgirl. “The statue, by a Chinese sculptor, Li Xiangqun, symbolizes the Agoodie or Minon, a term that refers to members of a regional military corps entirely composed of women. Both admired and feared for their bravery, the Agoodie participated in most of the military campaigns the Dahome (or, ‘Danxome’) Kingdom waged against its enemies for nearly 200 years.” https://www.bellanaija.com/2022/08/benin-amazon-statue-dahomey/
Learn more at https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-untold-story-of-queen-hangbe-who-founded-the-legendary-dahomey-amazon-warriors
They were called “Amazon warriors” by the French, and the Benin government adopted the name for the statue as the “Amazon warrior,” but I prefer, like historian Pamela Toler, not to use that reference. Toler, author of the book Women Warriors: An Unexpected History, says: “In addition to it being a decidedly colonial reference, you’re sort of reinforcing the idea that they are exceptions, and that no ordinary woman could be larger than life,” she says. “That’s a very European perspective on these amazing women. … They proved that women are stronger than society thinks they are” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-true-story-of-the-women-warriors-of-dahomey
When I returned from Africa, I went to the National Women Studies Association (NWSA) conference. I’m sharing 10 take-aways/reflections from my visit and the conference.
1. It is time for women warriors.
I have been thinking about conflicts, war against people and wars against the environment. And I have been struck by the overwhelming dominant presence of male voices in all walks of life. Men on the news; men talking about the conflict; men talking about religion; men talking about politics; men talking about education; men in government spaces; men in corporate spaces; men in military spaces; men in education spaces. Several social media posts have been about the next steps in the Middle East war, and this quote caught my attention from “Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.”
“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight or nor flight but the arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressor free.”
I have been asking myself, what is the third way? How can we find a Third Way? And my answer is that women offer an opportunity to get to the Third Way. Talk to women and get more voices of women into conversations. We need the voice of mothers, of women who know what it means to carry babies on their backs, to carry loads on their heads; to nurse babies while working; to withstand the pain of childbirth; to cook; to clean; to work; and to love. Though there are men who carry their weight, it is often an 80-20% or 60-40% or even as one of my friends said, 120% to 0%, even when they are present in the home. I am not male bashing or putting down men and fathers. I am talking about the power and important presence of women and the reality that society wants to and often has put women in a box, in the home, with psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual barriers that have symbolically and literally imprisoned their voices and spirits, and ultimately power and influence. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ powerfully shares about the imprisonment of the images of Mary in her work “Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul.”
It is time for women warriors, women of color warriors, especially. The NWSA conference reaffirmed my thinking about the power of women and the importance of the female spirit in leadership, in the world, in the environment, in society. The opening session panel with my sheroes, Paula Giddings, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, and Kimberle Crenshaw on Black Radical Feminism reaffirmed the necessity of women and women of color in influential spaces.
2. It’s time for Two-Spirit Ways of Thinking and Being.
NWSA is a conference about women, yet several sessions provided an opportunity to think critically and challenge the concept of what is a woman, what is womanhood, what does it mean to be female, how do we understand gender, what does it mean to adopt a non-binary identity. When I reflect on the concept of non-binary, I see this as a discussion about “the third way,” a way that sits in the in-between, defies categorization, recognizes nuances, and understands the importance of distinctions. In Oaxaca’s Istmo De Tehuantepec region, the word “Muxe” reflects the third way or third gender. As the reporter learned in answer to the question: “Which form should I use when I talk to you: feminine or masculine?” Lukas Avendaño responded, in Spanish, inadequate with its gender pronouns: “I prefer you’d just call me sweetheart,” https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender-of-southern-mexico#
Similarly, in some Native American communities, the concept of “two-spirit” has facilitated understanding individuals who carry two-spirits within them, both male and female. These individuals were often seen as “healers, medicine people, and visionaries,” perhaps because they knew the “third way,” being able to see both through the masculine and feminine lens, not just separately, but together and differently.
https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/the-history-of-two-spirit-folks
Moving away from the binary, from polar opposites to continuums, to the middle, is perhaps a way to the Third Way.
3. Structures and systems have to change.
Systems and structures are set up to maintain their hegemonic ideologies and ways of existing. They are set up in binary structures of polarization. They are systems of exclusions, haves and have nots. What does a system of inclusion look like? Most of society has been created and socialized for women to be subservient. In Ethiopia, I was told I had to wear a scarf to cover my head because I was a woman, but men were not required to cover their heads. In fact, men were expected to remove caps or hats or head coverings. If we are engaging in reverence, should not the head of men be covered? That is just one example. But there are numerous examples of systems and structures, from political to education to financial that are structured to reinforce oppression.
The Third Way requires different structures, systems, and beliefs. As is evident from the failed effort to change the constitution in Australia to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people through the creation of an Indigenous advisory body, the “Voice to Parliament,” it is often impossible to use a system and structure of oppression to implement a system and structure of equity, as the well-used quote by Audre Lorde: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” This is the provocative admonishment that Black lesbian feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde (1979/1984a) delivered to a feminist conference in 1979.
4. Leadership skills matter.
Leaders must have an intertwined set of skills that facilitate transformational change, including the ability to articulate and implement a vision. King Lalibela received a vision/message from Jesus after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to build a second Jerusalem in Lalibela. There was a vision, and visions often emerge from a receptive spirit, a open spirit, a spirit able to listen. https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-untold-story-of-the-ethiopian-king-who-built-the-incredible-rock-hewn-churches-in-lalibela; https://epicworldhistory.blogspot.com/2013/07/lalibela-ethiopian-king.html
After the vision, there has to be execution. King Lalibela built 11 churches and tunnels over 23 years, with a chisel and hammer, only, carving into rock, the vision that he was given. A leader must have both the ability to create and articulate a vision, but also must be able to execute. Many people can dream dreams: big, fascinating, and interesting dreams. Very few can figure out the steps to make the dream a reality. The ability to think through the steps and sub-steps, the process, and then work with others to implement the dream is a challenging but important skill.
5. Values matter.
Implementing a vision, accomplishing challenging assignments in life requires a particular set of values and character. It requires persistence, dedication, dogged relentlessness, tenacity, the ability to withstand opposition, and hard daily work. I’m sure that people stood and stared, challenged, disparaged, and discouraged King Lalibela, yet he persisted. And 900 years later, we are still encouraged by his work. He reminds me of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem my grandmother wrote to me: “The heights that great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept were toiling upwards through the night.” Dogged determination, day after day, hour, after hour, day after day, night after night. How can this be possible?
6. Time Management is essential.
How do we balance our commitment to a cause with the limited time with have in life, with our commitment to our personal health, our friends, our family, and fun? This issue of time is monumental. All we have are hours. Hours a day, days a week, weeks a month, months a year. How do we spend them, especially while we are doggedly and determinedly pursuing goals and visions? What do we have blinders towards? What is getting ignored and sacrificed? It cannot and should not be ourselves. We must take care of ourselves. See my recent LinkedIn Article on “Simon Says: Take 2 Giant Steps Backwards.”
7. Role Models matter.
It is so meaningful to see what is possible. Seeing the images of queens, Queen of Sheba
and Queen Hangbe, as leaders, not just wives of kings was powerful. Seeing street murals with beautiful images of African women and girls was amazing.
In chess, the queen is powerful. She can move all over the board! I feel that men know the power of women and have hidden the histories and stories of women. Without seeing women in leadership, it is challenging for young girls, young women, to believe that they can not only be in spaces that are dominated by men, but be leaders and voices of authority and wisdom in those spaces. There are always those who have to be the first. Sadly, these firsts are not always followed by seconds and thirds.
8. Own your Superpower.
“Blackwildgirl, A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower” explores not only the concept of a superpower, but how we find it, nurture it, protect it and use it. It includes a companion journal, “Blackwildgirl: Companion Journal” Finding Your Superpower.
http://www.menahpratt.com/blackwildgirl
I believe that writing helps us learn about ourselves. I have journaled for 45 years, and my writing reveals wisdom to me from within me. It reveals my own knowledge within. For women, especially, who have been socialized into silence, writing and journaling is a personal form of empowerment and defiance of norms, because it is our voice. We can be unrestrained. We can curse people and society. We can use “forbidden words.” It is a wonderful place and space to be powerful in private to prepare to be powerful in public.
9. Be full of hope and optimism.
Most people do not want to be around a person who is pessimistic and morose. Certainly, people do not want to follow a leader who is not hopeful. I am not expecting a Pollyanna approach to life, but I think it is important to believe that goals and visions are obtainable, even if difficult and challenging. It is important to inspire oneself and others to pursue goals and visions with hope and optimism. Like power, hope and optimism are important energies that can be channeled to make a difference. It is a vibrational force that can move mountains, even and especially our own internal ones. And I believe those energies will draw angels to our side to help us. The guides in Ethiopia told us that King Lalibela was assisted by angels. We all need to believe in angels.
10. Be Bold, Courageous, and Believe in Yourself.
Marie Curie, the amazing woman physicist said: “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” Marie Curie, who was a wife and mother of two girls, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/biographical/. I believe we have to bold and courageous. Society has not socialized women to be bold and courageous, and to believe in ourselves. Yet, in the Summer of #BlackGirlMagic,
https://menahpratt.com/a-summer-of-blackgirlmagic/
I share examples of Black girls who the world tried to discouraged, yet they persisted, in spite of, nevertheless. Let’s be warriors, for ourselves and for others. As Marie Curie said:
“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”
“Those to whom we think we can be most useful” is an interesting phrase. As I thought about it, I am reminded of one particular boy in Lalibela. As we were going to visit an ancient monastery on an almost intractable rocky path that could barely be called a road, the SUV/van struggled over rocks and potholes up a steep mountain. At the base of the mountain, a group of about 6 children approached our slow moving vehicle, begging for money, with looks of desperation, as if our vehicle was the only source for their survival. We may have been. Tourism has largely ceased due to the conflict and resources are slim.
We did not oblige, with difficulty. It is impossible to determine when and how much and to whom to give, knowing that there isn’t enough for everyone. Some of the children stopped after the first rejection. Our vehicle continued to slowly and tediously climb up the mountain. A few children continued to run after our vehicle, pleading for pencils for school. We obliged with a few that we had. Some of these children stayed behind with their pencils.
Our vehicle continued the steep climb, weaving around roadblocks, rocks, and potholes. One little lad, continued to appear, climbing, running, waving, asking, wanting more, his pencil that we had given him in his hand, yet wanting more. We shook our heads, signaling we were done. We thought, like the others, he would stop, settle for what he had.
Our vehicle continued up the steep mountain, at least for 10 more minutes, with no sign of the young lad. We eventually reached the pinnacle of the mountain and parked our vehicle. Then we began a steep, tenuous, arduous, and exhausting climb to the monastery. After about 15 minutes, we reached the summit. Who do we see? The little lad. He somehow, had persisted, with dogged determination, clarity of vision, ability to execute, full of hope, optimism, boldly and courageously, with belief in himself. He smiled at us.
And we, sensing perhaps “our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful,” generously rewarded his effort. He is my Lalibela gift, a tangible example of not giving up, pushing for the summit, and being a superpower!
As I learned in Benin at the Temple of the Python as they wrapped a python around my neck, most of our fears are imagined and not real. Now is the time for women warriors!
