The powerful myth of women’s power

One of my favorite readings from graduate school has been Donna Haraway’s 1991 essay Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Modern advancements in technology, she argues, further the justification for a blurring of boundary between woman and man, nature and technology, science fiction and social reality. We live in a postmodern world where identity, in its singular form, no longer productively serves society. The traditional feminist position, in particular as it relates to nature, envisions women as life givers and therefore denies multiplicities of identity. We require a deconstruction of feminism, in particular of the myth of binaries, in order to move towards a cyborg theory where boundaries no longer exist. Haraway, like myself, “would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (p. 181).

In my time in the most rural parts of Cameroon and Botswana, I’ve seen how gender myth is recreated through wildlife interactions. Western lowland gorillas of central Africa thrive in areas where biodiversity has been bolstered by the traditional itinerant agricultural practices of the Bantu, Baka, and Bagyeli tribes. Gorilla thrive on secondary forest and make nests in returning forest where they can still bend growing branches and eat new growth. People native to the area believe that women are able to protect themselves from the threat of an attacking gorilla by disrobing in order to show their breasts. Here in the Eastern Panhandle of the Okavango where elephant density is increasing at unprecedented rates, people believe that women who are menstruating, nursing, or pregnant are more likely to be attacked when confronted by elephants.

Underlying both of these myths is the power inherent to women’s bodies, and this power may bleed into other aspects of society. In Cameroon, for example, women are often considered provocateurs even when they vehemently oppose sexual advances and men are especially at risk to falling for the sexual “seduction” of women with chest or chin hair. The mystical processes that lead to women’s menstruation, the development of breasts, the life-giving power of pregnancy and nursing, are at once animalistic and other worldly. It is only natural that untamed and untamable wildlife react to women in unique ways that reinforce the myths of gender and of nature.

We may be quick to assume that these myths are unique to far-away, rural places where traditional gender myths are re-created everyday. I argue that it is precisely here, in these rural landscapes of Africa where the myth of binary and singular identity is pushed to its limits everyday. Rural Africa, itself a myth with important consequences, no longer exists. Families are flexible entities, and marriage or partnership is not a prerequisite of child rearing. Women are increasingly in charge of households and economies in ways that often leave men asking to be brought back in to the development conversation. Agriculture is one of many household strategies that is necessarily supplemented by natural resource collection. Nature is not apart from, but a part of people’s lives. I argue that these myths exist at home in deeply entrenched and telling ways. The US is currently at a crossroads, and because I’m abroad I am at once seriously detached from and increasingly connected to the competition, the rhetoric, and language evoked to discuss both Mr. Trump (highly egomaniacal, or a strong leader) and Ms. Clinton (seriously overqualified, or likely to rule erratically during menopausal fits). The gender myth, one that reduces women to wild goddesses worthy of fear, serves only to reinforce patriarchal dynasties and unsustainable resource exploitation. Haraway’s cyborg theory erases the manifest destiny of unidirectional land and resource allocation, of cities contrasted with game reserves and national parks, and of predetermined gender roles. The cyborg theory allows us the freedom to choose whether we want to be a goddess, a cyborg, or both at the same time.

Giants in the night

The elephants always announce their arrival first. They enter the water in a distant lagoon when the stars are already brilliant in the sky. I will never forget the first time I heard the sudden interruption of quiet with the sudden rush of waterfall. On some nights waterfalls are accompanied by terrible cries echoing off the nearby pools of water: Amanda, Anna, and Graham like to say that elephants are shouting from the shock of hitting cold the water in the dead of winter. Last night was warm.

The dry season is the high conflict season for farming and for other daily livelihood activities. Water holes are seasonal and by the time the irregular rain dries up around the bush, the Okavango fills with life-giving waters for months at a time. People need this water, as do the wildlife, and they do their best to avoid running into elephants and hippos when they fetch water or wash their clothes at the waterside.

Shortly after the waterfall rush began last night, some elephants entered the bush from behind my tent. They must have passed right through the neighboring cattlepost as silent as thieves. Their low rumbles can be mistaken for a soothing lullaby, but the breaking of branches all around me serves as a jarring reminder of their true strength. I like listening to them at night as I go to sleep. I’m comforted by the electric fence that divides us, and sometimes when they get really close I sneak out from my tent as quietly as I can to try to see them. Pewter skin reflects no light, and their eyes are too high up to shine back. Only a full moon can do the trick though I have yet to experience the magical combination of both a full moon and proximate elephants. I peacefully try to imagine what they look like and how they move, but the sudden snapping branches not 20 feet from my head always sends electricity through me.

Elephants are not nocturnal creatures. They are awake most hours of the day and need a regular source of water to help with food digestion. Tough times call for tough measures and there’s mounting evidence that elephants are adopting nocturnal movement patterns to help them avoid the risk of running into people- we are their greatest threat. In the Eastern Panhandle of the Okavango where elephant populations match and will quickly surpass human populations, people, too, are adopting new strategies to avoid the risk of running into elephants. I’m learning that people go out in groups and in the middle of the day, but that may be increasingly futile as the dry season drags on and the Okavango provides the only available surface water.

A well-traveled elephant pathway not far from
Ecoexist Camp.

I am often unaware of what time the elephants leave me in the night. It’s the sudden realization of quiet that usually wakes me up, but last night it was the interruption of the still night with cowbells that woke me up. I have been told many times of how cattle benefit from elephants during the dry season when all of the fodder is dried and gone. They have learned to follow elephants to eat the remaining green leaves that would otherwise waste on the broken tree branches. Last night, a 3am herd of cattle moved through where the elephants had just passed. I was annoyed the first time I heard cattle coming through at such an odd hour, cowbells clanging at irregular intervals, but now I appreciate my new understanding of this mutual dependency, knowing that because the cattle can feed in the harshest of times, people are a little more appreciative of these giants in the night.