Part 1 — Women’s Stories

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Sri Lanka

The myths and taboos are harsh, but what enslaves us most is our poverty

My name is Gayani, and I come from the village of Buththala in the Monaragala district in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka. The agricultural community I belong to is involved mainly in chena cultivation.

In my community, everyone has to work hard. However, the men work hard in the fields all day but after work they return home to relax, and expect to be served by their wives, daughters or mothers. We women work hard all day too: getting up early to cook for the family, then doing all the housework, looking after the children, sending tea to our husbands in the fields, and also doing some of the tasks in the fields. At the end of the day, we too are tired, but when the men come home, they expect us to be nice and obliging to them — otherwise they become irritable and quarrelsome.

Not all of us work in the fields, but even though we are at home we have no time at all to talk with our neighbours, as everyone is equally busy. During some seasons, we have to stay awake all night in order to protect our crops from wild animals. Our houses are small. They are built of sticks and logs. We apply our floors with cow dung. The roofs are made of iluk grass, and this means that when everything is dry, fires can break out fast. Then what little we have, we also lose.

We do not own our land. We rent it from the mudadali for Rs 1200¹. We don't have the money to pay for this, so we pay it in installments from the money we get from selling our produce. As rental, we also have to give half of our produce to the mudadali. This leaves us in constant debt, as the money left over from one crop is hardly enough to last us for two or three months. Even if we had land, it would not be ours to own anyway, because only men have rights to the land.

Four out of five women here are illiterate. We use our thumb prints when we need to endorse something. We hope to be educated, but there is no way for that to happen. Often even our children are unable to continue their studies because they are needed at home to help us.

Health conditions here are bad. Many of our children are malnourished and lack vitamins. We know we should give them more vitamins, but where shall we get the money to pay for them? The best we can do is to give them kandha (kanji)². Malaria is also common, since the area we live in is surrounded by forests. I myself have suffered from it. The health workers who come here give us immunisation vaccines; they come once every three months.

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There is no hospital here — the nearest is thirteen kilometres away. When we have gone there, they have given us two packets of triposha³ for the nourishment of our children. It's worse it you're a pregnant mother. The last time I had a child, I delivered her at home. I was all alone, so when it was time I took the scissors that I had, dragged myself to the fireplace, sterilised the scissors and delivered the baby. I had to do it — there was no other way.

I was married when I was very young, but my husband died when I was twenty-seven. He drowned, and I was left with two daughters. When I became a widow everyone, including my own family, rejected me and considered me a symbol of bad luck. As my husband and I were not legally married (we had a customary wedding) I could not claim any of his belongings or property. I had nothing — so in the end, I had to give my daughters away to an orphanage. I needed support to stay alive, so I married again. At first, my husband was kind to me; he did not listen to all the stories that the villagers told about me. But later, he too left me —just after we had our first child. My child by him was then only one and a half months old.

Some of the women in the village work in the multinational sugar company near here, in Palheatte Monaragala. They leave home very early and walk for about four hours to get to the factory. The wage is about seven rupia a day, and I hope to work there too one day when my child is older — though I know that the work is very strenuous. Many of the women who work there do not keep their money; they have to give it to their husbands or families. At the moment, I earn a little money by transporting soil used to build the bunds⁵ in the fields.

The people here are very conservative. A woman talking to a man is looked at very suspiciously. We have to be covered from top to toe, and there are so many myths and taboos. But things will change; the mothers and women are organising themselves. They do not want to continue living like this. The men laughed and ridiculed us at first, but now they can see that we are serious and they are more co-operative. Still what enslaves us most is our poverty. What can you do to free us from it?

Notes

1. $ US 45; twenty-seven rupia are in one US dollar.

2. Watery rice porridge.

3. A kind of medicine.

4. $ US 0.26.

5. Embankments in the rice paddies.