While the larger part of the world continues to maintain that African cultures are responsible for women’s subordination and inferior position in society today, women in the western Uganda kingdom of Tooro last week agreed to look to their culture for inspiration as they strive to empower themselves and develop their families.

This is as a group of over 500 Batooro women ended a women’s conference on culture/ indigenous knowledge and women’s empowerment.

Participants in the conference agreed to fight for the restoration of some of their fading but cherished cultural values especially those on dressing, proper behavior in society, pride and self-expression. Quite surprising from modern day women, but that is what the Batooro women did during their conference in Fort Portal, Kabarole district.

Nakadama at the Engabu Za Tooro event Serena Hotel

The conference convened by Engabu Za Tooro, a Fort-Portal based Youths platform for Action NGO attracted women from all levels of academia and social status to find ways of learning from their culture in order to better develop themselves.

The 70-year-old Tooro kingdom adviser on cultural affairs, Dorothy Nyakato led the call for a return to their cultures that are positive. But it is the great enthusiasm and seeming hunger by women to learn from each other that made the conference uniquely historical.

Sr. Dr. Maria Gorretti Kaahwa, a senior lecturer at Kyambogo University who gave a keynote address spoke passionately on how values (like public speaking), which children used to learn in homes have now vanished and are only accessed in specialized schools at high costs which most women and girls can not afford.

“Today, entrepreneurs pay a lot of money to have their employees learn communication skills and how to speak in public as a marketing strategy. For us Batooro, this has been a cultural skill taught across generations in homes from childhood and it used to give us a competitive edge,” laments Kaahwa.

Kaahwa says that being soft-spoken came naturally in Tooro culture, but she hastens to add that this did not mean lack of assertiveness.

She argues that the best way to understand development is through one’s culture as a mirror to reflect on the practical challenges and contradictions one faces.

“Promote that value that is good, helpful, relevant and sustainable,” counsels Kaahwa who attacked modern fashion shows for using women as “marketing toys”.

Nyakato agrees with Kaahwa. “The beauty of dressing decently, walking and sitting in public by female children was well emphasised in Tooro,” says Nyakato who was donned in traditional Tooro attire called Esuuka.

Kaahwa contends that traditionally, women in Tooro are the custodians of culture entrusted with promoting good manners as a conduit for society’s togetherness and progress. But not any more.

“For long time women in Tooro have been objects of fascination, wonder and admiration due to their virtuous excellence in language and dressing style,” Kaahwa says.

At the end of the conference that attracted Batooro women of all ages across the country, the women resolved among other things to revive their kitooro dressing code that has been overshadowed by “the foreign dresses of mini and slit skirts”.

For the promoters of Tooro traditional culture like Doris Kaija, not all cultures are good.

She says women should talk about and fight against cultures that negatively affect them most like those that favor boys who impregnate girls and yet condemn pregnant girls, but also pick and promote the good cultural attributes like honesty and hard work.

Kaija says societies have stereotyped women as a weak and that woman don’t even think and struggle to overcome societal habits that marginalise them. This, she says is not true since through playing their cultural role of advocating and working for a better society, Batooro women have been agents of necessary social change.

Kaija says women should start projects like saving and credit projects in order to boost their economic status, as women did in the “glorious past”.

Kaahwa however cautions that gender balance should not be seen as a war between men and women in society because it might lead to family breakups. For Nyakato, the women should still take on baby caring as a culture through which women nurture children.

The conference called for the publishing of progressive cultural values after careful research is conducted across Tooro.

The two-day conference was held under the theme: “How the Batooro culture can teach and inspire the modern woman to excel economically, politically and socially”.

Alice Basemera, the reigning Koogere (a competitive title that women compete for, named after Koogere, a legendary queen in Tooro culture who outperformed men in leadership and wealth) told her fellow women to work hard and over come gender challenges like poverty.

She advised women to fight economic dependence if they are to end gender imbalances in societies. “Women in developed nations have tagged their cultures well with economic independence to overcome gender prejudice and imbalance,” Basemera says. more on page 2 below

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