A girl I was born; a curse and a blessing.
The pride and the shame of being born Dinka.
Before I was old enough to understand my worth, it had already been calculated for me. Not in the things I would learn. Not in the woman I would become. Not in the dreams I carried.
My worth was measured in domesticated, horned and hoofed animals.
Four cows.
Thirty cows.
Two hundred cows.
The number does not even matter.
Because eventually, I belong to THEM.
THEM who can look at a girl, raised, schooled, trained and pruned and still find it perfectly reasonable to measure her against stocky, long, rectangular animals grazing somewhere in the savanna.
And above THEM all sits my master:
Society.
The social clock begins ticking.
Tik. Tok. Tik. Tok.
Except in my world, it sounds different.
Moo. Moo.
I curse the cold night when my body betrayed my childhood.
Acne. Budding breasts. Hair where there had been none. Blood.
Sexual maturity had arrived.
Morning came with another kind of maturity: introspection. Ambition. The ability to imagine a future and make decisions about the woman I wanted to become.
But my futuristic hopes and personal goals would soon betray me.
One by one, they died inside me.
And somewhere between becoming a woman and being told what that woman must become, something in me died with them.
I remained a body.
A body waiting to be instructed.
A mind waiting to be rearranged.
A zombie waiting to die all over again.
The pride belonged to THEM.
The shame was mine to live with.
And eventually, perhaps, mine to die with.
Then I learned Master Society's arithmetic:
A cow's worth > a girl's worth.
And its preferred equation:
A girl's worth = a cow's worth.
For years, I thought perhaps the equation simply needed correcting.
Perhaps:
A girl's worth ≥ a cow's worth.
But even that equation is wrong.
Because the moment I place the girl on one side and the cow on the other, I have already accepted the premise that her humanity can be measured.
It cannot.
A girl's worth cannot be measured in cows.
Then came the day.
“NEXT!”
I heard Master Society calling from somewhere in the distance.
The voice was angry, impatient, almost deafening the women standing behind me.
I looked back.
The queue had shortened.
I was next.
Suitors flowed vertically like a waterfall down my old man's homestead.
Handsome men. Rich men. Broke men. Built men. Womanizers. Perverts. Ambitious men.
Even the chief's son.
Society had spent years rearranging the anatomy of my brain until I believed what everyone else seemed to know:
I was ready.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
Which man will make me happiest?
And then there was him.
The waterfall intensified.
Its waters found their way between the stones covering the tombs of my once beating heart.
For a moment, something stirred.
I imagined myself as his savanna and him as my waterfall.
Our children.
Our home.
Our life.
Ours.
Wrong.
Master Society does not like that word.
Not our children.
His children.
Not our home.
His homestead.
Not our future.
His legacy.
Still, I allowed myself to believe in love.
He said I was beautiful.
He said he loved me.
And being the chief's son, marrying him came with privileges. Perhaps I would have a louder voice. Perhaps when my younger sisters stood in that same queue, waiting for the social clock to scream NEXT! I could whisper something back to them.
Perhaps.
Curse the cows.
Curse the cows that filled my father's homestead and fattened the pride of him and his hyenas of brothers.
The more cattle arrived, the more valuable everyone said I had been.
Look at what she brought us.
Wealth.
Prestige.
Cattle.
And with them came envy.
Raiders.
Jealousy.
Bloodshed.
The price of a daughter standing proudly on four legs.
Meanwhile, the savanna inside me began to wither.
No sunlight.
No water.
Just a beautiful landscape drying prematurely while everyone admired the cattle grazing upon it.
I became a societal toolbox.
A sexual tool.
A household tool.
A baby making tool.
And whenever greatness or success shone upon his homestead, I became another kind of tool:
A trophy.
Something polished and displayed so that people could look at his life and say:
What a man.
Sometimes I thought there was still tenderness inside him.
A little humanity.
Perhaps even love.
But Master Society was always there, whispering definitions of manhood into his ear.
A man must control his wife.
A man must discipline his home.
A man must be respected.
And so society narrowed his mind until violence became authority.
The marks on my face became proof that there was a man in the house.
Then came the children.
One girl.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Four daughters.
Four beautiful repetitions of me.
And somehow, their existence became another failure assigned to my name.
He threw his legs at me.
He told me to be woman enough to give him sons.
As though I had hidden his sons somewhere inside myself out of spite.
As though womanhood were a machine into which a man could insert cattle and demand boys in return.
Give me sons, he said.
Or I will return you to your parents.
Return me.
Like damaged property.
And then came the threat that completed the equation:
He would demand a refund.
The cows.
Of course.
Always the cows.
Another kick.
Another slap.
Another reminder of how much I cost.
And somewhere beyond the walls of our homestead, another girl was growing breasts.
Another girl was becoming a woman.
Another father was counting cattle.
Another society was preparing its arithmetic.
And the queue moved forward.
NEXT!
But perhaps somewhere in that queue, a daughter has begun doing the arithmetic for herself.
A girl's worth ≥ a cow's worth.
No.
She scratches it out.
She has understood what took me a lifetime to learn:
There was never supposed to be an equation.
A girl's worth is not livestock.
A girl's worth is not a bride price.
A girl's worth is not a refund waiting to happen.
Her worth is hers.
And for once, Master Society can wait.
NEXT?
Not yet.
She will decide when.