EP 9 ATETE - Spirituality is Resistance I Women And Resistance 🌍

In this enlightening conversation, Adesoji Iginla had Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq., delves into the rich history and spirituality of the Oromo people, emphasising the central role of women in their societal structure and spiritual practices.

She discusses the concept of Waaqeffannaa, the interconnectedness of nature and morality, and the importance of ancestral intelligence in guiding contemporary communities.

The dialogue also highlights the historical suppression of indigenous governance and spirituality, urging a collective reflection on identity and the need for communal healing as we transition into a new year.

Takeaways

*The Oromo people have a rich spiritual and historical identity that predates modern Ethiopia.
*Waaqeffannaa is a belief system that emphasises the moral order of nature and the divine.
*Women in Oromo society have historically held significant roles in governance and spirituality.
*The concept of ancestral intelligence is crucial for understanding contemporary challenges.
*Collective memory and oral traditions have preserved Oromo history despite colonial suppression.
*Oromo spirituality recognises the interconnectedness of all living things and the moral responsibilities that come with it.
*The Gada system exemplifies a non-monarchal governance structure that includes all age groups.
*Women-led restorative justice practices were integral to maintaining social order in Oromo culture.
*The conversation emphasises the need for a return to communal values and collective action.
*As we enter a new year, reflection and connection to our roots are essential for healing and growth.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Oromo Spirituality and Identity
01:51 Understanding the Oromo People and Their History
08:19 Oromo Spirituality: Waaqeffannaa and Its Significance
12:03 The Role of Women in Oromo Society
15:03 The Interconnection of Gender and Nature
16:40 Aya Fubara Eneli: A Personal Narrative
21:34 Ancestral Intelligence and Collective Memory
37:52 Reflection and Call to Action for the New Year

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

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Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:01.612)
Yes, greetings, greetings, and welcome to another episode of Women and Resistance. I am Adesuji Ginla, and Women and Resistance is born out of the need to center the role of women in our liberation. And we are going to go down the spiritual route today. And we're going to center Ateta, a spiritual goddess, familiar to the people of

the Oromos, which is centered in modern-day Ethiopia today. And my sister will be embodying what that spirit denotes and she will also be giving us a walkthrough of what that entails. And in the course of time, ask pertinent questions of how that ties into our modern-day experience. You're welcome.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:01.239)
Thank you. Thank you, thank you. So in the part of the world where my people reside, although my people are all over the world, it is already what we would consider the new year by some if you're using the Gregorian calendar. So happy new year. And in some other parts of the world.

Adesoji Iginla (01:05.358)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (01:27.697)
It will still be considered 2025. So this is a very interesting time that we are living in. And I am very grateful to be here and to talk with you about something that I hope will be very helpful to all of your listeners, whether they listen today.

or at some other time as they chart the course of their lives. So thank you for the invitation and for the day that you have chosen for me to join you.

Adesoji Iginla (02:04.59)
Thank you for coming through.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (02:17.223)
Let me start off by helping to situate who the Oromo people are.

The Oromo are one of the largest, as we will call it today, indigenous peoples in Africa.

Adesoji Iginla (02:39.15)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (02:41.601)
using your language, they will be considered one of the largest ethnic groups in Ethiopia, the area now called Ethiopia.

We are a Kushite people. Our language is from the grouping of languages. And our culture, our language, our political systems, and our spiritual traditions, which I will focus on later, predate.

Adesoji Iginla (03:20.59)
Okay. Thank

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:23.403)
the modern Ethiopian state by many, many centuries. So when we speak today, while you might locate us in this land mass now known as Ethiopia, if you hear my words carefully, we predate Ethiopia and we actually have spread out way beyond that original.

Adesoji Iginla (03:47.726)
Okay. Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (03:52.894)
Landmass.

We were not a single centralized kingdom, but we were what I could say, the language is difficult to translate, but you could consider it a constellation of related groups and confederations of groups of people. But we were bound by a shared language, Afan or Romo.

We were bound by a shared spiritual philosophy, Wakwefana. We were bound by a shared legal and political tradition, notably the Gada system. So when they tell you we did not have structure until the invaders came, you must know this is untrue.

Adesoji Iginla (04:37.162)
OK. Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (04:55.75)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (04:56.875)
We were also bound by strong systems of oral history, ritual, and collective memory, which we passed down from generation to generation. And for much of our history, my people were an organized society without monarchy.

Adesoji Iginla (05:21.262)
Interesting. Kings and queens. Kings and queens, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (05:26.357)
I know we like to say we descended from kings and queens. But at the time when we began, when we traced back our stories, we relied instead on age-grade governance, consensus, and rotating leadership.

Adesoji Iginla (05:50.99)
Comes around. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (05:53.749)
And if you know that the leadership is going to rotate, if it's going to go around, guess what? You focus more on justice.

Because you know what goes around comes around.

So some scholars today have located the early Oromo homeland as being in what would be considered the southern and southwestern horn of Africa.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (06:31.213)
These areas today will be considered southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and even the regions bordering the Ethiopian Rift Valley.

But we also expanded northward and westward over several centuries. Some of the scholars trace this expansion from the 14th century to the 17th century. The movement was not a sudden invasion, but a gradual process of migration, settlement, alliance, and

Adesoji Iginla (07:15.064)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (07:15.967)
and absorption of other peoples as well.

But to be clear, we were indigenous to the Horn of Africa and not migrants from outside of the continent. And most of our expansion coincided with ecological pressures, of course, population growth, and regional political shifts, of course.

haven't located that. The language has always been central to our identity and even what people know about me, Atethe, today is encoded in our language. Oral poetry, praise songs, protest songs were all used to preserve history.

And there are also some written texts that you will see that evoke who I am.

There were proverbs that encoded as social ethics and certainly at gender relations, which I have to admit have been troublesome for a long time. But our ritual language connected spirituality, land, and moral law.

Adesoji Iginla (08:48.558)
What do you mean by that?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (08:49.201)
Now, what I mean by that is not your Western type of justice of who can win, but doing what is right. So when there is an issue, it's not about who has more money, who can hire the better advocate. It is really addressing what is right.

Adesoji Iginla (09:02.551)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:18.665)
and meting out law according to the moral code of the land.

Adesoji Iginla (09:25.152)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:28.277)
You should note that despite centuries of suppression, especially during the Imperial Ethiopian rule, Afan or Romo remains one of the most widely spoken African languages even today.

Adesoji Iginla (09:50.156)
Interesting.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (09:51.455)
Now to give you some background before I share more about Atete.

Let me share a little bit about a spiritual worldview, if you will.

Oromo spirituality is rooted in Wakwefana, the belief system centered on Wak, the Supreme Creator.

work as moral order, not as a human-like ruler. Nature, land, water, trees are spiritually alive.

women as vital spiritual intermediaries.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (10:47.117)
ethical law which we called Safoom governing relationships between and listen to this between people nature and the divine

Adesoji Iginla (11:04.955)
people of nature and the divine.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (11:05.169)
So exactly the ethical law spoke for nature even though nature supposedly had no representative it did have a representative and I, Ateté, was one of the representatives the advocates for nature.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (11:28.373)
Within this system, female spiritual institutions, as they would call it, or as they would call me as a goddess, which is the terminology Westerners have put on it, played an essential role.

Some have relegated it to just fertility and childbirth. But it was more than that. It was ecological balance.

Under our form of spirituality, we will never have the climate issues you have today. We could not.

because we understand and respect the divinity even in nature, in the trees, in the soil, in the land, in the water, in the animals, in the birds, in the fishes.

There was a moral accountability and there was a women's collective resistance to violence.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (12:53.761)
Beginning in the late 19th century, though, much of our territory was incorporated into the expanding Ethiopian empire under northern rulers. And this period brought about a loss of land, suppression of the language, forced conversions to Christianity and Islam.

a marginalization of course of our governance systems and our form of spirituality. And you see many of us adopted Islam or Christianity, but what did not die were still certain elements of our indigenous spiritual ways of being.

Some of our rituals retained form. Some of them were camouflaged.

and some of them were buried under the new social ethics. But if you looked and if you understood what you were seeing, you would recognize them. So today, my people, they reside mostly in Ethiopia, especially in the Oromia region. They're also in Addis Ababa.

and in some of the surrounding areas. We're in Kenya, particularly in northern and eastern regions near the Ethiopian border. And of course, all over the diaspora in the United States and Canada and Europe, UK, Germany, Scandinavia, even in the Middle East.

Adesoji Iginla (14:40.826)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (14:43.827)
So important that you're having this conversation with me and I will tell you more about myself, but you have to understand that I am a representative of my people. So I first center my people.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:01.535)
My people matter. This conversation matters because knowing my people and my history is to understand that African societies had governance before the colonizers, the savage ones.

Adesoji Iginla (15:19.718)
Hm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (15:21.717)
It is to understand that we had systems that demonstrated non-monarchal kind of systems. didn't have monarchies. Listen, show me where in these Western systems that you are following, where you really have democracy.

It has been elusive to them. But our systems really did have democracy. It was a participatory kind of political system.

Adesoji Iginla (15:58.638)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (16:00.758)
Every age group participated and every age group was respected and had their role and leadership rotated.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (16:18.167)
To understand my people and our history is to understand women-centered spiritual institutions that reveal pre-colonial African ways of being. So today, when we act like white women came up with the notion of

Women are humans and should have equality.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (16:56.033)
That is the struggle they had with their men. This patriarchy is something by and large in the way it is practiced today that I would say African men through religion have taken on and oppressed African women. But it wasn't always quite that way.

Adesoji Iginla (17:18.562)
Correct.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:21.877)
And I need to remind my daughters of our power, not power over.

but power with.

Adesoji Iginla (17:35.038)
Yes. Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:37.695)
and I need to remind my sons as well.

How do you oppress the one from whom you come from and expect it to be well with you?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (17:57.781)
When you study my people, you have a better understanding of the ongoing struggle of empire and religion and modern states and these political systems and maybe what we need to do differently to heal ourselves.

So now that I have shared that with you, I will take any questions before I will now tell you more about myself.

Adesoji Iginla (18:37.952)
OK, in your opening dialogue, you mentioned the moral order of the Oromo society. So this question ties into it. Why do you think so many African spiritual systems place women at the center of the moral order?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (19:01.881)
the center but that does not mean above or to displacement let us be very clear we understand the importance of feminine and masculine energy we understand the importance of both the sperm and the egg but we also understand the importance of the womb as it were

the importance of the land that nurtures. And if you poison the womb, if you poison the land, then that sperm, that seed, no matter how viral or strong, will perish. Therefore, you must nurture and protect and revere the womb.

the woman, the one from whom life.

Adesoji Iginla (20:08.125)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (20:09.965)
comes into the world.

and if you study almost any indigenous people, any form of spirituality before these Abrahamic religions, that is what you would see. But not as

not a set up to rule over because a woman's role is not to then what you bring a child in and crush it no but always for growth for nurturing for life giving

It was never meant to be this adversarial thing that we have now seen set up.

Let me speak about who I am.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:12.522)
I am a tater.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:16.907)
My history has too often been told about me instead of through me.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:26.997)
I am not a myth.

I am not folklore.

I am not a marginal spirit. am not a footnote to patriarchy.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (21:47.199)
I am your mother.

I am a living memory of how women once governed life.

Justice, birth and balance.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (22:11.639)
Would any of you quarrel with any of these things?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (22:19.945)
As I have shared with you, I come from the Oromo people.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (22:26.603)
before conquest, before all these forced conversions, because that is what they do. They force you to become like them. Why?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (22:42.387)
If what you have to offer is good, let people see it of their own and if they so choose, they can adopt it. Why the force? That in and of itself should make us question. Before empire and colonization, my people, we understood the world as an interconnected

moral system. Nothing. Nothing exists alone. Nothing exists without consequence. Today, go and look up in the sky.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (23:32.319)
What is the moon doing? Is that not based on where the earth is in relation to the sun? Are they not all interrelated? Go and see what is happening to the sea.

Does it to not respond to the moon?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:00.299)
Do not certain flowers open only when the sun comes out?

Do not plant know when to bud and when to shed their leaves?

Who tells them we're all interconnected? How is it that human beings now feel that they can disconnect themselves with no consequences?

This world view of which I speak, we called it Wakwefan.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (24:47.295)
WAC is not a distant ruler. WAC is a moral order itself and that moral order requires intermediaries and that is where I lived. I was not separate from WAC. I was how WAC listened. I was how justice entered the human world. In Oromo philosophy, life is governed by three inseparable principles.

You are practicing Kwanzaa now.

also governed by principles. Principles make us able to live in harmony.

the three principles that governed us. Ayan, Spirit, Destiny, Divine Energy.

nature creation land water body

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (25:57.063)
SAFU, ethics, obligation, moral law.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:09.217)
the divine, nature, what we see around us, including ourselves, ethics, obligation, moral law, all of them intersecting. And I existed at the meeting point of all three.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:31.051)
This is why I governed fate on earth. This is why drought, fertility, rain, childbirth, illness, war, and peace all fell under my care.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (26:52.394)
When harmony broke, women called me.

If there was an injustice in the land spreading, women gathered. When men would fail to uphold moral order, women intervened. my son.

I saw something about this Western world you people live in. I don't know whether it applies to all of the West or just the part called the United States of America. It said...

that in 30 days, an average of 800 women are killed by their male intimate partners.

Adesoji Iginla (27:47.342)
unfortunately.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (27:51.212)
It's now also said that in the course of five years, so over a five-year period, women kill about 785 of their male intimate partners.

And because of this statistic, men are upset at women.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:26.38)
You killed 800 in 30 days.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (28:35.028)
Whatever the circumstances, in five years, women killed less than what you kill in 30 days. And now the problem is women. When injustice spread in my time, women gathered. When men did not uphold moral order, women intervened.

Adesoji Iginla (28:44.258)
today's.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:02.376)
Are my daughters still intervening?

I was known as the power of life, abundance, fortune and wealth. So glad to be speaking with you today. As you go into a new year, would you not like to call on my name?

Adesoji Iginla (29:24.75)
It would be pleasure. Yeah, yes, yes, would be the emphatic answer.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:30.092)
For those of you who would like to know more about me, study Fridays. The days you call Fridays today, they are my sacred days. They are the days you play music, you lay out food, you talk to me, you tell me what is on your heart.

Adesoji Iginla (29:51.406)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (29:53.482)
The first days of the Ethiopian calendar remembered me.

But unlike imperial religions, I did not require temples because God do not require temples. Divinity is everywhere. My shrine was women's bodies. My altar was the land. Now, I do not have to mince words, even a Romo culture.

was patriarchal. Men did control the lineage, even during my time. Men controlled the cattle. Men, through the gada system, did wield political power. And an all-male generational council governed leadership and law. However,

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:01.926)
Women were not powerless. And I would dare say if you go further back, even this was a distortion of how we used to be.

Adesoji Iginla (31:15.094)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:16.78)
existed beyond male permission. Women held ritual authority. Have you not talked to one of my sisters who talked about the authority that we had that included political authority? Remember one of my house sisters?

Adesoji Iginla (31:35.906)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:35.976)
until men started to erode that and then they took on the political authority we kept the ritual authority and then the colonizers came and then they took even the ritual authority do you remember that

Adesoji Iginla (31:48.278)
Yes, yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (31:51.52)
But we held on to ritual authority. We held on to moral authority. And the woman held the collective enforcement power. Because you can have laws, but if you have no enforcement.

Adesoji Iginla (32:09.812)
You might as well not have no loss.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:13.932)
Women received through me sacred objects that were not symbolic. They were functional. The sink, a ritual staff that was carried by women was a tool of protest and dignity. And you can go and look this up. It is written about. You will see it's written about.

Adesoji Iginla (32:43.213)
Async, you said.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (32:44.768)
Yes, S-I-N-Q-E.

And then we had the kanafa, q-a-n-a-f-a. It was a sacred piece of wood that a woman wore, would wear during childbirth and during her postpartum period. And it marked a woman as untouchable. These objects did not just decorate womanhood. They enforced law.

My rituals, they were not abstract theology.

They were left.

They were lived. It was our lived spirituality. I don't want to call it religion. We wore these kale beads that were consecrated to me. The beads were prayer, memory, and accountability. Today, Muslims have prayer beads. The Catholics use rosary. No one calls that demonic. But you want to demonize our culture.

Adesoji Iginla (33:37.998)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:01.052)
Women gathered herbs after ritual feasts. They prepared barley, porridge, butter, honey, wine, homemade beer and coffee. They sang invocations over the food and drink. They called my name out loud. Atetehara, ateteginbi, atetedula. They would ask me to watch their children.

They asked me to protect their bodies. They asked me to guard their cattle and their land. And on these nights, when these women referred me...

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (34:42.144)
I would come and visit them and they would enter a trance. That is what the colonizers and foreigners would call it. Now, when their spirit enters people, it is okay. It is the Holy Spirit imparting spiritual gifts and knowledge. But when it is our spirituality,

Now it is a trance and demonic and all of those things.

Go and study the Tsar.

form of spirituality, ZAR, you will see remnants of the Oromo form of spirituality. But for the Tsar, it has become more male, more patriarchal. Even that ritual space that women have on the Oromo, the men in the Tsar have wanted to take that over.

Adesoji Iginla (35:28.238)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (35:48.67)
When these women are overcome by my spirit, what they are getting, ha ha, let me be funny today, is a download of ancestral intelligence. Today, you people are chasing what you call AI. But me at Tete, we had and we still have the original AI.

It is ancestral intelligence, but you have to prepare to receive it. You must prepare your body and your mind. Is today as you end one year and go into a new year, is that not a great time?

Adesoji Iginla (36:36.244)
It's pretty powerful, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (36:38.38)
to ask for the intelligence of your ancestors, to ask to be reminded of the things that are embedded in your DNA that you have forgotten how to tap into.

Adesoji Iginla (36:55.79)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (36:57.342)
my daughters and my sons, any situation that you have that you're dealing with today, I guarantee you that we have a solution, an answer that lies in the ancestral wisdom of your people.

There is nothing you are dealing with that they have not seen and dealt with before, but you no longer seek their intelligence. You seek that of the very people who have shown you time and time again that their only goal is to use and destroy you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (37:45.056)
This ancestral intelligence would advise the women. It would warn communities of what was coming. It would reveal what was hidden. This power I passed from mother to daughter, from daughter to daughter, from daughter to, do you understand me?

Adesoji Iginla (38:07.697)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (38:11.954)
Men resented this and they often tried to crush it but they failed.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (38:22.238)
As a Roma woman, we're displaced, as they were enslaved, as they were married beyond our homelands. I did not desert them. I traveled with them. This is how we spread into Amhara regions. This is how we moved into Sudan. You can find us in Zimbabwe.

This is how we cross the Red Sea into Arabia.

Do you know that my name changed? But I did not change. My essence did not change.

Outsiders will call it possession. They described all kinds of things. They go and look at it. They're writers who wrote, the women, they would lose their minds and they will climb a tree and they would crush glass and they would eat hot embers. Does that not then speak to my power?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (39:34.646)
They were describing things with words that they could not possibly capture the essence of who I am and what I represent. I tell you I stand at the intersection of divinity and nature and moral law. What do they know about that?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:04.136)
What they did not know that they were witnessing as I traveled from place to place and my names changed. Haha From a Tete some places they even started to call me Maram Then Miriam Then Mary

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:31.114)
What they were witnessing was continuity. Women carrying governance in their bodies when formal power denied them that space.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:46.11)
in my most radical form.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (40:50.942)
I am about resisting violence. Let me tell you a story. During Kwanafa, the sacred period after childbirth, when a woman is protected by divine law, not just amongst my people. If you go even look amongst the Igbo people, there's a reason why you will see age groups. It's like every two years. Because when a woman has a child,

That postpartum period where she's nursing her child, no man is coming to touch and force her to sleep with anybody. You understand what I'm saying? That is her time to get her body back, to nurse her baby, to recover of everything that happens when she gets pregnant and nurtures and brings forth a child. During that sacred period after childbirth, a woman is protected by divine law. Her comfort is mandatory.

Adesoji Iginla (41:24.974)
Thank

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (41:46.504)
In most indigenous cultures, we have a period where that woman, she will not fetch water, she will not cook. Am I lying? Everybody will be, other people will come and cater to her every need. Her safety was non-negotiable. And during that period, if a husband struck her, ha! There is no negotiation. She did not suffer in silence.

Adesoji Iginla (41:54.222)
Correct, that's correct.

Adesoji Iginla (42:08.94)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:15.986)
she would leave the home and she went directly to the council of senior mothers known as the saditan hanfala and what followed was collective action all the women would abandon their homes let me tell you if the woman today say they want equality they can accomplish it

Maximum 72 hours.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (42:50.464)
Are my daughters listening to me? 72 hours, but it has to be collective action. Every woman get up from where you are. You are not cooking. You are not having sex. You are not doing any wifely or womanly duties for anybody. Even self, except for that child you have to breastfeed. Leave the children for him.

Adesoji Iginla (43:01.87)
Down to. .

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:21.8)
and just the farm the chicken anything you're doing whatever job you just abandon it gather with the women and just have a good time for 72 hours pray sing eat sleep in peace

Adesoji Iginla (43:26.51)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:44.616)
and then see if they will not come on their knees and ask, what is your list of demands?

Adesoji Iginla (43:54.318)
.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (43:55.358)
and perform every one of them. So in our time, all women abandoned their homes. Every woman in the village participated on less physically impossible. They gathered with SYNQE in hand. They marched in procession. No one could cross their path. No one could interrupt them. To do so invited illness, madness, and ruin.

Male elders would approach carrying green grass, a sign of submission. They spoke together asking to be spared the woman's gaze. Do you not study? Am I? Listen, go and study indigenous women across the world. You will find different forms of this type of collective action. When women will take off their clothes and say, okay.

Adesoji Iginla (44:42.414)
next.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (44:53.664)
the elderly woman. Okay. This is what you want.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:01.312)
and the whole society stops.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:08.34)
Women decide what comes next. Sometimes reconciliation followed. Sometimes compensation was required. Livestock was sacrificed. Feasts were held. Balance was restored. If the offender refused accountability, because every once in a while you get someone who's truly mad in the head.

Adesoji Iginla (45:26.446)
So yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (45:36.594)
Women then invoked Abarasa. Abarasa Sinki, a curse calling on whack to withdraw protection. This was not superstition. It was social enforcement backed by spiritual consequence. See now, people do not fear spiritual consequence. And they know if I have money, I go to court, I can bribe and no consequence. And that is why you see things all scattered. No moral law anymore.

This is what women led restorative justice looked like before modern courts. Then came the erasure. Christian missionaries renamed me. Islamic reform movements condemned me. Colonial authorities dismantled indigenous governance. Women lost ritual grace. We lost our space. They lost collective leverage. They were told this loss was

Progress.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (46:46.764)
Today in your cultures, a woman will have a child today and tomorrow be sent home from the birthing place and told to go and fend for herself and her child. What form of savagery is that?

I should have.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (47:11.146)
But today, even reduced to childbirth rights, I survive.

Because memory lives in bodies.

Because women.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (47:29.768)
still remember that they want to feel safe.

I am still here. I am present whenever women gather collectively, whenever they organize together. I am present whenever mothers demand dignity.

I am present in movements that link justice, ecology, and care.

I am present even when women refuse isolation.

Adesoji Iginla (48:16.238)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:17.502)
I am a tete.

and I'm still here.

still responding to those who will call on me.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (48:30.558)
still living within you if you will but tune in.

Thank you for allowing me to speak with you today.

Adesoji Iginla (48:41.036)
No, thank you. mean, you've taken us through a tremendous

explanation of what it means to have African spirituality and also underscore the reason why anytime we had colonial interruption, it was the first thing they went after. Anything that holds the community together is the first point of call. And so we now understand why our spirituality has largely been erased, although it's making a comeback.

in pockets but we need to do much more. One final question before you go. How do we as a society now bring back some sort of communal effort to us understanding who we are? Because we live in a very fast-paced world.

you talked about the level of violence that exists in our societies. But how do we take a pause? How do we, we're going into a new year for, you know, according to the Gregorian calendar, how do we take a pause, take a pause, reset, and, you know, channel a better course as it were?

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (50:25.802)
My spirit wants to just hold all of you in my arms and just hum and just rock you like your mothers and your grandmothers used to rock you when you were infants.

You remember those times.

when maybe you were hungry or just agitated for whatever reason. And they just take you to their bosom. And you can hear...

Comforting.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:10.038)
beat of their hearts.

and sometimes they may just start to hum underneath their breath and they're just rocking you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:26.846)
and whatever it was that had you upset.

just disappears.

You just have this piece that comes over you.

You don't even have the thought process. You know, the ability to really process it, but you just know you're safe.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (51:59.508)
My prayer for each and every one of you. No matter how fast paced your life is. No matter whether you are.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (52:13.758)
living in a mansion or huddled under a bridge.

that you make some time out today, tomorrow, and the next few days and you turn off all those things that draw your attention all the time.

and you just transport yourself back into the arms of whomever once loved you. Because all of you at one point were rocked. I don't care if it was not your biological parents. If someone didn't hold you, you wouldn't be here today. It's something called failure to thrive. So somebody must have held you. So whoever it was, transport yourself back to that time and just allow yourself.

to go back to that place. Maybe this time you're the one doing the humming.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:14.986)
Maybe you're allowing yourself.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:20.47)
to be at one with nature.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:26.667)
Maybe you're sitting on grass.

or you can see a plant or a tree next to you or you're feeling the wind or the sun on your face or you're by the water

And just take a moment, really more than a moment, to remember how you are connected to everything in the universe.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (53:58.142)
in this pause.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (54:03.603)
Notice if you could.

any.

Living thing.

and how somehow the Divine One provides for it. The Ant.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (54:29.704)
Even the cockroach. Whatever it is. The birds. Somehow.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (54:41.088)
They get something to eat.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (54:48.308)
And while you're in this place.

I welcome you.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (55:01.164)
to ask for what you need.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (55:09.049)
and I encourage you.

to make some concrete decisions about how you are going to live differently.

to be able to have and maintain what you are asking for.

Aya Fubara Eneli, Esq. (55:37.792)
So when you ask me how do we pause in this moment, that is it. Just pause.

It's a choice. And when you make that choice, I promise to meet you there.

Adesoji Iginla (56:00.714)
Asher, Asher. Thank you very much. And thank you to our listeners who have stuck around all through 2025. As we go into 2026, we hope to continue Women and Resistance. And in that, we're looking at the lives and times of Alice Donegan next week.

join us again, same time as we sit and speak to Alice Dunn again and see what, how she did our bit to push our liberation through struggle of course, and why we should be, why we should learn from what has gone before.

Like my people will say, if you do not know where you're coming from, you might not have an idea of where you're going. So with that said, thank you, Ate Tete. Thank you for everyone, all the super chats on this podcast, on African News Review. Until next year, which is to some people, a couple of minutes, a couple of hours.

We are already in 2026 in the United Kingdom where I am based and hope to see you on the other side of 2026. Again, thank you all for coming through. Until next week, from me, it is good night and God bless.