Jaboya: Radical wisdom emerges from the fish for sex trade

Jaboya is Dhuluo, meaning “fish for sex” and it’s a form of gendered trade that is commonly used to describe what happens every day when the fisherman at Lake Victoria come back to land and find scores of women waiting to sell themselves for fish.

“It’s a function of poverty and lack of choices,” the BD Life is told by Kathy Tate-Bradish, an HIV educator who works in Western Kenya. “It’s the major factor resulting in the counties along the lake having the highest prevalence of HIV in Kenya,” she adds.

To best understand the meaning of Jaboya, one needed to be at Kenya National Theatre recently to watch Millaz Players’ performance of Jaboya. Scripted by Emmanuel Chindia, the play captured the vibrant, sensual energy that swells the shore every time men come in with their catch of the day. That’s when women scramble to be first in line since the transactions involve both money and fish for sex freely exchanged.

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We meet a stew of quibbling female fishmongers, all competing for access to the men with the most fish. For a Big Fish boss like Odongo (Sultan Mbimwa), he can have sex with no less than five women a night as we see while he argues with Otieno (Samuel Baraza) over the boat he’d promised him.

It’s the Chief (Gaitan Brian) who suggests to the women that they need to stop quibbling among themselves and organise to buy a boat of their own. His radical suggestion is antithetical to the traditional taboo related to women never becoming fisher(wo)men. Now we’re getting into thorny territory since the Chief’s idea essentially calls on women to challenge patriarchal (man-made) taboos.

“There’s no reason women can’t be fishermen,” Chief says, sounding like a true feminist, not a government emissary spewing the conventional patriarchal party line. It takes some time for the women to hear what he’s saying and appreciate his radical wisdom. Eventually, they start believing that owning a boat of their own makes a lot of sense.

But then, they have another problem which is trusting one another and identifying one honest leader among them who they can all believe in. But once they do, they set up their own chama or economic merry-go-round to raise the cash required to buy the boat.

As it turns out, they can almost raise the funds required, but for Sh50. That money comes from Kamum (Faith Wambui), the young schoolgirl who won a cash prize for her high marks. But she understood the implications of the women being liberated financially. Yet by her making that sacrifice, she is left with insufficient funds for school fees. It’s pathetic to see how she’s left stranded at home. Her only hope lies with the women buying the boat, something they are prepared to do as the story ends.

Unfortunately, women cannot end all the outmoded taboos in a single act of revolutionary courage. One that remains involves Beryl’s family which has a timeline on sex. All sex is outlawed within Her family’s timeframe of a 10-week period.

Tragically, Opiyo (Mike Ndaka) ignored that taboo and sleeps with Beryl (Mary Mutabe). And for that, he dies, illustrating just how deeply entrenched certain cultural beliefs still are in Luo and other African cultures generally.

No one except Odongo feels the pain at Opiyo’s demise since they’d been bosom buddies forever. The issue at hand is the programme of the women. They’d been basically sex workers as well as fishmongers before. But now they’re on a quest to obtain their economic freedom since they would all own the boat and all share the spoils of fishing for their own food and their own fish business.

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I hope Millaz takes Jaboya to Nyanza region and to the Lake where they could invite women to see the show since it could introduce them to a few revolutionary ideas that might have a positive impact on their lives.

Jaboya is an impressive production directed by Mike Ndeda, assisted by Faiz Ouma. The show’s choreographer did such a good job that the movements of the characters flowed naturally from the script’s action. The scriptwriter, Chindia did well to assemble so many important themes, keeping them flowing organically until he found a logical way for the women to rise above their oppressive circumstances and find a viable solution that could be a real possibility.

All power to the women! And to Millaz.

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