since the early twentieth century, variously known
as menij(turn), sayoo(friends), or goth(an ar-
rangement). This is a circle of ten to twelve women
similar in age and class who meet on a rotation
basis every month in a member’s home. Entry is
established by puberty and is formalized by a few
basic rules such as collection of annual dues, charge
of a fee for failure to adhere to one’s turn, and so
forth. The cash collected is spent going to movies,
restaurants, and picnics. From time to time extra
dues are collected for travel. The main purpose is to
pass time, have good food, pray together, and
exchange information pertaining to women’s con-
cerns. Women enjoy the company of other women
as it addresses their special interests, reduces their
dependency on men, and gives them privacy. As a
concession to modernity, the community has added
a new dimension to friendship known as “couple-
company” consisting of married men and women
who follow a similar pattern. Social contact be-
tween the sexes is still dictated by the Islamic ideol-
ogy of purdah and the nature of political economy.
Jeffery (1979), describing the lives of women of
pirzademen (custodians of a shrine in Delhi),
writes that accommodating male guests posed a
serious challenge as women had to be made invisi-
ble to them. These extremes reflect the diversity of
women’s experience in South Asia.
Bibliography
M. Asaduddin (ed.), Lifting the veil. Selected writings of
Ismat Chughtai, Delhi 2001.
Z. Fatehully, Zohra, Bombay 1951.
A. Hosain, The first party, in L. Holmstrom (ed.), The
inner courtyard. Stories by Indian women, Delhi 1991,
106–11.
Q. Hyder, Memories of an Indian childhood, in L. Holm-
strom (ed.), The inner courtyard. Stories by Indian
women, Delhi 1991, 39–55.
Ishvani, The brocaded saree, London 1946.
P. Jeffery, Frogs in a Well. Indian women in purdah,
London 1979.
A. Jung, Night of the new moon. Encounters with Muslim
women in India, Delhi 1993.
G. Minault, Secluded scholars, Delhi 1998.
Rehana GhadiallySub-Saharan Africa: West AfricaYour presence in my life is by no means fortuitous. Our
grandmothers in their compounds were separated by a
fence and would exchange messages daily. Our moth-
ers used to argue over who would look after our uncles
and aunts. As for us we wore out wrappers and sandals
on the same stony road to the koranic school...We
walked the same paths from adolescence to maturity,
where the past begets the present. My friend, my friend,
my friend. I call upon you three times (Mariama Bâ,So
Long a Letter).sub-saharan africa: west africa 195Types of women’s intimate
relationships
Friendship is a voluntary relationship based
upon trust that one chooses to engage in and that
provides mutual rewards, including personal and
social support. Unlike the formally structured in-
teractions of kinship and other socially institution-
alized roles, which are ultimately about meeting the
needs of groups in society, friendships are primarily
about meeting the needs of individuals, including
expressions of intimacy and the privileging of and
by another. Such relationships are more easily
entered into over the course of an individual’s life-
time but are also more easily abandoned, a brittle-
ness that may at times prove useful.
Female friendships throughout Sub-Saharan
Africa, including Muslim regions, tend to be distin-
guished by age groups and gender. From among
one’s contemporaries are chosen the majority of
one’s friends – those acquaintances whom one is
always happy to see and who are greeted warmly at
the market-place or at school; those “useful to
know” people with whom one may exchange gifts
and even the formalized mutual obligations of a
patron/client relationship; and those who are the
“most-trusted friends,” with whom people share
the joys and sorrows of their lives. This type of rela-
tionship is the focus here. It may last longer than
many marriages and may transcend time and space.
Such longstanding intimacy is illustrated sensitively
in the novella So Long a Letter(1981) by Sene-
galese author Mariama Bâ, who uses the device of
an exchange of letters between two educated Wolof
women, friends since childhood. At times, a
woman’s intimate associations with other women
may take precedence over her bonds of kinship and
marriage; they certainly help her cope successfully
with the demands of such ties.
In general, women friends form mutual aid so-
cieties, complementing the ranks of female kins-
women. They watch each other’s homes, children,
and at times, husbands, and often send food back
and forth to each other. Indeed, this exchange of
food can be an important way of establishing or
reinforcing a friendship. When spouses quarrel it is
often a female friend who intervenes to heal the
breach and who seeks to keep the dispute from
escalating out of bounds. She counsels patience and
restraint to both parties. Since marriage in Sub-
Saharan Africa is rarely just between two people,
this function of the friend as mediator can play an
important role before representatives of the fami-
lies have to become involved. Female friends will
also come to the aid of a woman who gives birth
far from her female relatives. They take over all