Category Archives: Gendered activities

Photo 16 – UBB-HAA-122

A Fur woman grinding sorghum (Fur: “marga”, Arabic: “durra”) on a well-used grinder (Fur: “dida”- lower grinder, “manang” – upper grinder). Millet products are of special symbolic importance in Fur society. Millet flour mixed with water is in Fur language called “bora fatta” (meaning “milk white” – mother’s milk) and is used as a blessing on several ritual occasions (e.g. circumcision, rain rituals, war rituals, treatment of diseases, weddings).

Sarar village, Southern Darfur.

Photo: Randi Haaland, 1973

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Photo 18 – UBB-HAA-525

Men drinking beer (Fur: “kira”) during a break in communal house building. Beer is a product that the wife makes for her husbands from millets taken from his granary. It is shameful to sell millet beer. In daily context, men and women generally consume it separately. Otherwise it is used as a major way of mobilizing neighbours for individual undertakings like house building and weeding.

Umu village, Jebel Marra, Western Darfur.

Photo: Gunnar Haaland, 1969

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Photo 67 – UBB-HAA-344

Fur women are fetching water from a shallow pond by means of calabashes (Fur: “kere”) and pouring it into clay pots (Fur: “tawu”) that they carry on their heads back to the village. Activities connected with food preparation like grinding grains, collecting firewood, fetching water (Fur: “koro”) are considered female work.

Lower Wadi Azum, Western Darfur.

Photo: Gunnar Haaland, 1965

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Photo 68 – UBB-HAA-349

A Fur woman making stone grinders (Fur: “munang”- upper grinder, “dida” – lower grinder). A syndrome of activities associated with food preparations, like fetching water and firewood, making pots, and even, as this picture shows, making grinders of stone are considered female activities.

A hill site near Dor, Northern Darfur.

Photo: Randi Haaland, 1978

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