OTHER KNOWLEDGE, OTHER SPACES AND OTHER VIEWS OF MOZAMBICAN WOMEN FROM THE YAAWO COMMUNITY

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on my experiences with traditional mozambican practices, my ancestry are denied from their existence, such as the female intiation rites, popularly known as Unyago, from the Yaawo Community, in the province of Niassa, Mozambique. Bringing Unyago as a space for others and multiple knowledge, a space or resistence is a challenge amidst views colonized by the west and by ourselves mozambicans, perpetuating what the colonizer had said about the native’s cultural and identity practices African and Mozambican, in particularly: “the native's culture is not worthy of a civilized society”; “the culture of the native is a culture of the dog”. For this reason, to think of the “Other different” who has a thousand-year-old tradition, of a place that ensures bases for the achievement of his goals through his symbolic imagery, within its particularities, is of paramount importance for resistance and survival in a society that seeks to hierarchize the subjects with an acceptable culture or not.