MY FULBRIGHT RESIDENCY AT KU

By: Egodi Uchendu, The Women's Studies Program

My stay at KU as a Visiting Researcher (2001-2002) was made possible by a Fulbright grant. The nine months I spent in Lawrence was quite productive. My research was on "Muslim Women in Nigeria". Interestingly, this was not what I planned to engage myself with in the U.S. I became sidetracked from my original research interest by my interaction with Muslim students at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, where I took part in an inter-cultural program prior to my arrival at KU. I was intrigued by the ease with which these Muslims interacted and related with non-Muslims, an attitude I am yet to observe with Muslims in northern Nigeria where I once lived.

Discovering in the course of my readings that so much has been written about female Muslims in northern Nigeria, I turned my attention to southern Nigeria, which has a strong Muslim minority. My interviews and data from the few existing secondary materials on Muslims in that part of the country yielded valuable information pointing to a difference in practice between Muslims in the south and those in the north. It was obvious that, excluding a few towns in western Nigeria, southern Muslim women enjoy far greater freedom than their northern counterparts. The reason is found in the way Islam is interpreted in the south. Instead of conceptualizing the religion as one that boasts of a lot of "taboos", particularly for women, it is rather seen as a religion that promises immeasurable opportunities for its believers.

Besides researching on Muslim Women in Nigeria, I attended three Conferences -- at St. Louis, Missouri; Greensboro, North Carolina; and at Austin, Texas -- and presented the following four papers while in Lawrence.

• Modernizing Female Chieftaincy Institution in Anioma
• From Childhood to Marriage: Rural Girls' lives in Anioma
• The Last Passage Rite and Women in Anioma, and
  " Women in Anioma During the Nigerian Civil War