In many parts of the world, being a woman is not an easy task. For Pili Hussein of Tanzania, there were no exceptions. She was the daughter of a man who had 38 children in total, from six different women. She was forced to work in the fields with cattle from a very young age and did not have the opportunity to go to school. She later married a man who ended up being abusive and violent. At the age of 31 she ran away from her abusive husband and went in search of work.
Without any kind of plan or destination in mind, she wandered through different places until she finally reached Mererani, a village at the foot of the largest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro. This small town is the only place in the world where mining for a rare, violet-blue gemstone called tanzanite takes place. She knew that the best opportunity she had was to live and work as a miner, but she would never be able to do that as a woman. So she came up with a truly cunning plan…
“The women could not enter the mine area, so I entered bravely as a man, as a strong person. I took big pants, cut them into shorts and looked like a man. That is what I did,” said Pili. She changed her appearance, her way of acting, her name and from day one pretended to be a man. She was known as “Uncle Hussein” and no one ever knew her real identity. “I worked alongside men for 10 – 12 hours every day; they never suspected that I was a woman. I drank Konyagi (local gin) and joked with the men about which village women I liked,” Pili continued.
No one ever discovered or suspected that “Uncle Hussein” was actually a woman. She continued to work even harder than her colleagues, and eventually found two tanzanite stones so large that she made a fortune. With the money she earned she helped her family, built new homes for them and founded her own mining company, where she is in charge of more than 70 workers. But something happened that forced her to reveal her true identity …
A girl from the village claimed she had been raped by some of the miners and the police took “Uncle Hussein” in as a suspect. “When the police came, the man who had raped her said, ‘This is the man who did it,’ and they took me to the police station,” said Pili. She had no choice but to come clean.
