Young African Woman of Note- August 2013, Nyasha Sengayi

Nyasha Sengayi



This month I am proud to introduce you to one of those amazing young women, who work quietly without seeking attention or accolades, Nyasha. I first became aware of 28 year old Nyasha as one of the young women who visited the online portal Her Zimbabwe, a space where women come together to share stories, to comment and give voice to their opinions on a myriad issues that are part and parcel of the Zimbabwean Feminine experience. Nyasha was one of those whose comments caught my attention because clearly she wore the courage of her convictions very comfortably and she displayed a passion for zero tolerance towards violence against women.

My assessment of Nyasha as a young woman who cared deeply about the plight of women both in Zimbabwe and around the world was confirmed when one day, she visited the One Billion Rising Zimbabwe page on Face Book, just after the gang rape and mutilation of a Young Indian woman in December 2012. I blogged it here. Her rage and pain at this atrocious crime jumped off her post on FB and in it she stated that she had to do something.

 

“I have stopped crying and talking about Nirbhaya for now; at least for the few days that I will be running around to fight for her memory even in Zimbabwe. This is a promise to everyone who is upset about the issue, I will not sleep until what I want to do is done with my other sisters from other mothers. Watch this space. The time to stop talking has come. When I’m done with success, I will sit down and cry for her and all the other women we do not know about who have gone through similiar experiences....#Hope Alive 2013”  December 29, 2012.

Well, I watched the space and sure enough, on January 4, a memorial gathering for the deceased 23 year old medical student, organized by Nyasha and some of her colleagues took place at the Embassy of India in Harare. Here are some pictures.

The Indian Ambassador to Zimbabwe

Members of the Zimbabwe- Indian community

 

 

Nyasha at extreme left

Nyasha had become a regular visitor to the One Billion Rising Zimbabwe Face Book page and while I had been keeping it alive from my computer in the States, we desperately needed someone to start mobilizing on the ground. Nyasha’s ability to make a decision, to create a plan of action and then to execute was the reason I approached her and asked her if she would mobilize for the OBR Campaign in Zimbabwe. We skyped and she shared her ideas for the Rising and got to work immediately. Her creativity and wealth of ideas blew me away.From a road show, to spoken word and traditional dance, Nyasha encountered many obstacles as she tried to get various groups involved. She was tenacious in her efforts and after hitting many a brick wall, she found a few willing helpers and on February 14, 2013, Zimbabwe had a Rising at the Zimbabwe Art Gallery in Harare. Here are some pictures.

Miss Nyasha giving opening remarks at the Zim Rising 2013



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Done and dusted! And she walks on proud!

In March, Nyasha was invited to the American Embassy to speak to a group about the issue of Violence against women in Zimbabwe.

 

Nyasha doing what she does best.

She became involved in a campaign to find the rapists and murderers of 10 year old Stacey Munjoma who had been found abandoned in a field in Harare.

Stacey was found in the banana field on left. Crowd on the right headed to burial place.

  She and others availed themselves to the family to the deceased girl and held a memorial service for her also.

Mourners at the funeral carrying placards in protest 

Since then, Nyasha continues to be vocal on the issue of violence against women. She is an avid reader and eager student as she explores and defines her role in the women’s movement and what her feminism is about. She is also the founder of Source International Zimbabwe, an organization that seeks to create a global platform for women to resolve local challenges through movement building. It was founded in October 2012 with the aim of scaling up campaign- based programming for women’s rights and ultimately brings new and relevant action to the cause. Source is inspired by responsive citizens who are willing to stand against any form of violence against women

 

She has worked in the young women’s movement for the past three years and has a passion in exploring global issues affecting women. Her work is premised on opening space for effective Advocacy and Lobbing through Visual Documentation and Campaign Based Programming on the general status of Women in Zimbabwe.

She is also a writer and poet working on promoting the participation of women in telling their own stories through writing.

This year, Nyasha is the regional coordinator for the One Billion Rising for Justice, 2014. The focus of the campaign is justice for victims of violence and what this means in the Zimbabwean context.

 

Personally I am moved by the depth of passion that Nyasha has for ending violence against women and her commitment to giving voice to issues that affect women in Zimbabwe. She displays amazing leadership qualities, is creative in her problem solving strategies and gives of her time and resources with a generosity that is simply astounding. She is one to watch because I am confident that she will go far and will take other young women along with her.

Nyasha was involved in mobilizing young Zimbabweans to register to vote in the July 2013 elections

 

 Thank you Nyasha for all you do despite the challenging environment in which you operate. Thank you for being a fierce warrior woman, activist, spiritual being and role model. I hope that all who read this blog will be inspired by you. If there is one thing I associate with you it is your generosity of spirit, something I have only ever encountered in a few.  Here is one of my favorite quotes from Nyasha:

This picture is evocative of the Nyasha I have come to know: generous. Sharing playtime with a friend.

“In practice, intimidation is much more dangerous than physical violence. Who can set free an entire population of minds ridden with fear?" Nyasha Sengayi
 

Go on Nyasha, kick some serious **s! the world awaits you !

Young Woman of Note- August

Koketso Moeti- South Africa

Koketso caught my attention when I saw her commenting on Facebook on a mutual friend's wall. Her tone and her intelligent responses to development issues made me sit up and wonder who she was and what she did. My instincts told me that she was another unique young woman with a passion for positive social change and her articulation of how she thought this could happen was really impressive. I will let her talk to you herself. Thanks for all you do Koketso and thanks for being part of the re-branding of Our continent: showing the world that we have and are all we need.

 I am an ordinary 25 year old young woman, a servant and a mother to two beautiful children who are my world.

Despite the opulence we see all around us in South Africa, I also see too much needless suffering and growing up I wondered how that is possible. How one person can be worth billions, yet another dying of hunger? How one person can waste so much water, yet so many communities go without water. It was from this and my interest in the human mind that I felt compelled to try and go about changing this.

I found myself very frustrated about the way poverty alleviation is being handled, that a blue-print approach is being taken, which does not take people’s varying contexts into account. It was from this that a dream was born, a dream to create positive change- but differently. I had a dream that instead of the usual charity work one could actually empower people in a way that allowed them to break the cycle of poverty; create sustainable livelihoods which focused not on the accumulation of wealth, but rather on communities able to sustain themselves and families able to satisfy their most basic needs. This led to the founding of Operation ROOIGROND (www.rooigrond.co.za), which is a project that uses education and knowledge to promote access to information; alleviate poverty, eradicate substance abuse and all other social ills that go with poverty.

Young students of the early childhood learning center

Operation Rooigrond goes beyond building a library and facilitating positive change. It is about making a difference, bringing hope where there’s none. It is about lighting up a spark in people’s lives, a spark which they in turn would carry to another person leading to a fire within the community; which is bound to spread out and reach society at large. We also hope to be a vehicle through which we can actually have the voices of the marginalised heard and eventually even influence and alter policy. For too long the poor have gone ignored and here we say, despite people’s circumstances, let them be provided with an opportunity to be active participants in the creation of a better world.

The youth engaged in dance

There is a misconception of my work and it is perceived to be ‘anti-government’ or ‘controversial’, rather than ‘pro-people’ and ‘pro-justice’. As much as it isolates one, I am very fortunate to be doing what I love to do and this gives me more opportunity to immerse myself in it.

Community gathering

Apart from Operation: ROOIGROND, I am also the South African Correspondent of Safe World (Please seehttp://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/about/the-ngo/correspondents/koketso-moeti.html), which allows me to share news affecting women and children on the ground. Too often the plight of rural and marginalized people, as well as their stories of hope and victory, are ignored and this has given me a platform from which to share such stories and raise awareness of the challenges faced.

Temporary shelter to help with community relief after a fire

I also serve as the Provincial Coordinator of the North-West branch of the South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO North-West). This has provided me with a platform from which to connect and serve in the province as a whole, a challenge I really have come to enjoy and love. It is also the means through which I fund the Operation: ROOIGROND administration costs and also allows me to reach further for the purposes of sharing the experiences of women in South Africa.

Rooigrond Early Childhood Learning Center

I am also an aspiring writer, with the ambition of using words to promote social transformation, my blog can be viewed on http://koketsomoeti.wordpress.comSocial media is another way I try to further the various causes in which I am involved, so I am quite active on a number of them including Twitter (@ORooigrond and @Kmoeti), Facebook (http://facebook.com/kmoetiand http://facebook.com/orooigrond); LinkedIn (http://za.linkedin.com/in/kmoeti1) and Google Plus (kmoeti@gmail.com).

Please find here-under some links which may assist you in discovering more about me and my work:

An article written by me for The Sunday Times about my project, Operation: ROOIGROND- 'The World is in My Hand' (published on the 10th June 2012): http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/2012/06/10/the-world-is-in-my-hand

Safe World for Women profile: http://goo.gl/JL84w

Operation: ROOIGROND website: www.rooigrond.co.za

‘The World Through My Eyes’ blog: http://koketsomoeti.wordpress.com

In the media:

ROOIGROND Response to North-West State of the Province Address:
http://goo.gl/ux3HT

Rooigrond People take on Premier: http://goo.gl/4B3PM

Waiting For the ‘Promised Land’: http://goo.gl/47LgC

Young African Woman of Note-July

Elizabeth Vimbai Mhangami

 

 

It is with great pleasure and a heart bursting with pride that I introduce to you Our July Young African Woman of Note.

Elizabeth happens to be my youngest sister and so writing this piece is at once easy but daunting a task. Elizabeth was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She is someone we in Zimbabwe refer to as a “born free” because she was born after the birth of Republic of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was declared an independent state in April of 1980 and Elizabeth Vimbai graced the world with her arrival in November of that year.

Vimbi as we know her did her primary and secondary school education in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and later went to the United States, where she studied political science and women’s studies at Loyola University, Chicago.

After working for a brief period in the United States, Vimbi made a decision to set up a not-for profit organization in Bulawayo in order to assist AIDS orphans. However her idea of assistance was to look at ways in which she could provide assistance without breeding aid dependency, which is a huge problem in Zimbabwe and the African continent. In her own words in an interview in the New York Times, 2011: “You start having conversations with yourself about aid and dependency what is the most effective way of helping that would do the least amount of harm?”

Catha, a child head

Vimbai works with youth as opposed to young orphans. These you are heads of households and this basically means that after the death of both parents to HIV/AIDS, these young people have the sole responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings. They are responsible for their food, clothing and school attendance. This means that they have had to drop out of school in order to generate income for their siblings to survive and also they are responsible for cooking cleaning and all the activities that come with parenting. Many of the youth were about 9-12 when they were left as child heads of households but they were in their teens when Vimbai started working with them.

A child head and her family

Vimbai is the founder and executive director of Vanavevhu, a Shona word meaning “children of the soil.” Through Vanavevhu the youth and their siblings are able to get food, shelter, basic necessities and healthcare and this has freed the youth to attend the program which Vanavevhu offers them. The program teaches entrepreneurial skills and this is paired with bee keeping, candle making and market gardening. These ventures are generating profit for the youth and a sense of financial security that they have never had.

Clearing the garden

Vanavevhu started out with ten families, supporting 32 children in total in 2010. To date another twenty families have been added bringing together over 90 children and seniors benefiting from Vanavevhu support.

In the classroom

With their teacher Vimbai

What Vimbai and her organization have given the orphaned youth in Bulawayo, beyond the obvious material and physical benefits, is to demonstrate to them that someone cares. Before Vanavevhu, many of these child heads of households were very vulnerable to exploitation in the communities they lived in. The girls were particularly vulnerable to predatory males. However having Vimbai and her team as their advocates has given them a sense of stability and security. Many of them were not moved from their communities in order to keep the siblings enrolled in school and in familiar surroundings.

Arrival of Vanavevhu chickens

Vimbai is fierce about protecting her youth and has an amazing understanding of the issues that they face. She brings to her program a very youthful vibe and they can relate to her easily because in so many ways she is one of them. Her keen perception of what typical teenagers need to go through, gives her youth space to be themselves, make mistakes and to move on. She deals with resilient young people, who in so many ways have had to grow up very quickly in order to fill the role of parents for their siblings. Many of them were vendors, selling candy cookies and matches in order to make a living. Read their amazing stories and be absolutely inspired here.

Vanavevhu dance!

When I ask Vimbai what challenges she faces with her work she talks about the fact that the youth are the forgotten ones in most of the development discourse. Her age group is not a targeted “vulnerable” population by large donor agencies and so very often she cannot apply for big grant funding for her program. She therefore works tirelessly to raise fund herself by holding speaking engagements back to back when she comes to the United States for board meetings. In a way this is to her advantage because she is not bound by donor agency rules and regulations, which are not always compatible with what she is doing on the ground. She therefore relies on the support of individuals or organizations that are at liberty to fund any program they wish to.

Vanavevhu Candles

Another challenge which she so articulately describes here is the vulnerability of young women to men who prey on them because they are wealthy. She describes the allure of the promise of clothes, a cell phone, and money and how a young 15 year old may be hard pressed to resist this and abandon the program, which offers long term benefits as opposed to short term gratification. Vimbai works hard to assist and counsel the young women into making good choices in order to spare them exchanging sex for money, so that they can avoid diseases and having to depend on a man who may at any point abandon them. As a feminist this is a very important part of her work, and she hopes to impart some of her knowledge to the young women in her program. As a feminist she works with the young men also, so that they understand the inexcusability of physical violence towards women and she insists on mutual respect and equitable allocation of chores and duties in a gender-neutral fashion.

Vanavevhu Girls

I have often questioned Vimbai on how it is that she can do what she does in such a challenging environment where there are incessant power outages, a tough political climate, isolation from family (we are all in the US and she is in Zimbabwe), lack of a vibrant cosmopolitan social life such as the one she had in Chicago, her response is simple: ‘these young people are the future of Zimbabwe. Whether we like it or not, those who can leave are leaving and probably not coming back. Those with well to do parents are all gone and what is left is these AIDS orphans who no one even thinks about. Not government or even NGOs. If we truly are serious about the future of Zimbabwe then these are the young people who will be running the country and if we do not try to at least give them basic critical thinking skills business skills and a sense of self worth, then Zimbabwe will be in even deeper trouble than it is now.’

Duncan and Brian preparing the bee smoker

The Bulawayo region in Zimbabwe is largely underserved and does not have as many opportunities for young people as does the capital city, Harare. Bulawayo is also the center of the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980’s where tens of thousands of Ndebele people were slaughtered by government forces, leaving some terrible scars and a lot of anger and resentment. Giving the youth of this town hope is one way in which Vimbai does her part to ensure that the future of this region is not so bleak.

Musa, a child head

Vimbai’s take on development work is this: “If every African /Zimbabwean in the Diaspora, would take up just one social justice issue and DO something about it, then we would see positive social change.” She is of the firm belief that while we need assistance, Africans have to take responsibility for their continent and be at the forefront of articulating our issues, prescribing solutions, and then be the leaders who implement the action plans. This ensures that there is a real positive outcome and that it is permanent and self perpetuating. She often shakes her head as she comments on how for fifty years Africa has been the recipient of donor funding but the continent seems worse off now than it was fifty years ago. “We have allowed people to commercialize our problems and to commoditize our woes and the result is that these problems will never be allowed to disappear because then someone’s paycheck will have to vanish. Therefore the problems persist because the solutions offered are designed to fail. This is what the development industry is predicated upon”

 Mthulisi, a child head

                                                                                                   Sipha, a child head

Vimbai exemplifies the term “walking the walk”. She is committed to Zimbabwe in a way that many speak of but very few have demonstrated in a tangible way. Despite the many bureaucratic obstacles and intimidation she has stood her ground and with sheer determination and courage established what has to be one of the most innovative organizations that I have ever seen. I am proud that she is my sister, but more importantly I am proud of the high standards she has set for her youth and her staff at Vanavevhu. Her insistence that things be executed properly and with due contentiousness has resulted in a group of youth and staff who are proud of themselves and what they have achieved thus far and instilled a deep sense of ownership of the program and the enterprise that ensures that it can only succeed. She does this by having high expectations of herself and this is the role model she is to the youth and all those who work with them. Her passion is infectious as is her humor and her mischief and her amazing belly-laugh! Thank you Vimbai for all you do and for the amazing human being that you are.

You are a true visionary as exemplified by this apt picture of you! Beautiful!

Vimbai can be reached on facebook as Lizzabetty Mhangami and on the Vanavevhu websiteVanavevhu

On Human Trafficking

 Modern Day Slavery

Hallo, you are welcome once again. It has become very clear to me that we have no choice other than to talk to each other and to consolidate our strength and work together. We have no choice but to do this because the task ahead is not an easy one and neither is it a simple one. You see while you and I share our womanhood in common, you share your whiteness with your men and I my blackness with my men. You would think on the surface, that this should not be a problem, but you and I know that our history together, as women on the continent of Africa and  in far flung foreign lands where we were sold as labor, was one of  mistress and servant. You were mistress and I was servant. This went on for centuries and I have often asked myself why it is that you allowed the inhumane treatment meted out to us to carry on. I guess it served you well: you had us to do your work for you while you lounged under cool breezy trees sipping cool drinks. We washed your clothes, cooked your food, cared for your children to the neglect of our own. Perhaps this easy life of leisure was promised you by your men as a way to get you to travel to Africa and to the Caribbean and to Australia and to the Americas: The life of a madam with the natives as servants.

Sure, it was not you who part took of this kind of relationship, but it was your fore mothers and what happened is that a mindset and a set of rules was put in place whereby white people enjoy a position of privilegereserved solely for them. They walk this earth with a sense of entitlement to resources and a sense of superiority to all other humans on this planet. This is manifest by the fact that being white brings with it a myriad opportunities which non white people have to struggle and fight for. This happens in your lands and in the lands that you colonized.

When a people’s soul is plundered, degraded and dehumanized, when their land is taken by force and they are made slaves in their own land, when a people is savagely uprooted and brutally subdued through the whip, the chains and the burden of the plough, they begin to believe that they are cursed. Even after they are “free” in the foreign lands to which they were taken, and they have gained ‘independence” in their own land, from colonizers, they are still exploited by white people and they are still made dependent by being forced to partake of economic systems that rob them blind all the while telling them that they are giving them assistance. White people have for centuries perfected a system where they are always at an advantage no matter what happens. Then they turn around and offer us “help”, that benevolence that masks malevolence and the real motives behind the  so called help.

You look uncomfortable, but please I am not talking to you like this to make you feel guilty. That is such a useless emotion because it solves nothing. Guilt is not what this story is about. I am recounting this story to you so that you may read with knowledge. Yes read with skepticism because the story that has been told to you in your history books is a LIE! Your televisions tells you lies as do your news papers who thrive and get sales from pedaling dark stories about Africa and Africans. They tell you of failing systems but do not bother to explain to you who and what is behind the failures. Look at how your leaders pick which countries to wage war on, or which dictators to depose. There is always something for them to gain something that involves the development of your lands to the detriment and death of our lands.

I have to tell you that they do not do this on their own. Yes that is where you and I come together: Our men have failed us. Black men have totally and utterly let black women down. We cannot sleep comfortably or be complacent in the knowledge that our men will protect us. Yes that is a truth that hurts me to admit to you, but I have no choice. Truth telling has to be on both sides if we are to form an alliance you and I. Our men steal our children and sell them off to your men. That is putting it simply. You are shocked?

 I want to show you something. This picture makes my soul howl in anguish but I have to look and so do you. This picture represents a new kind of slavery whereby thousands of women and even girls are taken by their fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and sold into slavery. The difference is that they are not bound in chains and neither are they sent over to your lands in ships. They get visas and they are well dressed and sent to Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain, Ireland Spain, Russia, and the USA, where they are sold into sexual slavery. Yes, sexual slavery because there is a market for black flesh there in your lands, a market that has always been there. The consumers are your men, the ones who you are fathering children with, lying next to at night. They have a penchant for black flesh. Yes you look horrified but like I have told you before your men are very skilled in deception and cunning. They have you believing that the life you lead is perfect and while you are preoccupied with thickening your lips with collagen and getting buttock implants, they are busy trawling the dark alley ways for places where they can access black women.

Image from Unreported World 2012, human trafficking from Nigeria to Italy

But just think about what these women have gone through. Look at them and tell me you believe you are looking at willing participants. Many of them have been lied to. They have been told they are going to nursing school, or to work as nannies so that they can send money home to help their families. They are taken from remote villages and handed over to pimps and dealers by naïve parents. These pimps tell the girls that they have to pay back the money they owe for the visa and travel and they are in bondage for a lifetime working to enrich a greedy black man with a gaping hole where his heart ought to be. On arrival to Italy, Britain, Belgium etc, they are stripped and isnpected and molested as you can see.

Black women have been deceived many times. Do you remember Sarah Bartman, the South African Khoi-San woman and a few other women who were lied to by the brother of their Dutch slave master and taken to Europe where they endured untold horrors as they were publicly displayed naked in galleries and museums all over Europe. Their genitalia were gawked at and their buttocks poked and prodded because they were “unusual”. Imagine the indignity and the dehumanization that accompanies being treated like a zoo animal of exotic origin and have people pay to view your peculiar sex organs. This was in the 17^th century, and it is happening now, only employing modern methods to try to conceal it all. White people are still paying for access to Black women’s bodies as objects and commodities/consumerables.

Image from French Collection La Belle Venus

 Is it not barbaric to see the utter misery in these poor women and to continue molesting them as this white man is doing? This man is someone’s husband someone’s father and yet he will debase another’s wife, another’s daughter without a thought. That is because to white men black women are not human beings like their own women. We are sex objects. As one sick man I had the misfortune to meet once said “You are built for sex. Your breasts your buttocks those strong thighs! I just want to bite into you!”

The tenderness of lovemaking is reserved for you, while these poor black women get the brutal animalistic ravaging, because they are nothing but objects to be paid for, used and left without a backward glance. Until the next time.

Not all your men are like this but when you look at the numbers it is staggering and one cannot help but think that there are a lot of them out there who are into this. From the highest offices in your lands to the lowly construction worker, each feels superior to and therefore entitled to black flesh.  Your pastors, priests, lawyers doctors and other respected community members are all involved in this. That is the only way to explain how thousands of human beings can be moved from one continent to another and tucked away quietly to sit half naked in shop front windows displaying their bodies for sale. Armed with a few dollars in his pocket a white man can get easy access to a black woman’s body. It’s a King’s life for white men, isn’t it? But at what expense? How many more souls must howl in anguish night and day before this awful trade is stopped? Every year from Nigeria alone about 10,000 women are trafficked into prostitution every year! These women are paraded naked before brothels and inspected and then paid for based on their assets. They are forced to have sex for as little as $13 and if they want to quit the have to first pay $40,000-$78,000 to the pimps (UN estimates).

Image from  Unreported World 2012, human trafficking from Nigeria to Italy.

The manner in which black women are treated is totally deplorable. Our own men sell us off to be abused and perpetually violated by white men. There is this agreement between black men and white men that black women are chattel, domestic animals in our own lands and sex slaves in foreign lands. Tell me how do you as a white woman feel about this? I ask you because I need your help in this battle. I need to know that I can count on you to put an end to this hideous trade that robs us of our humanity. I need you to be so moved that you will do some research, snoop around your community, city town and see if you can sniff out a rat. I need you to talk to your friends about this so that you start to question the character of your legislators and those who represent you. I need you to investigate bills that have been languishing and that have not been tabled on the whole issue of human trafficking.

As for my fellow black women:  We need to wake up and refuse the lies and deceit we are fed about where we are going and what we will do when we get there. We need to vote with our eyes open and we need to start taking to the streets and refusing to be treated in this way. We need to demand that our leaders do what we voted them in to do, which is to provide stability and an economy in which we can make a living, so that we are not compelled to send our daughters to Babylon with a wish and a prayer, all because we are poor. We demand that girls be valued as much as boys so that selling them off to lands where mother has never tread becomes a taboo.  We need to fight patriarchy so that we have more say in what happens to our children and not just their fathers.

Are you not tired of seeing images of yourself such as the ones I have shown here? We need to stand in the streets rend our garments and walk stark naked if that is the only way we will be taken seriously. Believe me they is nothing more potent than a sea of angry naked women to force change. We have to do this for our daughters and ourselves. Those who are educated in cities and with resources need to help out the ones who are in the villages where most of the girls are taken from. At the very least please start talking about this problem when you visit your relatives in the villages! Tell them where their children end up! Show them images such as the one I have shared here with you.

Image from Jason Vaughn Jorgensen

I want to leave you with an image that is somewhat different and I want you to meditate on it. You see a group of white (American and European) women in a village in Nigeria doing a fertility dance with smiles on their faces. They are married in this village and treated with utmost respect. How does this make you feel when you see black men treating you with such respect, in a remote village where anything could happen to you but it does not? These women can leave if they so wish, they dance because they choose to they married into this village because they chose to. They will have sex with their husbands because they choose to. Now spare a thought to the black woman trafficked and who is forced into having sex with one strange white man after another. No dancing, no joy, ZERO respect.

Image from Hope for Nigeria

Useful Links
Trafficking of women from Nigeria to Italy
Human Trafficking- Global Report

Welcome- Please, leave your shoes at the door.

Hallo. How are you? I am well if you are well too. You are welcome to my home. Please do come in. Eh, but please leave your shoes at the door. Yes like that. Thank you. And while you are at it please leave your hat of  pity, your coat of condescension, your walking stick of superiority as well as your purse right there on that bench outside. Don’t worry, they will be safe. No one will steal them. The youth around here have no use for that purse if they must take the hat, coat and stick. Too burdensome they say. You can pick them up on your way out. That is if you still need them. I just need to you come inside as you are so that we can talk a little. Thank you.

No, no, please. Come and sit next to me on my mat. I know that last time I gave you that chair, but just for today, I want us to sit together on my mat. Thank you. I know you will understand. You see I would offer you that seat, the only seat in the house as my guest. That is our custom. The guest must be more comfortable than the host. But you see, doing that has made some people feel like they are better than the host. Some even walk away believing that the host himself thinks that he is inferior to his guest. But this is not so. That is a big misunderstanding. And it is our fault really. We should have explained better the real meaning of this custom of hospitality, which many of your people mistake for stupidity. Today we will sit down on my mat together, so that I am not looking up at you from my mat, and you are not looking down at me from the seat. That is the best way to talk to one another. When you go back you can explain to them.

Now we are seated, I greet you formally and welcome you once again. I am glad you have come to see me bearing gifts. But before we do anything else, allow me to speak to you today. Yes, I know you think that you know all you need to know about me, and I also understand that you think you know how best you can help me. But today I just want you to listen only. Don’t interrupt me. In fact, in here you have no mouth, but you have two wide open ears leading to an even more open heart. I am glad there are no men here today, because I want to talk to you as my fellow woman. I know our educated people call you many things, over there; neo liberal, liberal with a white- savior- complex. I will not call you any such names because in this land, names are potent and I do not want to invoke the things that those names describe.

Our people say that tears are best dried with one’s own hand. Please allow me to dry my own tears because I know whence they come. Hand me a cloth to do it, Put an arm over my shoulder to comfort me, but let me do it myself, so that I may not be ashamed and humiliated in front of the children, that a grown woman like me needed a hand to wipe her tears.

There is something you do not know about me. I think a lot, about many different things. Our women here have been thinking and thinking for centuries before your people came here with the Bible and guns. Perhaps you do not know this because your elders did not teach you, but before your people even existed, our people were there. Many of the things you claim as your inventions and enjoy over there on your side of the world, have their roots right here in this land. So when you look at me in this condition, do not be fooled by what you think you see.

That I am poor, does not mean my mind and spirit are impoverished. That I am feeble from hunger does not mean that I am weak of will. That my children are naked does not mean they are not clothed in pride and dignity. That I am uneducated by your standards and using your books does not mean I am lacking in wisdom.  That I carry many burdens whose source you know nothing about does not mean I am powerless.

Do you know that every time you come here and bring me your help, I am left feeling diminished? I am left with the kind of feeling I imagine I would have if I bared my nakedness in the market square. You look confused. Let me explain. It is not the help that is the problem, but it is the manner in which you help me. You assume that you know better than me what I need. In fact, you never ask me what I want, or how I feel about the help you bring. Then you leave, sometimes without saying goodbye, or waiting to see if I am doing any better after the help.

Sometimes I am relieved when you leave because then I can use my mind again to get on with my life. How is it that help can feel like a burden? It should bring relief, no? Yet I sometimes feel as though this help comes at such a heavy price, a price I would sooner not pay. I have lived in this land all my life, as have my great grandmothers and my mothers and millions of women before them. All of us have lived, raised children and laughed, loved, cried, worked, sang, danced and died in this land long before your people came. We understand this land, its hardships and challenges better than you or anyone from outside can. It is tough here, and as a woman most of the burden of life falls on you.

Did you know that, from the time I was aware that I was a female, I knew what that meant for me? I knew that I would have to fight intelligently, wisely, cunningly with a barely perceptible razor sharp tenacity for the things I wanted. I also knew from an early age that there would be times when I would have to bow, so as not to be broken, and there would be times when I would have to stand firm and shout, so as not to die. I learnt how to decipher the changing winds, the changing seasons so that I knew when to push and when to pull, when to be still and when to move, when to talk and when to be silent. That is how I wielded my power, by discerning which battles were worth fighting. The women in my family are very strong and I learned to empower myself through them. I learnt to be like the wind: we don’t see it and we cannot touch it, but we see its effects, trees swaying and ripples on river. We see its power in sturdy baobab trees uprooted and sent flying across fields like twigs in the breeze and waves that heave and vomit over entire cities, grinding everything into fine sand.

I don’t mean to sound rude but that is why your empowerment talk is senseless to me. How do you empower an empowered woman? Just because you do not understand my empowerment does not mean it does not exist. It is the same ridiculous way your people have spoken about this land, as though it came into existence the minute they set eyes on it, or the way they would say there were no people, only savage natives. Do you see the problem? You have inherited the belief that we here in this land are savages who need to be civilized so that we become more like you. Is that not so? Yet you are the same ones who have proved that all human beings originated in this land. You have proved it with your science, but you do not believe it in your hearts. If you believed it, then you would not see me as a lesser being than you. You would appreciate that my different color, approach, culture and language, songs and stories were as important to me as yours are to you, and you would respect that. You would let me tell my stories and sing my songs as you do your own. However you continue to see me as lesser, as needy so that you can bring your help and you walk away feeling very good. You walk away feeling as though you have accomplished something to go back to your land and report to your bosses that you helped the African woman. You take pictures of me, horrible pictures when I am at my worst. How many times have you ever said: go and change, rub some oil on your body and smile. You don’t even ask me where I want my picture taken. Instead you want it taken at the water pump or with me nursing a sick baby or with my lips cracked and parched from hunger. Then you parade these pictures in your land telling them to donate money to this poor African woman so she can feed her children. You do not even know my name; you call me Lilian because you fear you will swallow your tongue if you try to say the name my parents gave me. You don’t even try. You give me a name that makes you feel comfortable just like the help you give; to you ease your mind so you can sleep better at night.

Tell me, has this ever been about me? Be honest with yourself because the answer to that question has deeper consequences for you than for me. I am familiar with the ways of your ancestors, and I know what they did. Everyone here knows this, and while we do not dwell on it every day, these ancient trees, rivers, mountains and caves bore witness and tell the story day after day, year after year. The issue is: do you know the true story or the one you listened to at your mother’s breast? It is that story you need to probe, to dissect and to turn inside out, in order to answer the question I asked you. You have to do this if you really want to be of help, but you also have to accept that you need to be helped. This new world requires us to help each other, and that can only happen when you come to the realization that your knowledge about me is deficient, and your ideas about me are flawed at best and false at worst. You need to accept that the narrative you have been fed over and over again about me is told from the perspective of your people, in whose best interests it was to tell it that way. They had to justify their treatment of my ancestors by telling those back home that we were inept and unable to function save as servants to them and they in turn would administer our lands and all the wealth they discovered in the ground. They had to justify mass killings and forced removal of my people to your lands where they were slaves on plantations, if they made it across the temperamental sea. Seriously, look at me: Am I as helpless as you think? Ask yourself how I survive in your absence, or even before you came here.

You look worn out. I think that is enough for today. Just remember that the world is ever changing and to question all you read about me, even that which is written by my own people because some of our own have motives that are less than honorable. That is the way it is. You never know, we are the same age, you and I, and maybe our great grandchildren will run into each other. Think about what their interaction will be, if we do not rewrite the narrative. Think of how our meeting may be an opportunity for cultural exchanges that will be the yarn we use to weave a different story which we will tell our grandchildren. What that history will be is in our hands, but first you have to listen and hear me when I speak and allow me to see, not pity, but the power that is mine reflected in your eyes.

You have done well by stopping by. Excuse my manners, I did not even offer you water to drink. But I think today, what happened here was more important than following custom.  Yes, you are right; sometimes we make progress by breaking with tradition. Travel well and see you when you come back. By the way, if you still have a hard time calling me by my name, then just call me Mama Afrika.