So that you know - more from Malawi

 
At the 11th AWID International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development (November 14, 2008, in Cape Town), Geeta Misra painted the landscape for ‘The Power of Movements’ by suggesting five common elements amongst movements: a feeling of injustice; an understanding of oppression as a political condition; the desire to change political conditions or to shift power; the belief in the power of many; and the presence of the powerless.
 
In all the regions visited, the five elements are present and the rage they have ignited is being used to create small spaces and cracks for building a grassroots women’s movement. There are signs that anger is being combined with a growing willingness to fight back. There are many things women are demanding. These demands are beginning to mobilise them in the struggle; to unite them into a potentially powerful force for social change.
 
The women we met belong to either the Women’s Forum or the Coalition of Women Living with HIV and AIDS. The Women’s Forum is a loose network of women’s organisations and individuals spread across the northern region. Other than  dancing, singing, and showing off their work, the women pointed out the following:

They are still denied land and yet they are the ones who labour, develop and preserve the knowledge of agri­culture, of plants, domestic livestock, fishing etc. Although these skills are vital to the survival and comfort of the middle class, there is no recognition of this fact - in­deed, their vital skills and knowledge are denigrated as inferior.

Women are developing abnormal bodily structures due to the kind of ARV that they are taking (Sindi knows more about this condition and will be sharing her knowledge later).

The young people who are organising are doing so with hardly any resources (financial, visual aids etc). They don’t engage in creative activities such as
-       writing
-       singing
-       music
-       photography
-       painting/drawing
-       organising gigs or parties
-       story-telling
-       dancing
-       woodwork or metalwork
They are sharing whatever knowledge they have but will soon run out of steam. Young people get tired quickly if there is no creativity.
 
In one district, Karonga, home to two JASS-trained political activists, Margaret and Caroline, there have been frequent earthquakes, as many as 60 since the year began. There is no word about it in the media. The people living in the area don’t know what is happening; all that they have been told is that they should stop sleeping in their houses and sleep in tents instead. The tents are not adequate and the few available are allocated in the most ‘opaque’ manner. The area is facing a dangerous, unequal, and increased environmental catastrophe. Mining of uranium has started in the area and could be the cause of these earthquakes. Women are organising a protest march in two weeks time.
 
Girls are being trafficked to South Africa for the World Cup.

None of the women we visited, nor their organisations, has a computer. To have access to email is expensive and far from where the women stay.

They don’t know how to raise money and from whom.

The Dangers of One Story

[The latest dispatch from Hope Chigudu, this time from the North of Malawi, with Sindi Blose]

It’s difficult to know people till you meet them in their environment. The workshop situation can present what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian writer, calls, “The Danger of a Single Story”:

“You can’t tell a single story of any place, person or people. There are many stories that create us. The single story creates stereotypes. There are other stories that are just as important to tell. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. The consequence of the single story is that it robs people of dignity – it emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are the same. … When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we discover a kind of paradise.” (Google Chimanda Nogizi Adichie’s speech at Ted Talks)

In their communities, the ‘JASS girls’ have created what constitutesa kind of ‘bank account’ of relationships nurtured by trust and collaboration that they can draw upon to mobilize individual and collective assets to achieve a common purpose.

We visited Judy and Lilian (and some of the women) of Women’s Forum in Northern Province of Malawi. The Forum deals with various and complex issues related to women’s empowerment, in a disempowering environment. It was clear that Judy and Lillian have been able to speak above the loud noise that usually muffles ideas and political instincts of women living with HIV and AIDS. Judy and Lilian have not allowed their energies and agency to be stifled by lack of resources. Their plan was based on mobilising women to demand ARVs to be brought nearer to the people. They did. They invited key stakeholders in the health Ministry, HIV and AIDS organisations and the chiefs. The two of them organised numbers of women to demand mobile clinics to take ARVs to the people. The work they have done is powerful, inspiring, and transformative. They have not covered all the communities but they will, eventually.

Then there is the story of young women whose plan was to work more with young people in schools to raise awareness on HIV and AIDS and other, related issues. They took us to two schools to show off their mobilisation power. Violet, one of the young women that JASS has trained, is always shy and hardly says a thing during the workshops. We saw her transforming there, right before our eyes. She talked to young people in the most interesting manner. She engaged all her senses! She was participatory as she talked about trafficking and HIV and AIDS in the context of the world cup in Joburg. She created her own language that young people understood. One could see that the language she was using was empowering, thrilling, and told more than one story. There was an air of poetry, a sense of hope and a deep commitment to what she was doing. Mouths open in amazement, we felt connected to her (and other young women who were with her) at the deepest level.

Reclaiming Women Space and Voices: Crossing the Line in Zimbabwe

The gathering on the 6th March 2010 was a public one at the National Art Gallery in Harare, Zimbabwe – one of the events taking place this month to commemorate International Women’s Day. The panel discussion was part of a full-day series, punctuated by the young women who run YOWLI – Young Women Leadership Institute – with their exciting and Zimbabwean contextualized Vagina Monologues; women poets and women musicians, and films on women by women.

Morals and/or Pleasure: Women Media and the Creation of Discourses on Sexuality – this was the title of a panel discussion I was part of on the 6th of March.

There was Reyhana, a freelance journalist, and with the Humanitarian Information Facility Centre. She aptly brought with her posters she had made with newspaper cuttings of stories that covered women and men. The stark difference on the portrayal was hard-hitting. I suppose many were so much bombarded with negative media messages that they had not taken the time to think through the negative media portrayal of women and the impact that might have on societal attitudes on women. She was in effect challenging media practitioners on the way they portray women, and the thought that needs to go into writing as a practitioner should think about doing no harm. The point that came out was that the media tends to put labels on women, and many times these labels are negative, disempowering, and tend to portray women as lesser beings, only seen when the negative happens. There was also a reminder to the readers of the material produced in the media (and news media has a very powerful effect and influence on our way of thinking and perceiving things) to be analytical and critical of that messaging.

There was Catherine, who insisted to be introduced to the audience as a woman. Catherine’s focus was on her experiences as a girl child growing up, as a woman – deciding on her adult life and her career choice (law); which have had her confronting constant negative stereotypes on what a woman should be, and how she should behave. She also touched on one contentious advert that has PSI (Population Services International) fill our Zimbabwean landscape with billboards insinuating that small houses are the cause of the spread of HIV infection – and, of course, small houses are women. Catherine did a blog on this advert on the Kubatana website
(http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/women/091207cm.asp?sector=OPIN) where she aptly describes the adverts which are truly horrific and, I believe, a sure way of destroying our society through entrenching such negative and damaging stereotypes of women.

Third to speak was Charity Maruta, on her making of the film Sex in the City, a film that used local people, exploring how sex was discussed, understood and practiced in Harare. The issues all came down to power, money, technology and control.

The discussion provoked such strong reactions, and some unbelievable. A couple of men’s response was that these messages would be listened to by society if they let men say it! Obviously for me, that means the struggle continues, and we need more women like Catherine, Charity and Reyhana to continue carrying the torch as we women forge ahead in crossing the line, and no more going back. We truly commemorated it in style, dramatizing, performing, saying and discussing the things that are usually not verbalized in our society.

The Springing Up of Herbs and Passions

This time we moved from the workshop rooms to the communities. We are humbly learning from the experience of the those who live on the margin, from their perspective, from their perseverance, from their assertiveness, from their desire to make something of their lives, from their love for one another and their determination to survive the ravages of HIV and AIDS. The ‘graduates’ of JASS whose projects we have visited, so far, are implementing their plans.

We visited Lena’s project. It’s built around the mass production of healing herbs. Malawi is poor and not everyone can afford ARVs. So we met women and some men organising around herbal gardens. Young ones, old, and in between - we met them all. As we talked, we realised that it's not just the herbs that are springing up; new passions are also springing up from within communities. They are springing up among the people who have been pushed to the margins of society. For us as JASS, we are privileged to tell the world that the forgotten women, the excluded ones, are right here, where it hurts. JASS’ political project is on creating spaces to make their voices louder, their needs known and their ‘bodies’ visible. It’s not surprising then that yesterday we shared mats, drinks and sisterhood, we stood in solidarity with them, they shared collective pain, their dreams, their sacred stories, their collective yearnings that another kind of world is possible. Together, we imagined a better life and a better society. As we listened to the whispers of hope from these who live on the edge of society, two women chiefs spoke with the kind of courage that defies poverty. We were compelled to believe that grassroots movement in Malawi is not possible but has already began. On our way back to town, drained, tired, sweaty but excited, Sindi whispered, ‘Hope, our liberation is bound up with that of these women, I would like to come and stay with them much longer.’

Today, we head north. It’s a long trip but we are motivated by the knowledge that where hope has been stolen and dignity trampled upon there is a crying need for the space to imagine a better life and a better society. We shall co-create the space.

Hope Chigudu, on the road in Malawi

No longer Invisible

Therefore i will not keep silent.I will speak out in the anguish of my
spirit, i will complain in the bitterness of my soul. (JOB 7 vs 11). As we
approach International Women's Day, i find this verse quite inspirational.
It conjures into my mind the women who are suffering is silence, the
defenseless woman whose bare chest is ripped by bullets in Dafur, the
starved and hungry woman in Haiti, the lesbian whose life is threatened by
the Bahati Bill in Uganda and the woman who has to toil for survival in
Zimbabwe. All these women from different parts of the world, but with one
thing in common, their excruciating pain. I am not a sadist and i don't mean
to paint a gloomy picture, but yes, they are all victims of circumstances,
victims of men's insatiable appetite for power,victims of corrupt systems,
victims of patriarchy where men make decisions on behalf of these women
under guise of culture.

I feel that on such a day, Women have nothing to celebrate. How can I
celebrate when my fellow sister is bound by chains of misery, battered and
bruised . When women in Zimbabwe are beaten to the pulp by police armed to
teeth when they dare mobilise to raise their concerns as citizens, when the
South African lesbian women are exposed to HIV/AIDS through curative rape
and the Kenyan Albino woman's life is in peril. Women bear the brunt of
social , economic and political woes.Yet, they are often treated with very
little or no respect.Where i come from they say where two elephants mate its
the grass that suffers. This is true of women who are often at the receiving
end where men's hunger for power and love for glory meet, it appears no one
else matters. Today because of such rapacity countries are war torn and
reeling in poverty, it is women who have to take the toll.

At times i am over whelmed with emotion and i feel i cannot do anything for
all these women, then i realize i have a voice. I might be small in stature
and not have the muscle to wrestle, but my voice will not fail me, it will
continue shouting until women are respected,appreciated and emancipated it
will continue shouting.

To all women i say the things that divide us are nothing compared to the
power that binds us. Its' no use hating a fellow sister because of race,
sexual orientation or past mistakes. Together we can make some noise
wherever you are, make use of that voice.

-By Miles Tanhira(Information & Comm Officer at GALZ)
Zimbabwe

Give Them Wings to Fly: Crossing the Line in Zambia

Give Them Wings to Fly: Crossing the Line in Zambia


A dozen young women have converged on the Protea Hotel Cairo Road in Lusaka, as JASS (Just Associates) Southern Africa continues with the process of movement-building in Zambia. This part of the process is Leadership Training: Young Women Political Facilitators Workshop. The young women have been drawn from various civil society organizations, while also selected for their particular individual skills, potential, and obviously an enthusiasm for doing things differently in line with movement-building. The first two days have been amazing – with the young women, most of who were in the November 2009 Strategy Meeting in Lusaka, displaying a huge potential for becoming political facilitators. As articulated by one of the young women, this morning – their goal is to become bold, stylish, knowledgeable political facilitators.

The introductions at the beginning of the workshop were telling and had us in excited anticipation of the short three days we were to spend together. As the young women identified objects that reflected their characters within the room has had me looking at each object and each event in my day-to-day life in a completely new light. The objects signifying the different characters we a privileged to be with include a pillar (strong supporter that only a bulldozer can destroy), a phone (a vital tool for communication whose characteristics continue to improve each day), pen (writing to impart information), book (that can be written in, and that many can read and source vast amounts of knowledge from), light (brightening people’s lives through revealing knowledge), woman’s handbag (everyone has to have one, and has capacity to carry lots of stuff), scissors (cuts out the crap so as to deal with the core), juice (sweet, quenches thirst, and symbol of prestige), folder (capacity to hold a lot of contents with lots of information), and water (for nourishment, cleaning, strong and always finds its way round obstacles, to continue with its work downstream. A few could not find any object that they could compare their character with in the hotel meeting room, and this revealed how limiting that set up is for meetings of the kind of work we do in movement-building.

The exercises in the power flower and the personal SWOT analyses seemed to help the young women open up as these helped grounding in where they are located, and also a self-introspection that most confessed to never have engaged in. These two particular exercises have apparently got the young women to find their wings, and they have already started flying and crossing the line. The role plays three groups did, targeting traditional leaders, youths, and women aged 30 – 60 in a rural set-up, were a further learning point for the JASS team in understanding Zambian traditions and culture, and the representation of the diversity of contexts that young women work in.

It has been an important lesson for Southern Africa to keep the connections and conversations going, and therefore maintain the momentum, particularly in the early stages of introducing the movement-building concept in any country or community. There definitely is a lot to learn from each other for every woman participating in the workshop, and it will be an exciting prospect to see what plans the young women set for themselves as we conclude the workshop tomorrow. These young women are claiming and owning the wings to fly, and crossing the line in Zambia

GUARDIANS OF HISTORY

By María Suárez Toro, and RIF-Fire Communications Center
Feminist International Camp

Translation by Amandla Gigler, Executive Director at CALALA Fondo de Mujeres / Women's Fund

Lise Marie Jean, a feminist leader from SOFA in Haiti, warned us about the situation of buried historical records, during a gathering of over three dozen Latin American and Caribbean feminists, in the Dominican Republic on January 26-27. She told us that Haitian women grieve over the irreparable loss of many lives, "but also because buried under the rubble of what was EnfoFam’s office, is the historical record of the origins of feminism in our country, as this was the first [feminist] organization."
She told us about the damage to Kay Fam, another feminist organization, the national library buried in the center of the city and the documentation centers on culture, human rights and other issues.

We went to Port au Prince to honor the thousands of people, including feminist leaders, who had died, to show solidarity with the people who had survived, to bring humanitarian aid and to alleviate other needs, and to see what more could be done. And while we covered the news from our feminist gaze, we knew we had to say farewell to our historical memory in Haiti, also.

Feminists in the region had already agreed at the meeting that all of the communication networks will excavate Haitian interviews and documents that they have in their own records of the past 30 years. The Latin American and Caribbean Network of Journalists, the Feminist International Radio Endeavor and the Center for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA) are launching a call to others.

Upon reaching the city, we ask Lise Marie to take us to the ruins of EnfoFanm’s locale, to document the reality. It was a two-story house in a suburb near the city. Our gazes cloud over at the site of the old sign with the name of the organization that sways in the Caribbean breeze, hitting the shattered cement.

We find ourselves against the grain of the first guardian of history. Madame Lisie comes over from the house across the street to tell us that we cannot enter.

But she knows Lise Marie, who is accompanied by Flavia Cherry with RIF's camera. I arrived later. They filmed to tell the world. When I arrive, I'm reluctant to make my farewell. "They are there, intact, look at them!"

We must make an appeal to UNESCO and UNIFEM to come recue them. The building, although it is destroyed, still has its frame standing, although it is extremely vulnerable. Some things inside are visible. There are the files. We return the next day with Silvie from the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights. The guardian comes out like a friend, but we explain ourselves and she speaks with us. We thank her for her vigilance and go on to our next encounter with the present and the past. We see that the Executive Secretary of the organization arrived this morning. This makes us glad. Whatever can be saved should be placed in her hands; this is the legacy of the protagonist-guardians.

We go to the second locale, Kay Fanm’s office. Again we are intercepted immediately. This time is a young Canadian man - Etienne Cote-Paluck - who is protecting the locale, this one not completely destroyed, but not habitable. All of the activists were unharmed, except the organization’s director, Magali Marcelin, who, when the earthquake struck, had just stepped out of a building where she was in a meeting.

He asks us for identification and explanations. He lets us in and tell us what has happened. He breaks down in the middle of the story. "Magali was a second mother to me. I am the son of a Canadian feminist and the truth is that they raised me! "

He tells us that he already knows about the International Feminist Camp and is working to provide coverage to MSNBC in Canada, and he wants to interview us. He carries out his journalism from his position as guardian of memory.

Magali lives among us and the new generation of young people who were marked by her. I am encouraged.

The third visit is the office of the "Ministry for the Status of Women and the Rights of Women". All that remained standing was the sign that faces the street. The view is horrible. Not one stone is left to support another.

The silence embraces us, the rubble shakes us, legs falter, instincts are incite, although if the ground were to tremble there's nothing that could fall. Two floors of concrete lying on the floor like paper watered by the wind.

At the entrance there is no guardian. Myriam Merlet, one of the feminists who passed, who with others founded Enfo Fanm, had put so much political strength to that Ministry. The Minister and many staff had also died.

I pick up a page, out of all the scattered material between pieces of concrete. It is an invitation dated 10 May 2007, addressed to the Minister, for a "National Forum on Education for All". The Minister of that time was Marie Laurence Lassegue, the current Minister of Culture, one of the survivors.

My hand shakes. It seems incredible that a piece of paper can suddenly be charged with so much meaning. I don’t know if it is the first piece of history that is recovered, but I'm taking a Haitian women's organization for their museum, or perhaps I’ll look for the Minister of Culture when the time is right, to request assistance from UNESCO and UNIFEM to recover the memory.

A deep sadness mixes in me with the wind on a road toward the recovery of memory. I pay tribute to those missing from history, so that we do not lose them.