Lessons for African Youth: Gender Equality
Gender equality is a fundamental human right, and the seventh lesson for young African youth is a call to champion this cause.
Allow Us to Re-Introduce Ourselves
Shades of Us Storytelling Initiative for African People (‘Shades of Us’) is a non-profit organization using storytelling to address the socio-economic issues affecting Africa, Africans and people of African descent. This is with a view to facilitating open and honest conversations that lead to introspection, analysis and perspective change towards the greater goal of a redefined continent and people. Shades of Us was founded on April 28, 2014, by Ramatu Ada Ochekliye to address dysfunctional social issues peculiar to Africans living on the continent, or descendants of migrants who may have voluntarily moved to other continents or may have been forced – through human trafficking and slavery – to leave. Goal: To promote a just, equitable and sustainable society for Africans and people of African descent. Objectives: – To use storytelling to promote equitable societies for African people; – To spark conversations on human rights, roles and responsibilities for more equal African societies; – To promote African cultures and increase indigenous, national, regional and continental pride in our heritage; – To promote learning, development and capacity building of young people to push for African development and growth; and – To create safe spaces for survivors of abuse geared at facilitating healing and shared communities for growth. The founding principle of Shades of Us is the belief that all human beings are equal, have the same basic human rights and should be accorded the same respect and opportunities that guarantee their growth and development. Based on this founding principle, Shades of Us is subscribed to all thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and works towards promoting these rights for every human being, with special focus on Africans and people of African descent. Beyond the human rights declaration however, Shades of Us has adopted eleven of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as focal points of implementation. These goals include: no poverty; zero hunger; good health and wellbeing; quality education; gender equality; clean water and sanitation; decent work and economic growth; reduced inequalities; climate change; peace, justice and strong institutions; and being open to partnerships for the goals. They translate to Goals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 17 of the sustainable development goals. Shades of Us believes that the promotion of gender equality and reduced inequalities are the springboards to achieving all the other goals adopted. The organization is especially bias towards the issues that affect women and children. This is because globally, African women and children have been the most disenfranchised in all indices of human development. Speaking up for, and standing against societal norms that predominantly affect women and children, becomes the only recourse to redressing years of inequality and the drawbacks associated with it. What does Shades of Us offer? The answer is simple: storytelling. We tell stories for Africa, her people and descendants of her people. These stories are channeled through various platforms to engender discussion. They include: 1. The Blog: Primarily started as a site to air personal opinions, Shades of Us has grown to a magazine of articles, in-depth interviews, news and fictional stories from various writers. 2. Podcasts: Shades of Us has two podcasts: The Review and The Social Commentary. On The Review, the overarching themes in the art (music, movies, TV shows, books etc) produced by Africans and people of African descent are discussed and analysed to see how they shape society. With the Social Commentary, discussions around socio-economic issues affecting people are at the forefront of the conversation. 3. Video log: This is similar to the social commentary with special focus on issues affecting women and children. 4. Films: The organization produces short films that address the general theme of our work. This will expand further to feature length films, documentaries and other productions in the audio-visual category. 5. ‘Did you know?’ Quick-E videos: These showcase facts about indigenous African peoples and cultures are shared as short snippets. It is a fun way to learn about people who share the same skin tone and socio-cultural issues yet, are vastly different from us. The ‘e’ in Quick-E is Education. 6. Forum Fridays: This is a live interactive session where the audience does the talking. It would entail picking up trending topics and hearing their thoughts, feelings, rebuttals and rants. 7. Community Engagement: Beginning in 2016, Shades of Us started partnering with other organizations like Save Our Women (SOW) Foundation, Women Regaining Value, Stand With A Girl (SWAG) Initiative and Jela’s Development Initiative (JDI) to move our activism from the digital space to impacting, in-person actions. This will continue to happen in line with goal 17 of the global goals. And beginning in 2022, Shades of Us will host what would become an annual event called Safe Spaces. This is an avenue to bring together victims of abuse to talk about their abuse, how it affects their lives, how society – families, schools, governing authorities, law enforcement etc. – reacts to their abuse and what hope they have going forward. Another aspect of our community engagement will be through basketball and filmmaking. We will use these avenues to train young people to become the best versions of themselves. For years, our identity and brand has revolved around these areas of engagement. When we started Shades of Us, we designed our logos to be feminine because first, we are a feminist organization, and… they described the core of the work we were focused on. While that remains our core mandate, our next phase will be more inclusive. We have grown from personal commentaries on Facebook to a fully incorporated non-profit organization registered in Nigeria. We intend to branch out to eleven other countries in Africa and the Caribbeans: Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Seychelles, Botswana, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda, Barbados, and Jamaica. We want to tell stories about women, children, men, gender non-conforming individuals, people with disabilities etc. As such, we designed our new logo to be more representative of all the shades of us. So…it is with immense
Women’s Rights in Conferring Citizenship
Photo by Dayvison de Oliveira Silva from Pexels by Emono Bwacha A citizen of a country is basically someone who has legal ties to that country. One of the most common definitions of citizenship is that it is “the sum total of rights and duties ensuing for a given person by reason of his legal affiliation to a certain State”[1] The concept of citizenship legally ties an individual to a particular region or country. As a direct result, the individual has obligations to said region or country and in return, the region or country grants the individual rights to enjoy as a citizen. There are different ways by which a person can become a citizen of a country. It can be by birth, naturalization, registration, marriage, and an honorary citizenship can also be conferred on a person by the government of a country. Regardless of how one becomes a citizen of a country, he/she – ideally – gets to enjoy all the rights applicable to citizens of the country regardless of age or gender. In Nigeria, Section 42 of the Constitution prohibits any form of discrimination and promotes equal enjoyment of rights by all. On paper, it seems like a pretty straight forward segment of the constitution. In reality however, there are certain other provisions of the law that seem to promote the unequal enjoyment of rights between men and women, one of which is the right to transmit citizenship. Take Section 26 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (CFRN) 1999 (as amended) which relates to citizenship for instance. The law allows Nigerian men the right to confer citizenship on another person, but Nigeria women cannot enjoy that same right. This Section clearly states that the president may confer citizenship on “any woman who is or who has been married to a citizen of Nigeria”. By legal interpretation, this limits Nigerian women from transferring their citizenship to their foreign husbands. This is in direct contradiction of the provisions of Section 42 which prohibits discrimination based on sex, religion, and/or ethnic group. The experience of women’s citizenship is that it is treated as being of secondary or devalued status relative to men’s. The solution to this would be an amendment to the provision as there is no excuse for why men can transfer their Nigerian citizenship to their spouses, but Nigerian women cannot. Also, in many countries, women cannot transfer citizenship to their children. This has caused some issues of statelessness as outlined by the United Nations (UN).[2] According to the UN, equality between men and women in relation to conferral of nationality upon their children has not yet been attained in 25 countries over the world, with a significant number of these States found in the Middle East and North Africa (12 countries).[3] More than fifty countries have nationality laws with gender-discriminatory provisions, with most denying women the same rights as men to pass nationality to a noncitizen spouse.[4] Under the 1962 citizenship law of Somalia, mothers have no ability to confer their nationality on their children. In Eswatini (formerly the Kingdom of Swaziland), the constitution stipulates that a child born after 2005 can only acquire nationality from their Swazi fathers, unless the child was born out of wedlock and has not been claimed by the father in accordance with customary law: in which case the Swazi mother can pass on her nationality. In addition, Eswatini’s 1992 Citizenship Act contains the same provisions applicable to children born after 1992.[5] In a country like Nigeria where citizenship is experienced differently at both National and State levels, this brings in another issue women face with regards their ‘State of Origin’. Citizenship at the State level is defined in a patriarchal way, in terms of the ‘State of origin’ of one’s father but never their mother. In simple terms, children cannot identify with the State of origin of their mothers. They can only identify with the State of origin of their father. It becomes harder for women when they get married because they are then expected to abandon their fathers’ ‘State of origin’ and claim that of their husbands. In practise however, when the woman wants to run for office in her ‘new’ State, people from the State deny her this right because ‘she wasn’t born here’. If she then goes back to her father’s State of origin, people from there claim she’s no longer from that State because she is married to someone from another state. This has created confusion for many women, especially those vying – and are deserving – of leadership positions across many sectors of the economy. When women are denied these rights that are meant to be accessed by all citizens, it means they are looked on as second-class citizens. It is therefore important to amend these segments of the constitution to ensure women are treated as equally as men are. Equality in citizenship rights is not only fundamental to women’s rights but also supports child’s rights and sustainable development. [1] Ordor A. “Sharing the Citizenship of Women: A Comparative Gendered Analysis of the Concept of ‘Legal Personhood’ in Africa” (2000). [2] UNHCR, “Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness” (2014). [3] UNHCR, ‘Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness” (2020). [4] The UN Refugee Agency, “Time for all nationality laws to uphold women and men’s equality, says UN and civil society leaders” (2020). [5] UNHCR, ‘Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness” (2020).
The Agony of Water Scarcity
Photo by Tucker Tangeman on Unsplash THROUGH THE EYES OF OJONUGWA YAHAYA INTRODUCTION Located in an atmosphere of serenity and decorated with the rich savannah vegetation, the communal life and practice of trade by barter is still held with great prestige in the community of Ojokpachi-Odo. Ojokpachi is one of the villages in Omala Local Government Area (LGA) of Kogi State. The years I spent growing up with my grandmother in Ojokpachi would have been nothing short of amazing and enjoyable if we had access to clean and accessible water. The major source of water in the community is the stream (Oche and Oshumamanyi), while those that can afford hand-dug wells have it close to their compounds. The quality of the well water is determined by the nature of the soil where the well is situated, and it is not all the available wells that produce good, safe water. The well in my family compound produces hard water (highly concentrated in calcium and magnesium carbonates, bicarbonates and sulphates). The water is not good for drinking. We usually manage it for other domestic use such as cooking, bathing and washing, though the water does not lather well with soap, so it does not really wash cloths clean and ends up leaving the skin looking white and dry after every bath. During the raining season, we practice rainwater harvesting; a practice where my grandmother usually collects drinking water into special clay pots. The journey of water collection to the nearby stream during raining season is usually much easier, even with the distance of about 6 kilometres. Because the stream is full, and water flows freely during this time, we can make up to five (5) trips at a stretch. It is important to note that water collection in most households in the community is predominantly done by women and girls, making life difficult for women and girls. When school is in session, children of school age like me normally go for water collection first thing in the morning before setting off to school. When we get to school, some of us are assigned to fetch water to teachers houses as part of our labour duties. On getting home and having a rushed lunch, we set off for another round of water collection for the household until the available large water containers are filled up. It is an everyday routine. When school is not in session, we usually fetch water before going to farm. During the dry season when water scarcity reaches its peak, when the stream dries up and wells do not get to produce enough water, life in the village become as hard as you can imagine. We have to walk several miles – beyond 6 kilometres – in search of water. Women and girls set out as early as 3:00am or as soon as the cock crows to go in search of water, carrying touch lights in their hands. Women use cutlass to dig shallow ponds in the moist part of the stream, which is now dried, then wait patiently for the water to gather before scooping it with a little bowl into to a larger round container/basin which is equivalent to 25 litres keg. The queue usually become very long as the day breaks, sometimes water collection may take the whole day. The best time to get water from the shallow pond is very early in the morning or at midday when most people have gone to the farm, because the moment most of the people get back from farm the queue become unbearable. Sometimes, after waiting for hours, and getting to evening when the sun finally disappears, one may return home with an empty container. When the water situation becomes tougher, women and their children (girls) take time off farming activities completely to dedicate more days to fetching water. In this case the mother will be at the water source, scooping water from the hand-dug pond… scooping and waiting for it to gather again as if she is counting every drop, while the children will concentrate on carrying the water home. The journey home is never easy at this point, as our neck aches, with the centre of the head pleading for freedom from the water load, and shaky legs climbing the stony hill and walking the sloppy paths. The feet feels the hardness of the stones under the flip-flop slippers and bodies soaked with the constant droplets from the edge of the large basin, balanced on the head and held with both hands. One trip can take one and half hours. In some cases men who have bicycles go farther along the farm road with their kegs tied to the back of their bicycles in search of where the stream had formed a pond and is yet to dry up. Though the water gotten from there is usually dirty, brownish in colour and has odour due to dry leaves falling into the pond or as a result of cattle coming to drink from it. Usually when men fetch water, it is for their own personal use: for laundry and bathing and not for the entire household use as they believe that fetching water for the household is the duty of women and girls. My grandmother use to join us to fetch water but at a point due to old age, she did not have the strength to carry water, or wait on the queue to scoop water from the shallow hand-dug pond. But whenever me and my little sister go for water collection, she appreciates us a lot, calling us sweet names or our clan’s greeting name (Oyowo-gida), and adding larger portions of dry fish to our dinner. My grandmother feels our pains and wishes she could help. On several accessions, either me or my sister will return from the stream with swollen face from bee stings and my grandmother will cry and say we should not go to collect water again, but if we do
When No One Is Looking
Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels As long as I can remember, I have always cared about the issues that affect Africa, Africans and people of African dissent, with special focus on how these issues affect women and children. Even as a child in primary school, I can remember expressing anger at people who treated women and children poorly and standing up for the girls in my class. It would not be far-fetched to assume I was born this way, having what can be described as a gnawing need to lend my voice to women and children’s issues. I was probably around 10 years old when I learned about basic human rights and the government’s role in protecting them. Without meaning to, that became my Bible and code of conduct. I started creating content from a very young age. I wrote stories and school plays that centered women and children in roles that were not usually associated with their sex or age. These stories became church dramas because for most of my teenage years, I found expression in the church. Granted, most of what I created then was quite gruff and had a diamond-in-the-rough kind of feel but a central theme shone through all my pieces: women and children were human in themselves and needed to be treated with the full respect accorded to them by their basic rights. I remember a play I wrote that we performed in church. It started with the parents of the lead character – a young teen – finding out that she was pregnant. Rather than be judgmental, it promoted allowing yourself to be hurt if your child gets pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ but, loving (and supporting) the child regardless. It showed that children were themselves overwhelmed by the consequences of their actions and beating them or kicking them out of the house was not a fair way to handle the issue. This play connected so well with people that the way teen pregnancies were handled – a problem that was predominant in the community where the church was situated – became markedly different. It was for this openness that I was chosen when I was about 14 years to be part of a peer-education capacity building session on complete sexuality education. This opened my mind’s eye to the Millennium Development Goals and a world bigger than the things my environment had constrained it to. I began to actively promote these goals because I was: unhappy that the world didn’t take the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger as seriously as it should; wondering what could be done to achieve universal primary education; sure I needed to actively promote the idea of gender equality and the need to empower women; broken at the rate of child and maternal mortality and wondering how I could help; hated all discriminatory acts to people living with HIV/AIDS in a world where it was okay to do so; didn’t want anyone to die from Malaria or any other disease that could easily be prevented with small lifestyle changes; and, hated that our environment was gradually becoming dirty and unsustainable as a result of poor sanitation due to reduced enforcement of communal environmental protection activities. These issues became my issues. They mattered to me. And I wanted to do something about them. As I grew from teenager to young adult, I began to refine the areas that I was interested in. While I wanted to work in the field to directly help women and children, I knew it was cost heavy and living on the poverty line myself at that time, I didn’t think there was much I could do to help these people. So, I chose a path that centered more on creating content that could cause a mind shift in the general public and change behaviors that put women in boxes marked, ‘second class citizens’. I continued to write stories and plays for church, making sure to include the women empowerment nuggets in the overall message of the Christian faith. With the advent of social media, I found a bigger outlet for my work…especially as I was questioning faith and removing myself from the church. I began to share my views – my very gruff and many times, antagonistic views – on my social media platforms. A friend told me about blogs and the possibilities they held for massive, and maybe even global, reach. So, I learned about this new frontier of communication and started my blog: Shades of Us. I continued to evolve as a person, finding more perspectives to human rights and seeking even more succinct ways to communicate my ideas around them. When I heard the word ‘feminist’ during Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TedX Talk – We Should All Be Feminists – I knew this was the word that perfectly described exactly who I was and the issues that mattered to me. So here I was: Ramatu Ada Ochekliye, creating content around the Sustainable Development Goals and hoping I could change the world with my words. But, reality check. The world really doesn’t want to be changed. If the world has its way, it will continue to be patriarchal, misogynistic and abusive to women and children. It would continue to express hate against people whose sexuality is different from the accepted norm. It would continue to be intolerant of people’s rights to association, religion, belief and dignity. This is why, my work – and the work of other feminists, human rights activists and advocates, and anyone who just believes in the basic rights of all human beings across the world – can be really tasking. Nobody tells you that it is easier to maintain the status quo, as oppressive as it is, than it is changing anything. And because of this, many activists suffer the painful burnout that comes with wondering if their work even means anything. Oh! There are many reasons to keep
Cancel Culture
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels If you have been using social media for any length of time, it is quite possible that you have heard (or used) the term, ‘Cancel Culture’. Like ‘misogyny’, ‘patriarchy’, ‘feminism’, ‘human rights’, this phrase is one of the buzz words of this generation that gets thrown around when heated socio-cultural issues are being debated – or fought over – on social media. It has become so predominant that many dictionaries now carry a definition for the phrase. So, what is cancel culture? Dictionary.com has one of the more encompassing definitions. cancel culture [ kan-suhl kuhl-cher ] “Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.” I like this definition of the term more than the one on Urban Dictionary. This one just explains the term as it has been used in conversation, without any of the sensationalism in the one written by Urban Dictionary. I mean, what is the use of calling the people who are part of any cancel culture, narcissists? Why couldn’t they have stuck with the definition of the word? If not because I may need to use the dictionary sometime soon, I would encourage people to stop using the dictionary. See what I did there? It is the classic route taken to cancel an individual and/or organization. I read their definition, didn’t agree with the statement, proceeded to take offense, expressed said offense and invited people to join in my discontent. Again, if you have been on social media long enough, you would most likely have seen this expressed over and over, with millions of people chiming into the conversation and running with the herd. But have you seen this replicated in everyday life? I mean, not just on social media? I have. I think cancel culture, like other things expressed on social media, reflects how we act in our communities. The idea that social media is the reason why this happens is at best, ludicrous. I remember when I was maybe ten or eleven years old. This was around 1999/2000. We lived in a community in Kaduna State, Nigeria. The predominant culture was: husbands went out to work, wives took care of the house and their well-behaved children. Wives were seen but rarely heard unless they were in the market with other women. They dressed and acted ‘responsibly’ as was expected of married women. Husbands ruled their homes and were accorded the respect of mini-gods. Almost every home was a variation of this model. One home didn’t fit in though. The husband had died, and the wife was the sole provider and caregiver to her three children. She barely had any education or any necessary workplace skillset beyond being a full-time housewife. But she had to survive. And her children had to survive. So, she bought a grinding machine and soon realized the money she was making was barely enough to cater to their basic needs. After some years of really going through it, she took up sex work to augment the money she was making. This was a direct response to the men in the neighborhood who had been propositioning her and offering to cater to her (and her children) if she had sex with them. As the number of men visiting her began to increase, husbands warned their wives to stay away from her; no doubt wanting their wives to remain sexually unaware in comparison to her. The women decided to cut her off because they didn’t want to ‘lose’ their husbands to someone they deemed ‘wanton’ and ‘irresponsible’. But it didn’t end there. They placed an embargo on the widow’s kids too. Well behaved children had no reason to interact with the children of a ‘prostitute’. For years, this woman was a pariah in that community. It did not ease up when she up and left her children – teenagers at this time – to fend for themselves. The children inherited the hate their mother had taken for years and at that young age, had to find work for themselves. Only one family went over and beyond to provide any succor to the children; food, soap and friendship. It was not surprising that the only woman who welcomed them into her warmth also didn’t have her husband around and was going through hell raising five kids. She, more than any of the other wives, knew the great hardship that came with being a ‘single’ mother in a community where women were expected to be dependent on their husbands; no matter what the reality was. I remember how many times I was flogged for being friends with the kids. I had to hide my friendship with them for the longest time and it was my first introduction to cancel culture, even though I didn’t even know the phrase existed then. Many have seen this type of cancellation at one point or the other in their lives. In fact, most of the times we have seen this, it is usually with people or organizations that are not popular or prominent in the real sense of the word. Sometimes, what confers popularity or prominence on these individuals is the agreement that propels people to stop supporting them. Let us look at cancel culture in present day as seen on our social media platforms. The only noticeable difference is that are they fed to a seemingly larger audience; what with the internet connecting us to the global community and what not. What we may not have been able to express to a large audience in the past can now be done with the click of a button. How has this caused this culture to evolve? We are now able to call out people and organizations for human rights abuses, racism, cultural appropriation, and other areas demanding accountability. But
Do Sex Workers ‘Deserve’ to Be Abused?
Image: Indonesia Expat Disclaimer: This post has lurid details of sex. I was scrolling through my timeline on Facebook when I stumbled on a post which, under other circumstances, would have thrown me off. The thumbnail was a naked black girl on all fours with what I could deduce was sperm on her face. Normally, I wouldn’t watch such videos and would report it to Facebook to be taken down for being a sexually explicit content but the caption stayed my scrolling fingers. ‘Ghanaian girls are suffering abroad.’ Lot of thoughts ran through my head; was this a rape video? Did it talk about human trafficking? Was this a human rights issue that we should be talking about? And so I knew I had to see the video. So I clicked. The video was roughly five minutes long and it was the most chilling thing I had seen in a while. From what was said in the video, I can summarize it thus; The girl saw an ad asking for adult film (porn) actors who could deep throat. She went to the film makers and they agreed to shoot. The scene required that she has sex with two white men. The video started with the girl choking on the penis she was trying not to suck anymore. It was obvious watching it that she was in grave pains. This was expressed in the tears running down her face and the sheer look of sadness in her eyes. This was the point where the person with the camera started talking. ‘You said you could deep throat. Did you think you could just waltz in here and collect our money when you couldn’t do what we asked? You have just wasted our time you fucking bitch.’ It wasn’t what he was saying that got me angry. It was the condescendingly calm tone with which he was talking that nearly broke me. You could tell that the man didn’t think he was talking to another human being on equal footing. It is the same tone you would expect a member of the Ku Klux Klan to take when addressing a black person. I knew at that moment that the girl’s underperformance was not the issue. These were full blown racist men who wanted to demean and dehumanize a black woman. As if to punctuate that thought, the men started slapping the girl. It didn’t end there. They spat on her face and other parts of her body. They were doing all these while still penetrating her from behind and trying to get her to suck their penises. When the girl tried to hide her face in the pillows – something I think was a mix of shame and pain – the man behind the camera asked that she look into the camera. In a classic good-cop-bad-cop move, one of the other men slapped her face and the third guy slapped her buttocks. She looked at the camera, crying, and the camera man zoomed in on her face just as a large plop of saliva landed on it. She flinched but maintained her gaze on the camera. The man behind the camera continued to talk, asking her why she thought she could just come in and take their money. When she didn’t respond, one of the other men slapped her again to prod her into speaking. She spoke, through her tears, in what was the only words to come out of her mouth. ‘I don’t know.’ At this point, it finally dawned on the men that she couldn’t suck their penises anymore. So they decided to, for lack of a better word, ram her as roughly as they could. Bad cop 1 told her to touch her toes and started pounding her as hard and as roughly as he could. My spirit broke when I saw her move an inch away each time the full length of his penis entered her vagina. He taunted her, asking ‘where are you going you cunt?’ When he was done, the other guy – who was now wearing her wig – took over. He tried to get her into a position that had her buttocks jutting out at him but she kept falling; from what I would think was exhaustion. Angry, bad cop 2 removed her wig from his head and tried to force her to wear it while simultaneously slapping and pushing her. And the video came to end. I was so ashamed at what I had seen. Not ashamed because it was sex but because I just witnessed the dehumanization of another woman – a black woman – by men who thought it was okay to do so because they were offering her money. I was ashamed at the conditions that made a woman believe that this was the only way out. I was ashamed at being unable to do anything to improve the straits of the woman whose shame I had just witnessed. I went into the comment section, hoping there were many people who were as outraged by the video as I was and were willing to do something about it. I was shocked by most of the response I saw. While many agreed that it was barbaric to have kept on ‘sleeping with her’ when she was in pain, many pointed out that it was hard to feel pity for her because she chose to do the ‘job’. Others even said she deserved it because of her ‘lack of morality’. Some people asked why she continued to shoot when she couldn’t take the pain and that was the point that caught me. Why did she continue to stay? Why didn’t she end the shoot?! Whatever answer you choose to look at, one thing is clear; she obviously needed the money. And that there is the problem. I agree that she chose to do the work, but staying when she was being abused, demeaned and forcefully penetrated showed that her need for the money far outweighed the pain she
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Not Just a Dreamer
Our man crush is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. He was an American Baptist minister and human rights activist. He was also a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. We celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not just for being a dreamer but for working hard at his dreams. He refused to take the easy route by living as expected. He believed in his (and everyone’s) rights to fairness, justice and equality. He also believed he could achieve this through non-violence and his example is worthy of emulation. Many people do not talk about his weaknesses. We are always peppered with his strengths and wonderful speeches but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was as in touch with the chinks in his armor as he was with his drive for justice. It is worthy of note that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. suffered depression for most of his life and even attempted suicide by jumping out of a second story window. He didn’t let what many would have considered ‘failings’ to affect his life. Instead, he pushed harder and gave his all; even his life. He was murdered on April 4, 1968. Fighting for what he believed in led to improvements (generally) in the way black people were treated in the United States of America. His influence spilled into the rest of the world and he is revered globally. Are the lives of African Americans totally without hitches because of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? Not exactly. But we can attest to the fact that it is better; even if only a little. Dr. King fought not to just to win but because it was the RIGHT thing to do. And for that, we celebrate his awesomeness. Take a cue from his life and fight for what you believe in today.
Minding Your Business
Image: Trust Tru Katsande for Unsplash One of our previous posts, ACCEPT YOUR HUSBAND LIKE THAT, received some praise, a healthy discussion and some backlash. We were very happy! If we have people talking about the issue, we must have done a good job. But before we tell you more about our glee, let us discuss some of the issues raised. In one instance, we were told that it was disrespectful to talk about a religious leader in that light. In another, we were told that our view point was taken out of context. But the one that got us cracking the most was when we were told to ‘mind our business.’ Rather than do that, we set up a poll on Twitter and got even more anger. Some people wanted us to just mind our business. That was the one we really wanted to get into. Look at the poll we did. Two of the people who commented seemed very angry when telling us to can it. We burst out in laughter when we saw ‘meddlesome interloper’ and then the irony hit us. These people were so busy telling us to mind our business that they forgot they were committing the same faux pas; not minding theirs. They scrolled through their timeline, saw the tweets, read and understood them, got riled up, decided to respond, PROCEEDED to respond (and in some cases, respond again). You see that ‘minding your business’ would have gone more like, ‘scroll through timeline, see tweets, read and understand, probably get riled up (or not), decide it is not your business, continue scrolling through your timeline.’ That would have been Minding Your Business 101. And while we are a team of really crazy people, we decided to be respectful in our responses to these people. Where we would have bust a cap in the responders’ behinds, we decided to file it under ‘Peeves of growing a readership’. But the interaction got us thinking. Does anyone ever mind their business? We think not. From the busiest people to those who are just chilling in the Bahamas, there seems to be the need to know what is happening with other people and form an opinion about it. That is why the US Stock Exchange, even in the time of stability, monitors what is happening with the Asian Stock Exchange. It is another reason why an Arsenal fan keeps up with teams in the Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Eredivisie. It is also why religious adherents of different faiths wonder why the other group does what it does or why we click on those ‘29 more pictures’ on Facebook. Deep down, we believe that these events (that are seemingly not our business) affect us in one way or the other. In some cases, they do. In others, we are far removed. That is why a husband’s disdainful treatment of his wife is our business and why a possible insubordination by a wife was the business of those who commented. The myth of minding your business is then just that; a myth. There is almost no one who minds their business all the time. Even monks who are ensconced in monasteries high atop mountains still come out once in a while to affect the communities surrounding them. The need to know and be a part of something that may or may not affect you is why many businesses flourish across the globe. It is that need that makes us eavesdrop on people talking in the bus or watch those two conductors fight. It is also that need that has led to revolutions globally for better lives for people. But this is why many things are our business; 1. The World Bank reports that ‘51% of African women accept that being beaten by their husbands is justified if they either go out without permission, neglect the children, argue back, refuse to have sex or burn the food.’ While this goes against EVERY human rights, it is the ‘mind your business’ mentality that makes women feel they are deserving of such. If women are taught that it is unacceptablefor a man to hit them, whether he is their husband or not, then this appalling statistic will come crashing to the lowest figures; 2. Though greatly under-reported, it is estimated that 35% of women globally and up to 70% of women in some countries have been raped at least once. This can be found the 2016 UN Women ‘Facts and Figures: EndingViolence against Women’. We refuse to be silent with such staggering facts because we have been – and may again be – victims of this. We talk about it in collaboration with other bodies to see how this can be reduced. This means that if we hear that a husband rapes his wife, we call for justice regardless of the fact that he is her husband; 3. There are an estimated 414 million people living in extreme poverty across Africa. That is a whopping 48.5% of the population. This is according to The Borgen Project of 2010. And though we are middle class Africans, it is no reason to ignore such a deplorable state because it does not affect us. The Borgen project also reports on malnourishment, people living without electricity, lack of access to clean water, number of refugees as a result of war, maternal mortality, malaria, child marriage and women’s access to school. These are all issues we are passionate about even though we haven’t suffered some of the debilitative effects; 4. The Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report of UNESCO for 2014 shows that across Africa, 28 million girls between the ages of 6 and 15 are not in school and many will never even set foot in a classroom. This is alarming. And it is why we support the No Girl Left Behind Project. We want EVERY GIRL to be educated and to maximize her potential in her community. And if a girl doesn’t want to do so, we believe it SHOULD BE HER CHOICE ENTIRELY
International Day of Tolerance 2
TolerancePicture Culled from: ODYSSEY Tolerance. Noun tol•er•ance ˈtä-lə-rən(t)s, ˈtäl-rən(t)s : Willingness to accept feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own Merriam-Webster Dictionary A relatively simple word. Why then is so hard to understand? Why is it so difficult to apply in our everyday lives? The world is filled with greatly intolerant people unwilling to understand that by virtue of our humanity, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, tribe or religion, we CANNOT ALL HAVE THE SAME VIEWS OR BELIEFS. This lack of understanding has led to tribal and religious conflicts and violence, wars, terrorism, genocide, supposedly honorable killings, mob violence and so much more. Sometimes, intolerance leads to denial of an individual’s basic human rights; which in some cases is more terrifying than been killed. We believe that every human being has a right to the following; 1. A right to believe in any set of religious tenets they choose and in like manner, a right to not believe in any religion or God; 2. A right to be treated equally regardless of race, tribe, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, social strata, physical disability or level of education; 3. A right to dress in whatever manner a person chooses; 4. A right to hold views, opinions, beliefs or thoughts about any and every thing; 5. A right to form ideologies and belief systems based on the knowledge they have; 6. A right to share knowledge without forcing it down people’s throats or coming to harm for sharing that knowledge and best of all; 7. A right to believe differently from the norm or popular belief, culture, law or tradition. We believe these core values come with a limitation; that our beliefs SHOULD NOT cause harm to any human life. We may not have the same beliefs but we can TOLERATE each person’s right to their own. This mean that even if something goes against our core values, we have no right to try and force others to live, think and believe as we do. We have to find a way to respect people’s differing opinions; even if we dislike their views. As the world marks the INTERNATIONAL DAY OF TOLERANCE (as done every year on November 16 since 1995) we urge you to be more tolerant of one another and of people (slightly or vastly) different from you. We also urge you to shun bigotry, racism and perceived racial supremacy, sexism, religious intolerance, gender bias and inequality, forced sexuality and sexual orientation and all other forms of intolerance. If we do this, maybe Africa – and the world in general – can be a much better place. Do your part! Join the fight and stop intolerance today! Picture: Scary Mommy
