Category — Women

‘Each year, around 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence. One in four local authorities leave female victims of violence without the specialised support they need’. Ethnic minority women are especially badly affected.

This is the shocking message for International Women’s Day for Amnesty International UK’s campaign on violence against women.

If you go to Map of Gaps, you can see which services are missing in your local area and email your MP, asking them to do something to about it. Further information can also be found here

Every year (and sometimes on specific occasions), I post a poem I had written several years, well knowing that words are never enough and sometimes it is just too late. The poem is reproduced below:

If only we had known
The first time it happened
She wore dark glasses, wept all day
Hormones, we sniggered

The second time it happened
Walked into a wall she said
Alcohol, we smugly declared
Signed her cast, wished her well

The third time it happened
Fell down the stairs she said
And wouldn’t smile
Lover’s tiff, we winked

The fourth time it happened
A bee stung her she said
Frolicking in the park, we laughed
The fifth time it happened

She didn’t come in
We heard she was broken
Like a toy
Which no-one could
Ever
Put back together again

If only
We had known
We cried

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On International Women of Colour Day, I celebrate by highlighting the work of Magdalene Odundo, Professor of Ceramics at the University College for the Creative Arts.

I cherish the memory of a workshop I attended where Magdalene, soft spoken and charming, presented her work. We, the audience, gave a collective gasp of awe and admiration as we watched her hands adroitly create poetry from clay as she built a stunning pot from scratch – a process brilliantly executed in the most superbly simple way one could imagine.

Magdalene’s work has been exhibited in many places including the Crafts Council at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire. Her work is also found in museums worldwide including the Smithsonian, the Gardiner Museum and in private collections. Due to their uniqueness and excellence, the works are sold for quite large sums of money – in 2006, for example, a piece of art was sold for £28,405.

If you look closely at her work, you can see the various forms of women represented; among them, flaring hips, the belly of a pregnant woman and a graceful long neck with the head elegantly tilted back.

Magdalene and her superlative art make me want to stand on a spire and tell the world: This is who we are. See what we are capable of.

Viva Magdalene.

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we hear a woman’s raped every
30 minutes this fact needs to be
adjusted as 56 & more
many more were assaulted
inside the first 2 days of
premeditated brutality
of the elephants’ skirmish

their bodies are the frontline
where foes are belittled
& age-old grudges viciously settled

meanwhile rallies sermonise
peacemakers negotiate &
dealmakers mediate
they play the blame game who instigated
what who killed whom excuse me while
i spit & yet do not speak
of the trauma & the terror
& shun the soundless screams of
untold others who in mute silence suffer
they talk about democracy
about ethnocracy autocracy
& just about any cracy you can think of
malevolence shrouded in words
while powerless women little girls
boys & men are abused what
do they know about sacrilege how much
do they care about the shame & humiliation?
how many little girls did you rape today baba?
we know bodies may be healed but
spirit bruises soul lacerations are
indelible quotidian &
never ever leave your side

their bodies are a battlefield
whose destruction’s a conscious
act of ethnic cleansing

in some place we hear
the price for one rape is a goat how
many goats for gang rapes or
for sodomised little boys
we know this isn’t about gratification
nor passion & we are aware of the imperative
revenge domination control
opportunism thuggery it
really doesn’t really matter as the
sacrifice’s been made
the earth’s tasted their blood
their tears soak the ground
mission accomplished
they ask what they should do
as they pray for divine reckoning &
vengeance of cosmic magnitude
they live in constant sorrow & in dread of the hatred spewing
men with rungus for fists & serrated panga eyes
do they not feel pain when you
hurt them do they not bleed when you defile them?

their bodies are a battle ground
their violation
a weapon of war their
bodies are a combat zone
their degradation a
weapon of mass destruction

baba = father
rungus = clubs
panga = machete

First published in Pambazuka

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Celebrating Women Musicians from South America

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD).This day recognises the struggle by women to eradicate the cultural, legal and political obstacles that stop them from attaining economic independence and that create an unequal gender status quo. In addition, the day celebrates the progress of women throughout the world despite the limitations imposed upon them.

As with every IWD, the list of women one would like to honour and celebrate and who are an inspiration is an ever lengthening one. This list would be extremely long as one would be duty bound to mention all the women, famous or unknown, working to make a difference.

Nonetheless, as with every IWD, my list, were I to produce it, would include some regulars as I would include my mother, my wonderful sisters (both biological and non-biological), peace activists, law makers, Nobel laureates, leaders, lecturers and professors, writers and poets and not forgetting women bloggers and my online support network – the indefatigable group that supports me when I am faced with misogynists.

During last year’s IWD, my focus was on celebrating African women’s musicians. The magnificent divas who have managed to achieve world class fame and recognition in face of adversity through their talent and sheer hard work.

Continuing on the theme of music and musicians as the arts are very close to my heart, I want to focus on three women musicians of African descent from South America or the Latin world. These women’s ancestry is partly or wholly African – a fact that is acknowledged and splendidly reflected in their music. They too have had to overcome hardship. As Virginia Rodrigues (see below) said at the start of her career: “I have three strikes against me: I’m a woman, I’m black and I’m poor.”

These women truly make up the soundtrack of my life and the lives of many people as their songs encompass universal themes such as love, joy, life, sorrow, struggle, etc. Additionally and more important, the women are exceptionally talented and their music superb and superlative.

[Read more →]

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Please watch and take action.

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Cross posted on the African Women’s Blog

The first Carnival of African Women will be held on the African Women’s Blog on Monday October 9th. The Carnival is open to everyone registered on the African Women’s Blogs Aggregator and is a selection of posts on articles of interest to African women.

To participate in the premier Carnival, we are asking contributors to write a piece on Blogging and Identity and publish it on their blogs. Please feel free to interpret the topic as broadly as you wish – long, short, a poem, a piece of prose or photos. Once you have done that, please register the post at the Carnival Site or alternatively send an email to: info at blacklooks (dot) org with the URL of your post before the 6th of October. On 9th October we will publish a roundup of all submitted posts.

We hope that as many African women bloggers as possible will join in the Carnival. Even if you cannot write a piece please link to the site and join the webring. Thanks to everyone.

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I come from a family whose skin tones vary from very dark to very light and a variety of shades in-between. We are all proud and happy with our skin colour. My sister reminds me, however, that people (ignorant, foolish people) used to fawn over my lighter skinned little niece and ignore the darker one whilst she was taking a walk with the two toddlers on the streets of Eldoret. Truly shocking, quite awful as they are both quite lovely and potentially, a way of guaranteeing that children grow up with warped ideas regarding their looks.

This article from Reuters AlertNet which highlights why more value is placed on lighter and paler skin as compared to a darker one is quite disheartening.

What the women interviewed in the article say to justify using skin lightening creams, reminds me of a seamstress I met while in the Gambia for an extended vacation some years back. Although it was evident that she had used skin lightening creams, she was still gorgeous and stunning. I remember going to her house to visit whereupon I picked up her photo album that was lying on the table and started perusing while waiting for her to finish with another customer. One photograph had a woman who could have been her twin sister; the only difference being that the woman in the photo was dark skinned and in my opinion, much more beautiful.

When I asked about the uncanny resemblance, my seamstress informed me she was the person in the photo prior to lightening her skin. Before I could ask her anything else, she told me she was tired of being reprimanded by ‘light-skinned people like you’. She said that there was no way I could understand what she had gone through and what she had had to put with as the Creator had given me a lighter skin. Attempts on my part to say that ‘black is beautiful’ or to voice the detrimental effects of skin lightening creams were met with cold rebuff (and mild contempt, I dare say).

At the visit’s end, my seamstress said something that echoes what the Sudanese women are saying in the article: “Here, all men want to sit with or marry a woman with light skin. If any man wants to marry, he says the first choice is for a woman with light skin …”. I made no response but in hindsight, I should have said something similar to what the doctor in Khartoum who has been treating women suffering the harmful effects of skin lightening creams said: “…rather than ask why women use the creams, men should be asked why they prefer pale skin.”

Putting aside marriage and the skin tone Sudanese men prefer, the dark versus light skin tone argument in Sudan is of course, quite specific as the political crisis and civil war between Northerners (majority with pale skins) and the darker Southerners in Sudan makes the situation far worse. As the article states: ‘During civil strife, skin tone often meant the difference between life and death’. Although this situation, as dire as it is, cannot be comfortably used as justification, it is possible to see how one’s view regarding their skin tone can become distorted.

What then is the problem with the rest of us? Why do we feel the need to make ourselves pale (or white as this can only be the true underlying need)? Not just with our skins but also with our hair? Reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, I always laugh wryly at the section where Malcolm wanting to make his hair straight, applies lye, which begins to burn his scalp forcing him to dunk his head in the toilet bowl when he realises there is no water coming from the taps to wash off the lye (this was just as the Police burst in to arrest him).

I smile wryly dear reader, because I used to be one of those misguided people who believed the only ‘good hair’ was artificially straight hair and although the products currently in the market are arguably more sophisticated than the lye used in Malcolm X’s time, it is still possible to fry your hair and scalp while trying to create ‘more manageable hair’. Of course, Malcolm X evolved and saw the light and thankfully, so did I.

The BBC is currently running an interesting discussion (some contributions that have been made are fairly sexist, others plain weird while others are thoughtful) on beauty – Does beauty empower or exploit?. For this feature, the BBC have used the photograph of Agbani Darego, Miss World 2001. Would it be right to say that Agbani Darebo, as beautiful as she is, won the title due to her skin tone and straight hair? Needless to say, I am no fan of beauty pageants and only use this competition as an example. What about the lovely Alek Wek above? Isn’t she just as stunningly beautiful too?

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I have 3 quotes for you. I can’t remember who said the first two however; the last one is by Oscar Wilde. Feel free to choose the most apt…(see, no smilies here)

*Inside every older person is a younger person – wondering what the hell happened

*The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything

Live long and prosper, mwanamberi….hmmm, the aggregator wished you happy birthday before anyone else did.

Again, no smilies or ‘I come in peace’ smiles either…

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