Voice of Hope

 December 2001 Volume 5, Issue 1
 

VOICES OF HOPE
On Saturday October 2000-2001 Communities of African refugees/immigrants gathered at Faneuil Hall to pay tribute to the survivors of September 11 incident. The event was commarated by songs, poems from many cultures of various groups. One of the organizers Tory Krua from Universal Human Rights International summed up the main message of the gathering when he read "Refugees in America know about terror and loss. They know about grief, survival and rebuilding.


A SHARED MOMENT I was one of those who walked to help the Menagesha Cheshire Home For Physically Handicapped Children in the year 1999, about a year before I came to the United States. One afternoon I was visiting the children recovering from operations and confined to bed in the Recovery Room.


A charming young girl with a smile on her face greeted me as if I was her sister. I had seen her during a visit to the Center some three weeks earlier. She obviously noticed me then and was overwhelmed to see me again. I guess she was right. She was one of the additional sixty children from different regions of the country who had come to the center to benefit from surgical rehabilitation that was offered by the medical team of visiting Indian Rotarians for a limited period of time. She told me that she was from the northern part of Ethiopia, that it was her first time in Addis Ababa (the capital city of Ethiopia) and that she knew no one. I could imagine how hard it must be for her I felt like talking so I sat beside her and started chatting. Her leg was still in plaster as it had been when I first saw her and I asked her how she was feeling. She smiled shyly and said that the pain had been continuous but that as many people had come to visit because it was the “ Annual Walk Day” and now that I was chatting to her, it seemed to have disappeared. She laughed again and I laughed with her.
 
I had never thought about bringing happiness to the children at the Center by just paying a visit and chatting for a while with them. I spent two years of rehabilitation at Menagesha myself when I was a child and remember the joy we all felt when visitors came but I had forgotten the extent until I talked to this girl. I was glad to be able to take her mind off her pain and homesickness for a while but deep in my heart I understood that this problem was common to all the children in the home. I was even more touched later on when some of the children told me that seeing what I could do now had given them hope, I remember one young boy said to me I want to go to school and when I grow up I want to become a Doctor which made the pain even more bearable because I realized that most of the children in the home can’t read and write.
 
I thought I was lucky I was able to go to the near by school in my days at the home so I did not have to miss any time of my school years. Due to limited resource, the home can’t send the children to school anymore neither can it hire a tutor for them at the home.
 
At the end of the day, on my way home, I was talking to my self, what does the future hold for these children if they can’t go to school. These children are the men and women of tomorrow, with a great deal of social, economic, political and cultural responsibility to carry. Now, today, they need the care, attention, a sense of belonging and most importantly love in their lives, which most of them can’t get very often. Therefore, it would be best if we could all help in some small way to give them what they deserve today so that they can lead a good quality of life and be potential citizens of their country and the world at large in the future.
 
By Elleni Moges

Happy Ethiopian New Year, 2000

September 2000, Volume 1, Issue 1 FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD Since the 1950's, Ethiopian women have receded from participation on significant public agendas. The current results, which have been in the making since 1974, speak for themselves. The national quagmire indicates the absence of female sensibility, sensitivity, humility and wisdom. In 1993, a number of women, who are concerned with the relative deprivation of Ethiopian women from having a voice in matters that affect their destiny and well­being, got together to establish Adbar-Alliance of Ethiopian Women. Adbar was founded on the conviction that social life is complex and is shaped by many economic, social, cultural, and political forces, which cannot be isolated and treated as separable factors. As Ethiopian women, we need to realize that we have been among the most brutalized and victimized people in Ethiopian society, because of the mindless disregard for human dignity that started in 1974. When we try to address Ethiopian Women's, rights, lack of education, under education, disease, health care, economic, social, human rights as well as refugee/immigrants problems abroad, we must conclude that all are tied to lack of civil participation and democracy in our homeland Ethiopia. So we need to dedicate ourselves to these causes. A secure and peaceful environment in which people are free to mobilize their best human and material assets to realize improvement in their life conditions is a prerequisite for all people-centered actions. Adbar starts with the obvious. As Ethiopian women, whether it is in refugee camps in neighboring countries, in internal exile and displacement, in famine and economic crises, we fight harrowing abuses and carry a disproportionate share of the burden of our families' survival. Most Ethiopian Women who are in better situations seems less interested in taking the lead, and creating and pursuing an agenda to confront the situation that creates our human burden and suffering. Is it that our own life burdens are so great that we lack the time and energy to bother with the common good and our shared responsibility? Is it because we have been so marginalized in Ethiopian society that we no longer see a role for ourselves in the public arena? None of these reasons can justify our indifference. Mela is one of the many roads that Adbar has pursued to draw men and women to work together on their shared problems. Throughout Ethiopian history, our mothers had the wisdom never to relinquish social responsibility to the men alone. We seem to have changed over the last half century, and the results speak for themselves. Women did not willfully abandon their social responsibility; they were constitutionally pushed and shunted into the domestic, or powerless arena. Mela does not wish to open yet another avenue for infinite polemics on this issue of female absence and male dominance in the public agenda and its consequences, or for that matter to dwell on the misery created over the last half century. What Mela does hope to do is to encourage men and women to put their heads together in a disciplined way to pursue solutions to the extraordinary human problem whose genesis is well known to us all. The endless discussions and rehashing of life-experiences of the last two decades will not help solve our human problems. New visions and actions can. We invite all to challenge their ingenuity to create and share ideas and programs to address the enormous human suffering of Ethiopian women and their families. We hope Mela, the Adbar publication, will be a modest forum for the dissemination of ideas and information compatible with Adbar's human and social aspirations. Equally important, Mela should be a publication, which encourages Ethiopian women and girls' self-empowerment. We would also like to help the women and girls to develop their sense of self-worth, and thereby enhance their opportunities to lift themselves up by the bootstraps understanding ones responsibilities to self, community and society are among the building blocks of uplifting human experience. We urge our sisters to come forth and use this, their medium, to dialogue and cooperate with men in solving our age-old problems. Small beginnings can take us to great heights if we persist in our efforts.

 

Happy Ethiopian New Year

September 2001, Volume 4, Issue 1

PATRIARCHY: PART II
THE ETHIOPIAN WOMEN'S CHALLENGE

The realm of spirituality is no exception. The world’s religions have tended to treat womanhood and feminine experiences with suspicion, distrust and even fear. Menstruation has been condemned as unclean, menopause as disastrous, female sexuality as something dangerous and any female involvement in it as a dirty, sinful thing that seriously needs to be suppressed. Women’s reproductive ability has been ridiculously translated into weakness, needing male intervention to control and manage it.

My earlier quest for a meaningful spiritual life, which was inevitably found in the Christian faith, required a complete change of behavior on my part. I learned the virtues of humility and humbleness, chastity and purity; selflessness and generosity, kindness and compassion; endurance of hardships. An important element of my faith was the sense of belonging to a family of ‘those of the household of Faith’. I found out that the work calls for the highest standards of living from ‘the Faithful’. In this I was able to oblige. And then, I found out that a special pecking order existed in ‘the household of Faith’, men came first and then women followed; women were expected to play behind-the-scene roles, supporting the brothers. A few sisters in the ‘household of faith’ were able to emerge and take the front row a few times, but almost always we stayed a few ‘respectful’ paces behind our brothers, always letting them take the lead. This was a source of secret frustration for me. I wanted a piece of the action, but I did not dare to become ‘too forward’ and risk being misunderstood. It soon became obviously clear to me that it was ‘disadvantageous’ to be a woman. A woman has to conform in order to fit within the confines of organized religions, which are overwhelmingly male-oriented.

The culture that I grew up in was a simple extension of the larger Ethiopian patriarchal system. It was a reinforcement of the subordination and subjugation of women. In order to be a decent ‘woman’ one has to fit into the mold. There is no room for questioning ­ that would be perceived as disobedience of the ‘culture’. It glorified subservience of a woman to man, willing to be led and ready to endure whatever hardships came her way, with thanksgiving.

In our culture men are expected to be better than women; to be more powerful, more successful, more authoritative, more aggressive than women. Men are expected to be better than women; indeed, this is a source of pride. They are the providers, protectors, and controllers of the home. These are the men who are perceived to be “true men”. Many of us grew up knowing and accepting that women and men have different roles.

Many of us firmly believe that men and women have different roles to play in society. Many of us perform our part without question. Although a lot of women respect the principle of equality in principle and support the work some of us are doing, they have qualms about what some of us do. They believe that it may not be a good idea ‘to rock the boat’ by agitating for equality between men and women.

As far as some women are concerned, women should be more independent than they currently are, but they are quite apprehensive about what will happen when changes occur. Some of my friends, like many conservative Ethiopian women, are a bit skeptical of the so-called ‘women’s movement’.

“What do we want to achieve anyways: The men to go to the kitchen or start changing the babies’ diaper?” A friend of mine told me she would never subject her man to that. She has nothing to gain by ‘demeaning’ him in this way and would hate to see him lose face by having to do such menial tasks ‘meant for women’. Besides, what would people say about her if they got to know that she makes him do such things?

When we look at the gender role in the larger portion of our society, the peasant setting, both men and women would work on land, tilling and preparing the grounds for planting. The actual planting of seed, and thereafter removing weeds from the farm, was mostly done by womenfolk. The women also took care of the home, keeping the house and its environs clean and tidy, doing the washing, fetching water from the nearby rivers, for home consumption, collecting firewood or hewing wood, cooking, taking care of the domestic animals and caring for the children. The younger boys joined the women in doing these chores, but the much older boys stuck to male roles which includes felling trees or pulling out tree stumps, tilling virgin land, building new structures in the homestead and other exerting, manual jobs. Taking care of the general welfare of the home is the duty of the family patriarchs. They have the authority to decide what happens to whom, where and when.

The life of the rural women consists of almost the same routine day after day. The women are the first to get up in the morning within the homestead to start the daily chores; milking the cattle and proceeding to draw water and fetching firewood, cooking, feeding the children, taking lunch for the family members working on the field, helping on the field, gathering the animals into the pens for the night, etc. Later in the evening, the men would freshen up, may be change into their better apparel and take an evening stroll as they waited for the women to carry out the evening chores. One does not have to go through this routine to understand what this life entails. There is practically no leisure for women in the home. I found it a drag and grossly unfair.

I wanted to know how the women feel about it. I got a chance to talk to a woman who passed through this routine. She did not see this life as burdensome. It was simply the way things were and she accepted it. She accepts her role as a woman without complaint and cannot understand why some women (like me) think that we should get more out of life. “More of what?” She asks. As a young girl she was her mother’s understudy. Her mother always succumbed to her father’s will, even when she thought that his decisions were far from wise or even unfair. It was not a woman’s place to question her husband’s intentions, or keep second-guessing his decisions. She saw all this and learnt well.

When she eventually got married herself, she always did what her husband wished. This is what made a good wife and that is what she wanted to be. In time, she told me, she learnt her man well enough to influence his decisions without threatening his position. Indeed, according to her, a wise woman learns the art of putting ideas into her husband’s head and letting him think it was his own idea. So long as your wishes are fulfilled, why does it matter whose idea it was originally? Obviously she does not see that this robs women of visibility as someone else gets to take the credit for their ingenious ideas. She did not evens think twice when her husband asked her to resign from her job. It was earlier on in the relationship and she figured that her husband’s demand that she resign stemmed from his need to establish some sort of authority over her from the very start. “Things are very testy at the beginning”, she says. “A man needs the assurance that you are not going to run for his ‘post’ in the family”. She, however, concedes that she is lucky that she ended up with a man who took good care of her and the children. Many other women are not usually so lucky.

 

Their husbands often use their financial power to punish or ‘tramline’ their ‘errant’ wives by withholding much-needed monetary support. Like the majority of Ethiopian, women who have learnt the art of survival in marriage, she has relied on her wit to suffuse crisis in her marriage. “Often, pretending to be much more foolish than you really are, is a ruse that men fall for over and over again”, she told me. Apparently most men feel secure when they think that their wives are too dumb to really do anything by themselves. Strange reasoning, but I am assured that it works. According to her, there is no way for the sexes to be equal. Say, for instance, the question of fidelity in marriage. While women are expected to be absolutely faithful in marriage, men have flagrant extra-marital affairs. A married woman, who is caught having a similar affair, has no hope for a pardon from her spouse; she is quickly gotten rid of. The man, with his superior earning power and capacity to provide for the family, indulges in such behavior in the comfort of knowing that there can be no significant reprieve against him. Many women simply suffer their errant husbands quietly and bear the pain.

In my view, most women know exactly what is going on. They appreciate the double standards applied to both sexes. Despite this fact, many women adapted to male whims, as did our mothers and grandmothers before us.

I feel that women are like undergrowth plants desperately trying to flourish and thrive on the forest floor, while the bigger, taller, gigantic trees block out almost the entire sky and sunlight from view. Most of these miserable plants will never reach the height of the big trees, unless all things remain equal. Indeed, most of the really puny and vulnerable ones are the first to be trampled upon and destroyed when hazards come. Some of the forest undergrowth does survive, of course, but at best it only gets to become sturdy bushes; never strong, tall, or gigantic trees comparable to the ‘dominant’ forest trees.

So long as women engage in the ‘survival tactics’, they shall continue to be the ‘forest undergrowth’. In my opinion this is not enough. It is too little. Women must acquire the same opportunity with men to grow, with enough space, sunlight and sky to thrive, even bloom and blossom!

By Muluken Teshome

 

 

ETHIOPIA THE PH.D. WHO CAN'T WORK WITH OTHERS
AND THE SOCIETAL IMPACT

In this day and age, Africa imports modern education, cars, computers, telephones, TVs, the Internet, fashion, books, and pretty much every thing. But it does not look like it imports modern "organization" education. This hold true for Ethiopia, there may be many reasons for that, but the fact is that we now have several generations of people "educated" without the faintest experience and knowledge about how to team with others, how to work, organize with others to solve old and unsolved huge problems or get together and build new institutions that last and achieve their goals.

One must be exposed to organized work, to being elected, to team-work success, to being rewarded for a good job. Since elementary school, these notions become second nature, instinctive to him or her. Organizations are a collective of human being grouped for a certain mission. They are social entities. My belief is that organizations are like scaffolding around buildings. It is in their womb that the new buildings grow. It is hard to imagine Noble Prize winners in medicine without the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Royal Medical Society and the like.

It is hard to imagine for instance a telecom industry flourishing in Ethiopia and de-regulation obtained without an Ethiopian trade association of IT related businesses, without an Internet users association, without an Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation's customers association, and telecom is an Ethiopia's window to the future in business, in education, in governance and many other areas.

Without an organization the individual, highly educated or not, is alone. His efforts are invisible and insignificant. He or she will be modern "handyman" who can only work on an as an employee to do a specific job in larger organizations belonging to those who were "organization" trained since their childhood.

 

In Ethiopia, perhaps in many African countries, when one goes to school he or she is expected to study the basics (math, reading, writing) and gets no education in how to team with others, in organizing and solving problems together. Perhaps one of the few places where one gets a crash course on how to "organize" and "lead" is the army.

I, for one, don't remember doing anything related to teaming with my school friends, or my neighbors to accomplish a community work during my whole student life. To make it short, we now have Ethiopian PhDs, MSS and BAs in chemistry, social science, in many other fields who are incapable of working together. And if they get together they will raise the most contentious issues political or otherwise, argue forever and split. If by miracle they get to form an organization they will measure its performance by how much it opposes someone else (people, institutions, government, etc.) and not by how much positive work it has done, how much result it has obtained, how many members it has produce, or how much recognition it has given to excellent work.

 

This is my view, a direct result of there not being "organization trained". This behavior perhaps explains why Ethiopians rarely team up to start business together here in the United States and else where. 

Why our community misses opportunities to grow strong, wealthy and well established and why we grow relatively poor every day when compared to the other immigrant communities in the United States.

Congratulations Graduates of 2001

PATRIARCHY: PART 1 THE ETHIOPIAN WOMEN'S CHALLENGE


The writing of this article is the result of personal quest for many issues that have a very personal slant. The points I am going to discuss in this article are related to my personal experiences in search of a meaningful identity: one in which I could relate to totally and feel altogether comfortable with.

My academic background in the study of feminism is negligible. The motivation to explore this topic springs from a very basic personal need to connect with my identity as a female to the different aspect of life that has been the subject of much thought and introspection in the past couple of years. I know that I am not alone in this quest of hope to share the findings of this endeavor with my fellow women who have been grappling and groping for answers to this
question like I have.


I believe a person's ability to find meaning to their life stems from understanding the world around them. As I learned to understand myself better, I learned to understand the environment I live in more and I was beginning to understand how I related to and with my world and for me this is discovering my own identity. As I discovered myself I do not like what I saw because I had a limited understanding of the concept of identity; operating on the conventional paradigms of the subject, I had no choice. My pursuit for a meaningful identity has led me to shift the old paradigm in search for a new one.


I was born like an Ethiopian women in a male dominated society where the dominance of men and subservience of women in something that is indoctrinated in us from a very early age. I grew up with the knowledge that men are more privileged than women, they are supposed to be. Women exist at the instance of men; all the decision-making power belongs to men, both within the domestic and public spheres. Naturally the men make decision that favors them at the expense of their female counterparts. I learnt early that the art of serving and obeying men is a women’s province and her duty. It is hardly surprising then to find that I am still a ‘domesticated’ individual. My early upbringing was meant to prepare me for an eventuality that my fate, marriage and the limiting life that it entails. ‘It is a woman’s lot’ to endure this kinds of life.


The incident that triggered the thought to write this article is a recent event in Atlanta that reminded me of another phenomena that took place a few years ago. It was at this event that I saw it. I saw how women are ever so imperceptibly sidelined and excluded from decision-making. It happened so subtly that I felt sure that neither man nor women present ever saw it happen. I tried to speak out my mind - my reverie was broken, but I shall never forget that instance.


The incidence relates to lekso bete. I lost a close member of my family. When a person dies, mourners congregate at the home to console the bereaved family and make funeral arrangements. Funerals are taken to be very important events in Ethiopia. It is not only the duty of immediate family to bury the dead. All friends and relatives have an obligation to bury the deceased. Depending on the status of deceased. The mourners contribute money to give their dead friend or relative and decent burial that is usually organized through idir (self-help organizational structure). Thus, funeral meetings, more than many other conventional social gatherings, have gained immense social value as cultural events. These forums provide decision-making opportunities; Who shall order the coffin? What kind? Where? Etc. All of us family, friends and relatives congregated to mourn him as well as arrange for his funeral. Some of us stayed there night after night. It was at one of these evenings that I saw the spectacle I refer above.
 
At these meetings people contribute money and then make decisions about hot to spend that money. This includes that to buy, who shall do it, who shall be responsible for what, who shall read the eulogy, etc.


When we see the structure of idir, members appoint a chairman to lead the sessions; I say chairman because as long as I have attended idir meetings it is always a man who is chosen to be the leader of the group. On a few occasions a women is chosen to be the treasurer, the keeper of the money (women tend to be more trust worthy). Apparently, it is assumed that women are either too stupid or timid to think of stealing the money. Besides, if they are going to include a woman in the process, this is the best position she is going to get. I have often been piqued at not a woman being nominated to ‘lead’ the group.
 
Not that I personally am so hungry for a leadership position but I am convinced that there are women capable of leading, who have the organizational efficacy enough to be trusted with the process. No, the nominee is always a man. The message looks as if ‘some things cannot be trusted to a woman’.


Even in time of mourning, women are not equal to men. Male mourners are treated with more deference than the female ones. The female mourners are expected to go and assist in the kitchen, while the male mourners will sit in the meeting place, usually in Denkuane (tent). One friend, a real feminist I might add, once told me that she had gone to Lekso Bet and had been asked to yield her seat to a male newcomer. Careful not to lose her cool in such a somber setting, she politely declined to leave her seat and hung on to it until she left the gathering, much to the consternation and perplexity of the other women.
 
The incident I observed in Lekso Bet was the effective ‘weeding’ out of women from the meeting place, leaving only men to make the decisions about the funeral. I am not saying women are exactly forcibly ejected from their seats. They merely get up of their own volition to provide incoming men with sitting space. After all, a decent, well brought up woman does not sit while a man stands, does she? Being ‘well brought up women’ we did not stop to think about the effect of what we are doing, we merely gave in to years of conditioning and gave up our seats to men. By getting up and giving away our seats, I did not realize the enormity or significance of what we were really giving up. We were giving up not just our seats but our chance to be part of the decision making process that was going to affect us, at least in the funeral!
 
As I talked aloud to myself to the utter dismay of my relative, I wondered in amazement how many other ‘seats’ I had ever yielded without being any the wiser. I wondered how many seats Ethiopian women continue to yield, completely unaware that they were thereby signing off their right to power (as ability to make decisions is power), day by day. I wondered if the men I was watching with new eyes, realized how easily women relinquished their positions thereby empowering them, or they just took everything for granted. I have continued to wonder what will happen when more and more women learn not to relinquish their seats like my friend. Not just at the funeral meetings but in all spheres of life.


This is just one of the incidences where I observed the ways and methods employed by men to sideline women. In some meetings I have seen men gesture to each other almost imperceptibly and then step aside to discuss important matters. To the women present, who are obviously excluded from the private ‘gesture club’, there is no way they can simply walk up to the group of whispering men and participate. It would not only look extremely improper, a woman would not put her pride on the line to do so. She could be rudely rebuffed. The important thing is that the mere fact that they were deliberately excluded by the gestures meant that the men did not want them in the deliberations. This manner of exclusion happens at all sorts of social gatherings, including weddings and funerals.


As the meeting progresses, the men allocate the various jobs to be done to different people. Women always get the jobs of ensuring that there will be enough food for the mourners. They are the caterers and caretakers. The men are given responsibilities such as obtaining transportation for the mourners who will travel to attend the funeral as well as to negotiate any other big expenses. It would seem that while men are not readily trusted with the role of keeping the coffers, they are trusted with big expenses; a bit of a contradiction, I would say. Women’s duties in this process involve the no expenditure duties (such as catering and serving), or the low expenditure duties. This mode of doing things creates a hierarchy of authority. By distancing themselves from the woman folk, the men have continued to carve and wield positions of power and domination for themselves in the communities they live. The perpetuation of this power is very much dependent on continuation of the unquestioning subservience of women to men.
 
This state of affairs was, and still is, a source of much frustration to me, and it rankles my sense of justice a great deal. I believe that women should not be disadvantaged simply because of their sex. We are entitled to have the same opportunities as men. Although I fervently believe in the above truths and have spent a good portion of my life combating the inequality or double standards that exists between men and women, it was quite recently that I realized that I am a very socialized woman myself, enslaved as it were by the delimiting beliefs, especially as they pertain to women. I suppose one cannot grow up in a culture that is oppressive to women and fail to embody and espouse the same system of beliefs and values, irrespective of how objectionable they are to one personally.
 
The experience recounted here made me realize that my life was a contradiction in terms; kind of like preaching water but drinking wine. I only needed to comprehend what made me say one thing and yet really believe another. I also had to question my old belief systems to ensure that I truly believe what I preached, and preached what I believed. When I started this exercise of self-examination and reflection, I thought it was easy, but doing it has made me realize that it is not as simple as it looked at first. The challenge was to synchronize what I profess with what I believe.


While in principle I believe that men and women are equal, I realize that I grew up ‘knowing that this is not really true’. I found that, buried deep within my subconscious, is another very vibrant belief that men are, or even should be, better than women. I grew up learning whatever is feminine has tended to be devalued, even despised or deemed evil, while things masculine have been celebrated and venerated. I grew up witnessing the unequal and unfair standards between the sexes being well depicted in all spheres of life.
 
. . to be continued in the next issue
 
By Muluken Teshome (Atlanta)





THE GREATEST GIFTS PARENTS CAN GIVE THEIR CHILDREN
The greatest gift parents can give their children is to talk to them from the time they are babies and whenever possible. Why? Talk helps children develop language skills that are critical to school success: speaking, reading, and writing.

When you talk to your baby, in whatever language you speak at home, you are teaching them words- vocabulary- and how to put words together to form sentences.


It is important to talk to your children, even babies, using "complex" sentences. Instead of saying "mommy cooking" tell your baby what you are doing and why. " I am going to cook food now because it is dinner time. When I have finished cooking we will have a good meal."


If you think talking does not make a difference, think about this. By the time children are 18 months old, children who are spoken to in the above manner have a larger vocabulary than other children who are just told what to do. Because they have a larger vocabulary, children will find it easier to go from speaking to reading and writing. This is because the words written on the page will be familiar to them. They will not have to struggle to learn the word and then read it. Instead, they will just have to learn that the letters on the paper correspond to the way that word is written.


So whenever you can, speak to your children, even as babies. Remember it is never too early to help them learn!


By Lei-Anne Ellis, M. S.
Agenda For Children, Cambridge

The Fight Against AIDS in Africa : Part 2

WOMEN AND AFRICA'S SECOND REVOLUTION


According to many scholars, Africa is undergoing a second Revolution. This revolution is a self-transforming grassroots movement. These transformative grassroots economic, social, and political movements draw their origin and strengths from the abusive, irresponsible, and incompetent elite leadership experiences which over the past thirty some years, has not only corrupted and bankrupted African societies, but also led to loss of life genocidal proportions.
 
As we surmise, the first African revolution was an anti-colonial struggle for true independence.


It was elite-led and the masses only executed the designs of the elite. At the dawn of independence, the elite that led anti-colonial struggles replaced the colonial masters in State power. What followed the initial euphoria of independence, and its promise of human dignity and prosperity in Africa, is a matter of a living history of misery, indignity, oppression, and mismanagement of State and national resources. This has led to the current state of despair and disintegration in Africa. The people-led grassroots second revolution is a reaction to this sustained disaster.


Many of Africa's declared sovereign countries are referred to as "expired states". Others were called "soft states". Only a few like Botswana, Gabon, and Ghana are believed to follow actions that may help them enjoy prospects for coherent nationhood and increased prosperity, growing out of their internally consistent social philosophies and cultural underpinnings. In other African countries, decades of mismanagement, cruelty to citizens in every way, and unaccountable and irresponsible financial looting and corruption have led societies to hang on the verge of total disintegration. These States have little or nothing to offer citizens, much less inspire the emergence of a viable civil society under law and order. These chaotic states are variously referred as "soft " or "expired" states, depending on the degree of alienation from the people and their irrelevance to the lives of people.


Unable to deliver any of the function of states like development, peace harmony, and prosperity that seemed within reach in the 1960s, heretofore mismanaged African that entertain some good will towards their people have simply receded to the background and the people are able to do their own experiments to make economic, social and cultural sense out of the mess and ruin of so many years of mismanagement and corruption. In this new grassroots experiment, called the Second Revolution African women are the front runners, in fact often the sole runners, picking the broken pieces of a worn out civil society and slowly putting them back together. The most vibrant domestic production and circulation of good and services in Africa are in the informal sector created by Africa's women.
 
Against tremendous international and domestic odds, African women are braving new life, courageously organizing and facing up to the challenge of rebuilding destroyed civil society from the bottom up with very little means and the burden of male oppression. Theirs is a grassroots movement dedicated to the rehabilitation of human spirit, the environment, African cultural values and the creation of human, social, economic and political environments in which the best in a society both male and female can emerge and thrive. Their efforts have already led to tremendous achievements.


To mention a few concrete cases, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, basically a women- led environmental movement covering 27 of these country's 42 administrative districts. It has upward of fifty thousand direct membership and millions more men and women followers organized into two thousand local community groups. This network forms the single most effective network of citizen organization that informs and mobilizes people on political, environmental corruption, of issues of human and civil rights abuses.
 
While it is busy rehabilitating and denuded countryside ( the movement, assisted by moderate donor grants, has planted over 20 million trees by early 1990s), it also tackles the fundamental systematic problems that have disemboweled people and alienated their culture from serving as the anchor for national transformation. So far, this network led professor Maathai Wangari now has such international prominence that it plays a central role in mentoring government decisions in almost every area. Among some recent achievements that mark the strength of this women ­led, grassroots civic movement are; Arap Moi's 1992 concession to multi ­party political participation and the scrapping of huge, World Bank financed building project that would have defaced Nairobi's most beautiful and expensive national park. In both cases, the women ­led mobilization of civil society resisted unaccountable government practices. In April, 1997, Niger under went the usual African political convulsion when an army coup unseated a duly elected government and jailed the entire cabinet. Women in Niger were angry and frustrated by this resumption of cycle of mindless violence.
 
They spontaneously gathered in growing numbers and sat around the army headquarters demanding the release of the cabinet members. Even mothers of infants participated. Their husbands attended the infants and brought them to the mothers for breast-feeding every soften. The women continued their sit-in protest until, confused about what to do with the women and embarrassed by international attention, the government released the prisoners. With their first mission accomplished, the women left the army premises.


We mention the current African instance of a new form of civil society in evolution with women at the heart and center of it. The aim is to highlight the failure and crises that can create new opportunities for change and transformation for that is real and balanced. Also we see a number of factors playing out of this new phenomenon of the second African revolution. First, that the African continent is beginning to see light at the end of the dark tunnel because women who value human life and the culture that nurtures it and gives it primacy are beginning to act. Second, this unexpected women-led continental rival is coming at a time when the total chaos in Africa had led most observers to conclude that the continent is helpless, and even contemplate the need for "recolonization" of the continent. The widespread grassroots social, economic and political movement is now attracting new international attention.


Many social scientists are taken by surprise at these new developments and are calling for careful study of the socio-cultural and economic phenomenon unleashed by women.


There are no other women on the continent who are burdened with abuse and uncertainty of destiny. Ethiopian women have lost their dignity, being subjected to rape, disease, poverty, malnutrition, and untold stress of internal and external exile. This leads to mental illness, suicide, and other forms of misery known to mankind.


Ethiopian women can and must be a big factor in creating an action and goal-oriented crusade that can quickly refocus and redirect all social, intellectual, and material energies; to doing concrete things, not fiddling with intangible and endless exercises in rhetoric.


Without women playing a resolute role, there can be no enduring and practical solutions to the extreme challenges facing us all.


We must step down from the treadmill of each wanting to tear and reorganize existing restructures created by others merely to reshape them after one's image. This can never work. But work does work.


To this end, Mela opens its pages to practical dialogue and useful and useable analysis of things that have worked and working or can work in the Ethiopian women community in Diaspora and in Ethiopia.


As we strive to stand up and be counted on, we hope to join hands with all enlightened people who realize that salvation is only a commitment away and that together, we the women will be in the driver's sit of a destiny guided by our best humanity.


We are learning as we go along, that our unique collective assets and potential are diverse, plentiful and awaiting rediscovery.