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| | • | En Angola, Bosnia y Herzegovina, Kosovo, Mozambique y Somalia, países azotados por recientes guerras, la mayoría de las mujeres adultas son viudas. | | | • | Las mujeres suelen cuidar a los heridos en combate y se encuentran a sí mismas, como resultado del conflicto, inesperadamente solas al frente del hogar y el cuidado de los niños y los mayores. | |
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During my studies, I went to one of the local courts to attend a proceeding for the seizure of a widow’s property. Seated in one of the benches was a frail looking woman whom I could tell had been sobbing.
When the court house was empty, as the matters for the day had been completed, I passed her on my way out; she did not even noticed my presence until I tapped her shoulder, then without lifting her bowed head she said, “I don’t have anywhere to go; they should have dug a grave for me also.” This woman had been disinherited when her husband died; that was the cultural practice, and it was this same culture could not allow her to go back to her parent’s home, the same culture that had no place for her in society. She had gone to court for help but it was too late; her relatives had taken advantage of her ignorance. That was the turning point of my life and I set to help women claim their rights through training.
At the end of the training process, the woman leader gave me a beautifully beaded key holder with my name inscribed on it and she told me, “Put your keys here and whenever you open your door, always remember you have opened our eyes and changed our lives as Maasai women.” That was the beginning of the many doors that I was given the task of opening and it has led to the most rewarding experiences of my life. Some of the doors I have had to open leave a lasting impression of empowerment and sometimes, the doors have been a little rough and required more strength to open.
As a trainer in peace and human rights issues, I have had the opportunity to train women from both my generation and my parent’s generation. These two generations are diverse and the culture of one is different from the other.
In one of my trainings, there was one woman was the elder one in the group, and I looked up to her for guidance and gave her the respect she deserved. During my introductory talk, in which I was introducing some basic concepts and trying to get the diverse opinions of everyone in the group on what the terms “peace” and “conflict” meant, I heard this same woman say: “Who does not know what that means…besides what is this young woman teaching me?”, in what was meant to be a whisper but unfortunately was loud enough to hear; hearing that momentarily put me off course.
However, I regained my composure and decided to repeat out loud the statement she had made to get a response from the others and some said, “Well, we all know what it means but our definitions are different, and we want to hear them.” How that saved my day! But I still left the session with somewhat of a bruised ego as I thought to myself that she would not have said that to my elder colleague.
The trainings have had their trying times especially when dealing with my elder sisters who have on several occasions looked down on me because of my age. I have shared this with fellow young women who have also encountered the same discrimination, and my firm belief is that we learn from each other. I wholly agree that experience is the best teacher but that does not justify looking down at young women’s activism.
African culture dictates that the older we get, the more respect we command; women and children are classified as one, the visible but silent members of the community. They are there to be seen and not heard. Thus if women are like children, then a young woman ranks very low in the hierarchy of importance.
Culture is very important in my country, Kenya. And in the Gikuyu community from which I come from women are meant to be submissive, as is reflected in the word woman in my native language, “Mutumia” meaning one who should keep quiet and graciously accept with silence what she undergoes, from violation to death.
Culturally, among the Gikuyu, women are not allowed to inherit from their parents whether they are married or not. However, the law allows women to inherit. What is happening now is that the older generation is claiming that they should have inherited certain property and did not, while the younger generation is asking for their inheritance as a matter of right and causing a lot of conflict. Using my knowledge as a lawyer, I am helping the disinherited, especially widows, to claim their property through legal awareness seminars as well as spreading the message to young women to strengthen their independence by getting their own property as opposed to waiting for an inheritance.
The Maasai women, whom I work with, go through similar experiences. For instance, women are not supposed to look at men when they are being addressed, women do not speak in front of men. They also go through cultural rites like early and forced marriages, female genital mutilation and education preference of boys over girls. I have been involved in educating women of the importance of taking their girls to school and discarding harmful cultural practices.
The road has not been easy; one of the main causes of conflict is culture in terms of values and systems. To change such culture is to change what has always been valid. At one point, the men came to see what exactly we were teaching the women and I had to explain to them the importance of the trainings.
In my workshops I have adopted a method that involves first understanding the reasons behind certain cultural practices and have had to take the trainees through a process of sifting out what the good intentions of the rites are and identifying the negative sides that need to be changed or discarded altogether.
Culture is our identity and thus it needs to be understood from both the viewpoints of my generation and the elder generation. The most practical approach that I have found is to work with the leaders among the older generation who can influence their own generation and help promote understanding between the two generations. The older generation has to stop talking down to young women and start talking with young women.
On the other hand, the older generation has been instrumental in shaping my activism as I have learnt a lot from their experiences. They have embraced change for their daughters whom they have vowed to protect from cultural violence. I believe young women need mentors to help us through our activism and support us. | |  | MARCAR ESTE ARTÍCULO PARA REVISO | |
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