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Dignify
a Zister!
By Cathy Buckle
February
21, 2004
Dear Family
and Friends,
When I dropped
my son at school yesterday morning he said: "See you at lunch time
Mum." "Lunch time, why what day is it?" I asked. Friday is a half
day at school and it took an eleven year old boy to remind me what
day it was. For the last 7 days I have spent 12 solid hours a day
at my computer trying to answer an unstoppable tidal wave of emails
from ordinary people wanting to help the women of Zimbabwe.
Thank you is
such an inadequate phrase to express my gratitude for the overwhelming
response to my letter last week about women's sanitary needs. Offers
of help came from all over the world; from women and churches, groups
and clubs and from scores of men too. There were letters from fathers
and grandfathers, doctors and priests. So many people have offered
to help that it has filled me an overwhelming feeling of hope for
our future here. One man said that my words had ignited a "chivalrous
rage" within him. How I wish that all of you who responded to my
letter could have been here to see the reaction of a woman being
given a small packet of sanitary towels this week. The woman's eyes
shone with tears as I gave her the bag which she clutched to her
chest and then she hugged me and said: "Oh thank you, God Bless
you, now I can be clean again."
I must apologise
for being so ill-prepared to cope with both the correspondence and
logistics of what continues to grow into a vast mountain of support
for ordinary women in Zimbabwe.
A dedicated
email address has been established and will be manned by volunteers
to respond to and channel what has come to be known as the Dignify
a Sister campaign. The address is: dignifyazister@yahoo.com
. It may take a couple of days for volunteers to cope with the backlog
of mails that I have been physically unable to answer and have forwarded
to Dignify A Zister but please do not let this labour of love go
because every single packet of cotton wool and sanitary towels is
wanted and desperately needed.
The volunteers
organising Dignify A Zister will link offers of support with individual
women and their sisters and daughters in Zimbabwe, provide addresses
to send to and answer all the questions being asked. This is not
a political movement or an international organisation. It is just
a way of letting ordinary people hold out the hand of friendship
and give moral support to women who ask only for the dignity of
cleanliness.
For almost four
years I have been telling the story of how Zimbabwe has been turned
upside down because of a political party's determination to stay
in power. I have told of rape and torture, arson and murder. I have
recorded how inflation grew from a teenager in 2000 to an insatiable
monster which hit 624 % in 2004 and how 4 years of political mayhem
has left 8 out of every 10 people unemployed and almost 70% of our
population dependant on world food aid in order to survive. In these
four years I have had many thousands of emails from people all over
the world and almost always their question has been: What can we
do to help?
Dignify A Zister
provides just one answer and on behalf of Zimbabwe's women, I thank
the men for their chivalrous rage and the women for their sisterly
love, compassion and empathy.
Until next week,
with love, Cathy.
Copyright Cathy
Buckle, 21st February 2004.
My books on
the Zimbabwean crisis, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are now
available outside Africa from: orders@africabookcentre.com
; www.africabookcentre.com
; www.amazon.co.uk ; in Australia
and New Zealand: johnmreed@johnreedbooks.com.au
; Africa:
www.kalahari.net www.exclusivebooks.com
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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