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Imagining
ourselves
Shailja
Patel
Extracted
from Pambazuka News 254
May 12, 2006
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/books/34114
"Imagining Ourselves,"
(IO) an ambitious online project featuring personal stories by hundreds
of young women from more than 100 countries around the world. The
women were asked to respond to one question: "What defines your
generation of women?"
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers in Johannesburg describes herself as a
"refugee from legitimacy."
Amanda Tumusiime, Ugandan visual artist, makes works in oils.
Monique Wanjala, social economist from Kenya, has changed the way
"my brothers treat women" by coming out to her family
about her HIV+ status.
Zimbabwe’s Netsayi sings of the longing for connection on the journey
to claim herself.
Iman Shaggag of Sudan recalls the forcible circumcision of her childhood
friends.
Nigerian photographer, Toyin Sokefun, captures women both owning
and disowning concepts of female beauty.
What do all these women have in common? Their songs, stories, films,
artwork, photos, are in "Imagining Ourselves," (IO) an ambitious
online project featuring personal stories by hundreds of young women
from more than 100 countries around the world. The women were asked
to respond to one question: "What defines your generation of women?"
Produced and presented by the San Francisco-based International
Museum of Women, IO sets out to capture the voices of women in their
20s and 30s – a generation poised to take the reins of global leadership.
Launched on March 8th, International Women’s Day, in Arabic, English,
French and Spanish, the exhibit logged an astonishing 65,000 "hits"
in 24 hours. In its first week, over 200,000 hits were recorded.
Contributors from 154 countries posted comments, responses, and
their own stories. By mid-April, the numbers had risen to 3.5 million
hits, from 130,000-plus unique visitors, in over 170 countries.
Clearly, IO taps a global need – for young women to share their
visions and voices, and to connect with their peers internationally.
African contributors range from the famous – Hafsat Abiola, Rokia
Traore – to 20-year-old Odette Mukeshimana, orphaned at 9 by the
Rwandan genocide, and left to raise her 6 siblings single-handed.
In a week when South Africa’s Jacob Zuma was acquitted of rape,
when we heard of UN peacekeepers and aid workers in Liberia and
the Congo extracting sex from 8-year-old girls in exchange for food
and money, IO is a vital injection of nutrients for the artist-activist
soul. Not because it offers escape from the grim realities African
women face. On the contrary. In the words of Kenyan journalist,
Mary Kimani, who has covered Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC for the
last 6 years:
"The poems I have sent in are not romantic poems. Imagination
is not just about things we would wish to be, but a lens through
which we can also see truly. There is a place for dreams, it is
the place that tells us all that we can be if we were allowed wings
and could soar. But all real dreams must be firmly anchored in reality.
"What defines my generation of women? In one word: resilience."
This resilience is the hallmark of the African contributions to
IO. They are juicy, vibrant, outrageous, creative, defiant, humorous,
stoic, determined. They are charged with talent, fuelled by razor
intelligence, honed and polished by professional skills and training,
driven by vision and purpose.
The resilience shines through the groundbreaking performance of
the Vagina Monologues in Lagos, a production that prompted the First
Lady of Lagos State to declare: "Every woman is on that stage."
It infuses the passion of South Africa’s Monica da Silva, who pioneers
community homeopathic treatments for HIV+ children. It underpins
the words of 18-year-old Marie Josee Nyirabisabo, as she describes
her YWCA training in literacy, reproductive health, microfinance,
and her business plan to generate income for herself and her two
younger siblings.
The one gripe I have with IO is the limitations of its search tool.
The site carries no single comprehensive listing of every story,
event, and contributor, so tracking down the African voices becomes
a treasure hunt. But the hunt throws up endless riches – compelling
photos and visual art, uniquely individual voices, powerful film
and music. The site is beautifully designed, both clean and rich,
visually striking, yet clutter-free. I’m not surprised that the
average visitor stays 20-30 minutes.
"Women catch courage from women whose lives and writings they
read," wrote the renowned American writer and scholar, Carolyn
Heilbrun, "and women call the bearer of that courage, ‘friend.’"
The great strength of IO is that its genuinely interactive design
allows this ‘catching of courage’ to take immediate form alongside
each exhibit in the posting of comments and responses. So for example,
Lisa Russell’s short film on obstetric fistula in Niger, elicits
a story from Sudanese Iman Shaggag, about the childhood friend who,
after circumcision, had no interest in any game other than mutilating
her dolls just as she had been mutilated.
Scheduled to run for four months, March – June 2006, IO presents
a different theme each month, with featured contributions and conversations
online, and linked live events around the world.
The opening theme for March was Love. Notable contributions include:
Ugandan artist Amanda Tumusiime’s oil paintings of the Kiga Hug.
The vivid textured images show the greeting embrace of the Bakiga
of Southern Uganda, "The Kiga Hug is a personal invitation
to cherish, love and embrace the future with a purpose."
The story by Monique Tondoi Wanjala (Kenya), of her journey from
a newly-married "enthusiastic Christian wife" who believed
AIDS only affected "promiscuous people", through the discovery
that she had been infected with HIV by her husband. Wanjala takes
us through her cycle of denial, despair, and the choice to move
forward, educate herself and others, come out as HIV+ and become
an advocate and activist. "For me, knowledge is power."
"Unfolding Posture", by multidisciplinary artist Heba
Farid (Egypt): a series of photos of a woman’s body turning under
water. The views of limbs, hair, torso, fluid and distorted, become
a metaphor for all the shifts women address in IO.
Nigerian Toyin Sokefun reflects on beauty, in photos of women claiming,
manufacturing, and contemplating their physical selves.
And finally, Hafsat Abiola interviews Amina Lawal, an illiterate
villager from northern Nigeria, made famous in 2001 when an Islamic
Shari’a court sentenced her to death by stoning for bearing a child
out of wedlock. Two of Lawal’s responses stand out with heartbreaking
starkness:
Q: What are your expectations for your life?
A: I leave my life to God.
Q: What were your dreams when you were growing up?
A: We had no dreams. We were not brought up to think that we could
dream.
In April, the theme was Money, perhaps the most crucial determinant
to women’s ability to define themselves. We meet Winnie Gitau, who
against all odds, started her own health foods business in Kenya
- and revolutionized the market for holistic products. Her story
demonstrates the challenges faced on the continent, even by educated,
professional, middle-class women, in financing business ventures.
At the other end of the spectrum, Carolyn Asapo (Uganda) describes
her work with the Village Enterprise Fund, which offers start-up
capital to rural women. "My wish is to have a world where challenges
are transformed into opportunities."
Culture and Conflict is the focus for the current month, May. Phillippa
Yaa de Villiers, South African writer, delves into the complexity
of mixed-race heritage in the apartheid years.
" I am the colony of their forbidden love,
where Africa's son
and Scotland's grand-daughter
dna-ed, denied their offspring"
And ends with a clarion call to all her sisters:
"No ring adorns the marriage of myself to myself,
it is endless and golden."
Netsai Mushonga (Zimbabwe) narrates her evolution as the founder
of WPP (Women’s Peacemakers Program), and Director of Women's
Coalition.
"I was alarmed when my distant cousin was killed by her husband
and then not arrested. He was made to pay a cow to his in-laws and
got a younger fresher woman. That memory from my childhood sticks
out to me as I finally realized that women's situation was akin
to slavery."
Tessa Lewin’s short film, "Conscious Dreaming" is a charming,
whimsical, thought provoking, musical animation piece. In just a
few minutes, it captures the dilemmas of all young women negotiating
the quest for self with the longing for connection and stability.
It’s hard to click out of the IO site. It feels like walking out
of an electric conversation between a group of women, a conversation
that bubbles with laughter and inspiration, throws up fresh argument
and challenge moment to moment, leaves your brain and imagination
crackling. Perhaps the most important thing IO does is make my generation
of women present, in their own voices, through their own lenses,
for all the world to see and hear.
Hafsat Abiola says, of her interview with Amina Lawal: "I meet
so many women who are still waiting for permission to be present.
Ultimately, Imagining Ourselves must be Imagining Ourselves Authorized."
Mary Kimani sums it up:
"When I hear the term 'Imagining Ourselves', I think reality
and hope mixed together. It is who we are now and who we want to
be. It is love and pain, joy and anger, hope and fear all mixed
together. We imagine ourselves whole, human, complete, and that
has never in any language or culture, translated to perfect or ideal.
It has always translated to complex, multifaceted, and annoyingly
human."
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers wraps up her poem with uncompromising
solidity:
"Here we are then. Here we are."
http://imaginingourselves.imow.org/
Imagining Ourselves Curriculum available for educators, partners
and community organizations to download from the Museum Website
at:http://www.imow.org/education/curricula_exhibit_io.php
* Shailja Patel is a Kenyan poet, writer and theatre artist. Her
work features in Imagining Ourselves this month at:
http://imaginingourselves.imow.org/pb/Story.aspx?id=443&lang=1
Visit Shailja at www.shailja.com
* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org
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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