Strong in the broken places

I often wonder what ignites the passion for activism and what motivates individuals to care enough about the plight of others to place themselves on the firing line.

One of the things I discovered about the 24 young women that are taking part in the Moremi Initiative for women’s leadership and development in Africa (MILEAD) here in Ghana is that their passions derive from some of their most painful and deepest hurts.

In essence, they have risen against all odds to face their pasts and use their own pain to alleviate the suffering of others, prevent the possibility of similar pain being inflicted on others and wherever possible to use their experiences to reach out to others.

I once read a daily devotional that was titled, “strong in the broken places” and I never could really understand the meaning of that phrase.

But now I realize that there is strength to be derived from the lessons we learn when life’s tragedy breaks us down.

It all started with a seminar on child sexual abuse, gender violence and all the inherent complexities of these social ills and turned into a cathartic experience when one of the fellows shared a personal horror story.

Herlyn Uiras was diagnosed with HIV after she was raped by a truck driver who had offered her lift smuggled her into South Africa at the age of 16 and dumped her in Johannesburg miles from her country of origin – Namibia.

Herlyn’s story is heartrending, spine-chilling and life-transforming, proving the remarkable resilience of the human spirit and the triumph that comes with choosing to be a survivor and not victim of life’s endless tragedies.

“My friend and I wanted to see what Joburg was like and that truck driver said he could get use into SA. We were excited, we were 16, we were on an adventure. The moment he got us across the border he demanded sex, I refused but he went ahead anyway and when I saw that he would do it anyway, I begged him to use a condom. He wore one but it broke while he was at it. He didn’t stop. And I couldn’t stop him.”

The way Herlyn tells her story is striking in two ways; first she owns the consequences of her choices, specifically the choice to trust a stranger with her life.

She stayed 5 months in South Africa, surrendered herself to the police and was given passage back to her country.

Today Herlyn is 26, working with AIDS organisations to sensitize young children about the disease and is engaged in projects to discourage human smuggling and warn people about the dangers of human trafficking.

Prior to the earth-shattering revelations she made about what she went through, I had already created a profile of her in my mind, as I did with every other young woman I had met there.

I had profiled her as one of the fun-loving, side-splittingly hilarious women I have ever come across.

One would never guess at the sound of her infectious laughter that her life had been touched by such trauma and tragedy – though it wasn’t easy, Herlyn says she got to the point where she made peace with what had transpired – forgiven herself and even managed to somehow forgive the man who had raped and infected her.

As she told her story, she was so composed and we all listened disbelieving because although she spared us the details, most of us could still feel our skins crawl and imagine how she must have felt.

Then somewhere along the narration something just broke in her – she cried and we cried. Cried for that 16 year old girl who didn’t know any better and cried for the woman standing before us, who ten years later re-lives the nightmare to help others and to warn others by sharing her life story across the continent.

I have no way of knowing who’s life may be helped or saved by sharing Herlyn’s story with readers who follow Kubatana’s blogs, but there is no doubt in my mind that her story will help someone, somewhere to either avoid what befell her or choose to overcome whatever pain was inflicted on them.

Having received a fully-packed programme scheduled with back to back lectures and activities lined up for us, I went to Ghana expecting to be taught but when I got here – I found myself learning. Learning the meaning of what it means to be strong, strong even in the broken places.

Chief K. Masimba Biriwasha suggests that “Zimbabweans need to commit to high levels of excellence in all spheres of their lives as part of the rebranding process” . . . read more

When a friend suggested that I should go and check out the home furniture industry located in the teeming high density suburb of Glen View 3, approximately eight kilometers out of the city centre, little did I know I was in for a quick lesson on Zimbabwean mediocrity at its most basic level. First things first: I firmly support local entrepreneurship but only if it adheres to high levels of excellence at every step of execution. Suffice to state that my story began after I complained that the prices of furniture in the city centre were simply too exorbitant for the quality of the items on offer.

My friend told me that many of the furniture items being showcased in the city shops were actually originating from Glen View 3. I immediately became curious to check out this goldmine of furniture. So, I jumped on a Kombi at Market Square and headed out to Glen View 3 keen to strike a furniture deal that would not damage my pocket yet beautify my apartment.

Because I wasn’t sure about the location of the place, I constantly reminded the Kombi’s conductor that I wanted to drop off at the furniture joint. The complex, he retorted, to my amazement. Complex is actually what the furniture joint is called by the locals, I discovered later. In recent years, the place where the furniture is being made has grown so much to deserve being referred to as a complex.

Granted, it is a home industry which is providing employment for hundreds of people that may otherwise be out of jobs in today’s precarious economic environment. I could only premise that many of the people that are working at the complex could otherwise be criminals or beer drinking and dagga smoking ghetto thugs. So it is great that such an alternative exists.

The first thing that greeted me when I arrived at the so-called complex was dust. There were dirty plastics strewn all over, and particles of dust swirled in the air. Blades of grass and plants were covered in dust. My concern with the dust was quickly swept away when I looked around and saw magnificent furniture items on display on dusty ground.

There were quite a number of stands, each guarded by salespeople who as was to be expected hassled and harassed me to buy some of their wares. The furniture items looked exactly as what I had seen in the furniture shops in the city. In spite of the bits of dust that constantly wafted into my nostrils, I decided to purchase a bed and a set of sofas.

After the transaction, the salesman commandeered me to a workshop area as he ran around to make transport arrangements at my request. And then there it hit me. In front of me, I saw one young man working on the framework of a sofa. He punched nails mercilessly into the wood. I saw him picking rusty nails and just punching them into the wood as if he was demon-possessed or as if the wood had cursed his mother. After a while, he turned to me sweating profusely and requested my opinion on whether the frame of the sofa was proportional. Not quite sure how to respond, I made no comment, and the next thing, I saw him pick up a piece of wood from the ground and attach it to the frame with a bent nail.

After witnessing this ordeal, I left the complex quite disappointed at the level of workmanship. I wasn’t surprised when the bed I bought broke three weeks later. The stuffing in the sofa was so hard and crooked that my wife and me had to furiously apologize to our visitors to take care when sitting on them. Because I had settled for mediocrity I was going to pay for it. And as the saying goes, cheap is indeed expensive. I felt cheated by my support to my own countrymen’s entrepreneurial capabilities that I regretted having gone to the complex in the first place. After much reflection, I realized that while the spirit of Glen View furniture complex is quite entrepreneurial, the problem is that it is tainted with mediocrity.

As I see it, mediocrity is indeed the bane of Zimbabwe’s progress and development. It’s so apparent in everything we do, the idea of cutting corners, so to speak. The end result is always shoddy, not up to standard products. From our music to our politics, mediocrity always rears its ugly head. Unless we shake off this deep seated mediocrity, we will continue to speak big of ourselves and have little to show for it, at least at a global level. Zimbabweans need to commit to high levels of excellence in all spheres of their lives as part of the rebranding process.

On a recent visit to my grandmother’s rural home, I remarked to my uncle how sad it is that when I have children of my own, all of their grandparents will be city-dwelling creatures who won’t boast scenic views of misted mountain ranges, free-roaming cattle and grass-thatched rondawels.

“Ah, but you can’t be sure of that yet,” he quipped. “You could get married to a man whose parents live in the rural areas and who loves to go and see them often.”

I am not too sure whether the grimace I felt growing within, after that statement was made, actually seeped through my flesh and crept all the way up to my face. Marry a man whose parents live where and who loves to do what?!

Now, I know those types well – the urban dwellers whose lungs can’t take the smell of diesel and industrialisation for any protracted amount of time, and who must therefore drive off to the ‘roots’ (that’s Zimbabwean slang for one’s rural home) at any opportunity. Public holidays, Christmas, Easter, annual leave – name the calendar dates and these men are on their merry way.

I have absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. Showing love and appreciation for where you come from is a sign of humility and respect. So bravo to all of those who have embraced their heritage.

But please don’t expect me to be the first to be kitted out in faithful pursuit at the suggestion of each and every road trip to see my in-laws and their string of relatives.

Let’s go through the reasons why.

It isn’t just rural folk who want to see what mettle a mroora (daughter-in-law) is made of. But they make the greatest demands on you to find out whether you really were worth all those cows given away as your bride price.

They want to know if you can cook, clean and do every other wifely task they know of from their own mental handbooks.

And note, cooking here is not for some previously planned dinner party of eight guests who all get place names. In this instance, it’s more like cooking for the whole village – aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, brothers of aunts of great uncles and any other relation you can think of!

Oh, and I neglect to mention that this is cooking by fire.

In a drum.

With a big old log for you to stir the pap around with as it gurgles and threatens to erupt all over your face.

I laugh at the thought of my even attempting such feats of heroism.

Ah, and then there’s the small matter of plucking feathers from newly deceased chickens which, in their final moments, you watched coursing about the yard headless and bloody.

I have to pass on that one too because I have real issues with cooking or eating something that I have seen living.

Call me crazy, but I grow attached to livestock. I watch and learn their different characters and even give them names and nationalities. In fact, in just this last visit to my grandmother I reincarnated one of her hens as a moody painter called Pierrick cocking his head to and fro (in the previous life the hen was male!) and fixing his eyes on angular shapes and edgy colours.

So don’t think for one moment that I could ever partake of the cooking and eating of Pierrick and others of his kith and kin.

Fetching water from a well kilometres away and then balancing a full bucket over my head? And actually walking with it?

Pass again.

But my personal favourite is getting all of this done before the first cock crows and with the whispers behind my aching back about when exactly it is that I will show my fertility by falling pregnant.

Did I just chuckle out loud? I am not so sure because no one else is in the room.

The chuckle, whether audible or otherwise, is induced by the fact that I am involved in a well-documented unshakeable romance with my pillows. So much so is sleep the glory of my life that I have since forfeited the spectacle of picturesque sunrises for it.

I will forfeit a whole lot more, even at the risk of being called a salad. In Zimbabwe, people who are considered to be ‘raw’ in a cultural sense, are derisively referred to as salads – no particular type of salad, just anything that’s made up of raw ingredients.

Oh, and who really understands the idea of getting married and enjoying your spouse’s company for a few years before birthing a brood of noisy rugrats? Just you wait more than a year and listen as everyone speculates that you are barren and that you need that special healing that the pastor who lives on a distant mountain top gives.

I am in no way making light of rural life. Rural communities have their own systems, proud rituals and traditions. And these are what keep them functional.

But I am at an age where I can be honest with myself.

I will never be a size 10. I will not be a fashion designer when I grow up. And I will not be the typical traditional wife.

My way of life is a fusion of things – an acculturation of different ways and beliefs about how I feel that I can most benefit the various structures within society, including family.

I am not a domestic goddess. I can be competent at house work, but nothing more. And whoever I marry, if I marry, has to understand that.

So no eyes gawking at me and vetting my competencies, thank you! The rustic life wasn’t made for some.

And for this narration of my reservations, call me a salad if you want. In fact, call me a Waldorf salad. At least I can munch away at bits of apples and nuts while you chew over my audacity.

Bon appetite!

Pina colada and berry flavoured vaginal lubricant.

Green apple-scented condoms.

These are just but a few of the enticements featured at the Condom Project stall at this year’s  18th International AIDS Conference, which opened on Sunday. The organisation, which is part of the larger Condomise Campaign, boasts a stall with an array of colourful condoms, genital lubricants and other aids which the general public are free to sample and taste.

But amid the kaleidoscope colours of sensuality and allure, the female condom still looks unappealing in its white, pink and blue packaging.

As Joy Lynn Alegarres, the Director of Global Operations for the Condom Project, explains, the FC2 female condom, the only condom currently approved for  global use, is undergoing a rebranding (through partners such as UNFPA)and will soon reflect the identity of the various countries where women use it.

“In Bali, the packaging is now pink with a flower on it,” explains Alegarres.

As Maya Gokul of South Africa observes, the female condom is available in over 120 countries of the world and has passed tests of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

And it can be sexy.

“Since the inner ring is detachable, it is exciting for guys,” adds Gokul. “When the penis bumps against that inner ring it is very sensual.”

She also added that a male partner can use the inner ring to arouse the woman through playing with her clitoris prior to putting the condom on.

And as Nienke Blauw of the Netherlands demonstrated, there are newer models of the female condom that may soon be on the market that can add to the variety for the female condom.  One condom, which is called the cupid and is being developed in India, has a sponge instead of an inner ring which is meant to gave a different sensual experience to the user. Another is cone-shaped and has a tampon-like tip which expands to fit into the inner vaginal lining upon contact with moisture. Unlike other female condoms, it does not use lubricant as it makes use of the woman’s fluids to eventually open up after insertion.

But while innovation around the female condom is increasing, barriers still exist.

“In Zambia, female condoms are going for a (United States) dollar for a pack of two,” explained Carol Nyirenda of the Coalition of Zambian Women Living with HIV.

Prices of female condoms remain much higher than those of male condoms, which means that many women cannot afford to buy the only HIV prevention device that they can control themselves.

Currently, Zambia’s activists are in the process of lobbying the Ministry of Trade and Industry to review and formulate policy for the regulation of the quality of privately imported male and female condoms by 2011.

Also, Nyirenda stressed the importance of educating those who use the condom to do so correctly and consistently, and also to challenge cultural norms that increase women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission, such as marital rape.

“There is need to work on cultural norms which promote the subordination of women, especially in terms of sex, notes Tabona Shoko,the Director of Zimbabwe’s National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (ZNNP+), who is an advocate for the female condom. “We need to create leeway for women to negotiate for safer sex.”

Interestingly, Annie Michelle Salla of Cameroon shared that in her country, male military officials had actually requested that rather than train them to use the male condom effectively, they requested that condom promoters train their wives to use the female condom.

The reason?

The men felt that it was important for their spouses to be able to protect themselves since they admitted that they were not responsible enough to do so.

Roli Mahajan, a journalist from India also feels strongly that the female condom should become more widely available and affordable. But when asked how it could be improved, she admitted to never having used it.

Veanne Turczynski from Germany has also never used the female condom but is sceptical about the product. “I cannot imagine that it’s practical to use because it’s hard to handle,” she noted. “It’s so much more complicated than the male condom.”

But with an HIV epidemic that still affects far more woman than men, the female condom remains a tool well worth investing in – for the sake of women’s health.

Rejoice Ngwenya in his latest article entitled the 3G Revolution That Never Was reckons that Zimbabwean corporates like Econet are taking their customers for granted. Read more from Rejoice . . .

One of Zimbabwe’s leading transnational blue chip telecommunication companies, ECONET, is once again promising the local market a miraculous transformation of the country’s Information Communication Technology [ICT]. For several years, the ambitious Strive Masiyiwa-owned enterprise has been trumpeting molten corporate lava on new 3rd Generation platform [3G], spending thousands of dollars in the process to seek attention from habitually technology-averse Zimbabweans. A massive excavation along Zimbabwe’s main trunk road is now been backed with more promises of memorable fibre optic 4G revolution.

If customer satisfaction was measured per capita of advertising and promotional ad spend, ECONET would probably be running out of space on the human utility scale! There are those who argue that a proliferation of ninety base stations in ninety days to support a two million plus subscriber base is the ultimate symbol of success, not to mention high share prices, exciting dividends and healthy bottom line. Others also insist that a company that has a hundred square metre full colour billboards at every major intersection in every major town is a symbol of marketing excellence. No doubt there are similar such experiences across the length and breadth of the African continent. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that market dominance is a precursor to customer satisfaction; rather, it evolves into irritating monopolistic behaviour.

The global corporate graveyard is littered with big spend ventures whose customer satisfaction index – for want of a term – is no higher than the intelligence quotient [IQ] of the cockroach hiding in a dark corner of your laptop case. At one time, it was impossible to send short message services [SMS] on Fridays through the ECONET network, let alone make a call. Their engineers, as expected, had a perfect explanation. Subscriber rates, they mourned, were literally controlled by business-hostile central government regulators, so much so that the use of local Zimbabwe dollar currency rendered sustainable service delivery impossible. The market accepted the explanation, and waited with abated breadth for the day when the nervous ZANU-PF government would allow use of ‘foreign’ currency in local transactions. I remember – ironically with a tinge of trepidation and amusement – that my account was arbitrarily ‘converted’ to pay-as-you-go for reasons only known to the late Egyptian Tutankhamen. My and every account holder’s protests fell on deaf, highly-paid electronic ears.

As fate would have it, we are almost two years into the multicurrency use, but I am yet to experience a ‘phenomenal rise’ in service delivery. When wireless internet provision became fashionable, competition from ‘fixed’ broadband pioneers like Zimbabwe Online ‘inspired’ ECONET to go one up by introducing the mobile 3G ‘dongle’ connect card internet browsers that were billed to take Zimbabwe business a notch up in regional ICT competitiveness. As expected, these promises were bankrolled with expensive promotions and fanfare, and those like me whose survival solely depends on mobile web-based activism, fell to our knees and showered praises to the galaxies. As it turns out, the prayers were premature.

Many months after I and perhaps thousands of other techno-freaks fell into the 3G promotional trap, we are still to experience the beauty of the ECONET ‘inspired’ ICT revolution. Compared to US1 [one United States Dollar] per thirty minutes that ‘fixed’ broadband service providers charge in public internet shops, or the US20 or so dollars levied for a miserly 100 megabytes, I quickly moved onto the USD25 per month unlimited access offered by ECONET’s miracle dongle. This was a gigantic error of judgement, on my part.

For the ten or so months I have been ‘hooked’ to this much heralded 3G system, I can access my internet only an average of two hours per week. On several occasions, I have met my colleagues-in-despair at ECONET HQ, seeking answers from arrogant, stoned-faced young technicians more interested in showing off their latest i-tuners to bamboozled school girls. I have tried to scream, but my voice chokes with anger, and I can only have just enough energy to wobble down the stairs with nothing but a bruised ego.

In the past few weeks, my misery has been incremental, as expected, compounded with a perfect explanation from ECONET that the fibre optic project is ‘interfering’ with our access and that all will be well once the cables are buried! To date, I have probably lost a couple of exciting activist deals due to my lack of communication, never mind the mental stress of dealing with a technology beyond one’s control. Sometimes, as I do now, I feel local ECONET engineers should be rounded up and thrown into an ICT dungeon filled with archaic Olympia typewriters, Moss code, telex, Gestetner machines and discarded valve-type black and white television sets where their reputation can assume a comparative semblance of respectability – that is if they survive drowning in volumes of black duplicating inks, scarlet correction fluids and used machine oils!

The question essentially is: why do ‘successful’ corporates take us customers for granted? Toyota International had a rude awakening, so did British Petroleum. I call it corporate stupor. At a certain stage, the blue chippers get drunk and choke in their own success, paralysed by exciting financial results and moribund with self praise that only immunises them from customer sensitivity. I cannot recall how many cars Toyota had to recall, or how many millions litres of oil BP has so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but my wish is that companies like MTM or CellTel waltz into the Zimbabwe market to give these overzealous chip-on-the-shoulder  players like ECONET a f*****g whipping. Just perhaps, perhaps I might be able to open my Yahoo without having to sing the Khoisan desert anthem 100 times over in Latin. I am a stickler for free market competition, even if I have to lose a network I have been hooked since July 1998. Thus I am agitated by market dominance that has manifestations of monopolistic behaviour. Ninety base stations in ninety days my black a**! Jeeper’s creepers, just give me only one base station in three hundred and sixty five days that WORKS and we will be lifelong pals, Mr Masiyiwa!

Zimbabwean diamonds have been a hugely divisive issue around the world, but within the country’s ruling coalition their lure has become an unlikely unifier among the frequently feuding parties.
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