tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134432402024-03-13T01:57:12.122+00:00A Life Less PerfectWe all have an equal right to make a bid for self actualisation. The very best life is an enabling environment for everyone to reach for their perfection as you reach for your own; those of us who think this way are kindred spirits, of a fortunate tribe, and our lives make smiles.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-15387851704395518402023-09-25T06:48:00.004+00:002023-09-25T06:48:37.593+00:00Does this blog still work?Checking if this gets publishedMama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-81260639691933891962016-07-15T13:20:00.000+00:002016-07-15T13:20:03.387+00:00How to not be in an abusive relationship.I wrote a blog post called 'How to beat girls and women' in February 2007. Now it is 2016, and I just got a comment on it from someone called Love Hurts: "My husband is so tender and loving to me in some ways, but sometimes he rapes me and beats me. Then he tells me he is sorry that he would never want to hurt me. He says he fears it so I don't try to leave him. We have been best friends our whole lives as well, but he just gets so scared of me leaving that he becomes violent. I'm his first and only gf or wife. My ex before him beat me nearly to death and now I find myself dealing with this. Maybe there is no escape from sexual abuse. I was human trafficked as a child and forced into prostitution before escaping. I'm a survivor. Maybe tho I deserve this because of my childhood. he really is a good man. He loves me at least. My own father never did but he does."
It is very difficult for an abused woman to close the space into which abuse happens. It's not a speck of use saying, Why do you stay? Because it follows one, from relationship to relationship. You start off with a perfectly normal man and after a few months or years he becomes a monster. Every time he shouts or hits you he tells you it is your fault. He beats your fault into you. This is particularly hard if your fault was hammered into you as a child, or if you suffered sexual abuse. He bellows. He judges. He snarls. You are never good enough. That was my life. I used to tiptoe quietly around the house, unsure when I entered a room where he was, if he was going to suddenly erupt in fury. And I knew that my fear was irritating. I knew that just me being scared was likely to make him bully me, and I didn't know how to stop being scared. Eventually I made up my mind to leave, but... wouldn't I go and create this again with another man? I had found myself in that space twice already. I was doing a Landmark Seminar at the time, and I booked a call with my seminar leader to help me work out how I would go about creating a relationship in which abusive behaviour was not possible.
She started off telling me how disgusting it was that a man would behave like that. I agreed, but what could I do? That tack was getting nowhere. So then she asked me what I could create as a possibility that would make it impossible for abusive behaviour to exist in a relationship. I said, "Love. Honour. Responsibility. Caring. Respect..." Ok, she said, who could you respect? I started running through a list. I could respect my partner. I could respect the sanctity of the home. I could respect my children and their need for peace. And who else? She kept asking. And who else? Who else could you respect? I stared at the pretty kitchen cupboards and tried to think. Who else? Eventually she gave up and said, "You!! You could respect You!!"
I was stunned. Had I not said Me? I hadn't said it! I am the last person in the world I think of as a doormat and I hadn't even thought that I could respect me! I suddenly saw something, about how I was being in that relationship. Something I had got from my mother. I didn't matter as long as everyone else was ok... Gosh!!!!! The seminar leader said, "Ok, I have got where I was going now, quick. What do you see as possible for a relationship in which abusive behaviour does not happen?" I couldn't think. I grabbed for the first words that came. "Err... Love, Respect and understanding," I said. "Great!" She said. "Lovely. Got to go! Bye!"
I hung up the phone and stood there gawping at it. At that moment my partner came downstairs, turning at the bottom of the stairs to face me. I looked up at him, and I felt something different in the way I was standing. It was something in the base of my spine. We were in the middle of a fight, and he had come down to continue it. I saw him open his mouth, and look at me, and I saw is mind go blank. Whatever nastiness he had been about to utter, he could not remember it. He floundered, "Er, um... can I help with dinner?" My mouth fell open further.
I narrated this story to a forum leader once, and asked her, why? why would a conversation of which he was not even a part, have affected his behaviour? She said, because we are 100% responsible for the behaviour of everyone around us. You are responsible for his behaviour, she said, and for the first time I heard that as a statement of power. That is my power. When I drop it, I pick it up. It is hard to carry it, though it is getting easier with time. 5 years later, he is a co-parent, not a partner, and he is still sometimes nasty at me. I resist reacting, I go away, and recreate it. Love, respect and understanding. Which one is flagging here? I admit it, it is always respect for myself. I recreate that I respect myself. I just do. I am some woman. And out of that the empowering response flows.
Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-50515794940454340272010-02-23T21:42:00.003+00:002010-02-23T21:53:20.039+00:00Evolving TogetherMy last post was very enthusiastic but poorly argued. I seem to have got lost at the punch line.<br /><br />I think it's true that we shouldn't be scared of each other, and it's dangerous to teach our children to be. The urge to excel isn't dangerous, it's the key to lving life as the best you can be, but we are a species who cannot excel without taking others with us. Eventually, we must take everyone with us. As the Mayans did (if they did vibrate higher and higher and all sublime as a race) we must raise the consciousness of others in order to raise our own. Co-operation is the key to success, development, what have you, which kind of rules out fear or one another. <br /><br />The classroom that creates 99% losers in order to create one winner, however, is a piece of the past. <br /><br />And the greatest way to be of service to everyone else is to be the best that I can be. This inspires other people to feel that they can do the same in their own field. It's being content with your own field that seems to be a challenge, not constantly comparing and measuring yourself by external measures because that creates fear and depression. <br /><br />Well, better stop wittering and get on with bringing Almasi to life. She's the first character from my cartoon studio's desks.<br /><br />MwaraMama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-5603460387311866352008-09-15T16:53:00.004+00:002008-09-15T17:35:42.620+00:00baby clothes update (Kenyan Educational Fears)I've collected about 40kgs of clothes so far, baby clothes and teen girl clothes. I found a place in Forest Gate which can ship them to Kenya for £2.25 per kg with a £25 documentation fee as long as we do our own clearing. Which was a great option, as previous ways of shipping were running at £10 or £20 to Kenya. So I was going to pack about 20kgs of clothes and send, for £75. I did wonder how many baby clothes £75 would have bought in Nairobi, but I thought I might as well try it, so we could see what it was like in practice. Then I got paid and the bills hit (my other half is out of work at present) and it looks like I'll have to wait another month and see what I can do then! But I haven't forgotten or lost interest, I'm still mulling over the problem and sorting baby clothes.<br /><br />In recent years I've heard twice, from concerned 30 or 40ish Kenyans, the fear that Chinese students are very intelligent and hardworking and <span style="font-style:italic;">these are the people our children are going to be competing against</span>! This is said to show that Kenyan schools must train our children to be ever more competitive.<br /><br />Well, I've been reading a lot of John Holt and John Gatto, about the long term effects on a society of compulsory, competitive schooling. And at present I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Barock Cycle, about 17th Century Europe.<br /><br />Competitive thinking is, I submit, a symptom of an immature society. Africa and China are looking at each other the way France and England used to across the sea, each fearing the success of the other. As Louis the 14th says in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Confusion</span> of the muted roar he hears across the Channel, 'I prefer silence.' In those days countries thought that if the other did badly, they themselves would needs do well. But today, as Lehman Brothers collapses, the news that US banking giants are falling causes us in the UK to tremble. We don't say, 'Bad things are happening to our neighbours. Bully for us!' We say, 'Bad things are happening to our neighbours. Soon, bad things will happen to us.'<br /><br />In this interlinked world where we are all in one economic and environmental entanglement, the logical conclusion of the insanely competitive few centuries we've just had is playing itself out. Our planet is being destroyed and our economic system is collapsing under the weight of its own greed.<br /><br />In this context, making the sole aim of a successful adolescence the achievement of A grades is not very bright. A grades are for getting good jobs and buying THINGS. Not for being enthusiastic about life and interacting with people. They are for avoiding poverty. But this is a fallacy built on false propaganda. The idea that our world is poverty stricken is a red herring. <br /><br />We are not suffering from profligacy caused by cheap energy. We do not need to economise on energy. On the contrary, the sun delivers for free, to every part of the planet, 15,000 times more energy than we need every day. We could use twice as much energy and still have 7,000 times more than we needed. The sun and its derivatives, however (wind, waves, biomass) cannot be sold. At some point in the 1980's the conventional energy industry actually as good as stated that as no-one could own the sun, nobody should. The only way to guarantee a steady supply of money is to market consumables, which is why it's important to keep the world addicted to fossil energy. In the same way, there is no shortage of money. But 60% of the world's money is locked up in the stock market. No wonder there's too little in my pocket!<br /><br />In fact the only form of poverty that matters is water poverty and poor soil. How much money is poured into research on how to make <span style="font-style:italic;">terra preta</span> (artificially enriched soil in deserts) compared to research on new ways to suck fossil energy out of the earth beneath us?<br /><br />Crude oil is a very unpleasant substance, black, sticky and smells horrid. Bio-diesel is golden and a great solvent. Moreover, everywhere we suck fossil oil out of the ground it causes war and attracts mayhem and misery. Then we burn it and destroy the planet. It really is like a curse we delved for.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-47593164243122140652008-08-30T18:42:00.002+00:002008-08-30T18:47:01.812+00:00Baby Clothes needed in NairobiThis is a republished version of an email I received from my friend Lynn in Nairobi. <br /><br />Hi,<br /><br />I trust that you are all well. The reason for this email is that my firm, which is a forensic consultancy, does a lot of pro bono work in Naivasha with rape survivors and especially young girls. Most of these girls do not report the abuse as soon as it happens and will only tell someone when they realise that they are pregnant. As a firm we do the criminal paternity tests to ensure that these paedophiles are put away for the crime that they have committed.<br /><br />We currently have about 10 girls aged between 14 and 17 who have been defiled by people known to them and as a result have either recently had a baby or are about to. All these girls come from poor backgrounds and may be orphans under the care of an elderly grandparent. If they are lucky the family will support them but sometimes this is not the case.<br /><br />We are currently working on a particularly harrowing case of a 14 year old girl who was defiled by her biological father and now has a 4 month old baby. She has been rejected by her mother, who also has a 4 month old baby, and her grandmother and is literally living on the streets. Her father has 'disappeared' but calls her mother every so often looking for money. She is selling cabbages for someone and gets about 30 KShs every 4 days or so. Her and the baby have both suffered pneumonia recently, thankfully the baby's medical treatment is free but not for the girl so she has not been able to finish her course of treatment. We are trying to get this girl into a home that can take both her and her baby and also ensure that the home will not only be able to provide medical care but also enable the girl to go back to school, she would have been doing her KCPE this year.<br /><br />I am not asking for money for these girls, what I am asking for is clothes for the babies and also for the girls, so if you know anyone with baby clothes, regardless of the age, coz these babies will grow after all, please let me know and I will come and pick them up and donate them to these girls, I know anything will be appreciated. Also clothes for the girls, like I said they are aged between the ages of 14 and 17.<br /><br />On behalf of my business partner .... and myself I would like to thank you in advance and also ask you to forward this to anyone you think maybe able to help. We have a problem in our society and I like many of you lived a carefree youth, where you worried about homework just wanted to be outside playing shake, kati, tapo and all those other kid things, but these young girls don't have that choice, through no fault of their own they have been thrust into motherhood in the worst possible way. <br /><br /><br />Many Thanks<br /><br />If you want to donate baby clothes, please send Mama Wangari a comment with a contact method for you, either email or telephone. I will respond as soon as I get it to arrange what's possible re delivery to Nairobi but not publish. If you want a comment published please do not include contact details in it. ie send 2 if you want one to be published.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-32192813591317879272008-07-07T00:22:00.009+00:002008-07-07T16:13:50.187+00:00Home-brewed bioalcoholWe're all going to have to shift to creating our own energy. We all need to live & work in buildings that generate their own electricity, and live in circumstances where we can walk to, or at least be able to name, or drive past somewhere in our weekly round, the fields where the crops are grown that give us oil for our bio-alcohol. We have the choice of doing this now, off our own bat, or doing it after 3/4's of us have died out, at which point those of us who are left will be unable to operate power plants or pipe oil, and will have to find & affix solar panels if we want electric light or heat, and plough fields to grow rapeseed etc, and make the requisite methanol/ethanol from the dung of our cows or old potatoes or whatever.<br /><br />I'm a chronic guilt tripper, I've never actually done much beyond making plans and falling short - I certainly am not going to put my short up for anyone to see until I've done some more work on it. My supervisor called the other day and gave me to understand that I may graduate on it, but if I show it to anyone commercial in the state it's in it'll kill any chance of a cartoon studio dead.<br /><br />But I can read. I was reading round about a war a while ago, starting with <span style="font-style:italic;">The Cat From Hue</span> - John Laurence. Fabulous. This led me on to <span style="font-style:italic;">War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning</span> - Chris Hedges, which stopped me dead in the water on a very fruitful sortie into the depths of the human psyche. It's an excellent title, a good point, but the book is too self indulgent. <br /><br />On good people - I had a friend then who was doing a PhD on War Studies at King's, and his thesis was Rwanda. Now that was a man who walked his talk. He wouldn't have anything to do with me because I was on a reproduction kick and he needed to do his work. <br /><br />He interviewed 20-30 of the genocidaires in prison and only met ONE who said, "I did these things." Everyone else said ,"These things were done." That Rwandan one is a very troubling episode, you know, because the violence was so intimate. It always is, in Africa. In Europe genocidaires press gassing buttons. In Africa they use farm tools, and afterwards (GASP) the perpetrators and their victims must learn to live together ... if you understand anything of the nature of trauma, this is beyond belief. How do you begin to fix such an out of integrity?<br /><br />Some people try. I have some friends whom I met as child, in Kenya, working for VSO. They live in North Wales now, and I visited them with my family, only to meet <span style="font-style:italic;">We wish to Inform you That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families</span> on the shelf beside my bed. Their youngest daughter has gone to Rwanda to do teacher training. And they've just left to visit her! My mind boggles at the thought. Nothing could make me go to Kigali in this lifetime. I work on the Underground, and I will go to great lengths to avoid being around when a person jumps under a train, even if it means ducking out from supporting my team.<br /><br />A few other titles I wish I'd read then - Karl von Clausewitz's "<span style="font-style:italic;">On War.</span>" <br /><br />Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's impressive work- <span style="font-style:italic;">On Killing</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle</span> (1959) by J. Glenn Gray<br /><br />War is a difficult subject. It is evil, but is elimination less evil? How else does a society react to threat? After all, all the societies alive today are the most hardened, pugnacious ones. The soft die out. How to create a world not inimical for the soft? How are they to survive in it?<br /><br />These are the answers civilisation is supposed to provide. It's making an attempt - I understand the Chinese are lifting 20,000 people a day out of poverty. Great stuff. Long may it last ... but isn't poverty good for the spirit?<br /><br />Sometimes I see a flicker of a glimpse of how it might be possible to be the best that you can be, to reach your potential and thus expand the human condition, living in a comfy society in the West and not doing much, directly, for the myriad have-nots. After all, it is the spirit that matters, and what it learns. But it is a fugitive glimpse. I am not convinced it's not just fear of returning to an insecure society. I grew up with this 70's mindset, from my mum, that to do good in the world you have to live an uncomfortable life. But it does not necessarily equate that an uncomfy life is good for the world, and it is hard on one's kids. I hated having no running water. I don't want my kids living that.<br /><br />On the other hand it isn't necessary for all the world to live in energy poverty, and this might be my way out. A mechanism to share wealth equitably (isn't that the fundamental question of civilisation?), and absolve me of the burden. Hermann Scheer is leading a big shift in my thinking on this. <br /><br />What I've seen in <span style="font-style:italic;">Energy Autonomy</span> is:<br /><br />a) We're all going to have to shift to creating our own energy. We all need to live & work in buildings that generate their own electricity, and live in circumstances where we can walk to, or at least be able to name, or drive past somewhere in our weekly round, the fields where the crops are grown that give oil for our bio-alcohol. We have the choice of doing this now, off our own bat, or doing it after 3/4's of us have died out, at which point those of us who are left will be unable to operate power plants or pipe oil, and will have to find & affix solar panels if we want electric light or heat, and plough fields to grow rapeseed etc, and make the requisite methanol from the dung of our cows or whatever.<br /><br />b) It is complete rubbish that poor people are right now trekking about seeking firewood when the sun's beating down on their backs delivering, for free, 15,000 times more energy than we need every day. It is unspeakable that species have been wiped out in the last 100 years completely unnecessarily, just so we can suck up the earth under our feet and enjoy the pleasure of selling it to each other.<br /><br />c) The reason why we're not living off solar power right now is because oil/coal/gas/uranium is a product that can be sold, and nobody can sell the sunlight. In 1981 when Reagan came to power the conventional energy business shut down the nascent solar movement because nobody could own the sun, so nobody should. See Who Owns the Sun?<br /><br />d) Ample proof has been available since the 1970's that renewable energy can replace conventional energy and supply the world's needs. It's not hard, for us people who can split the atom, it just needs the political will to junk the energy business. See John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes for an explanation of why this is not forthcoming, and weep.<br /><br />e) I have also conceived an overwhelming desire to make my own biofuel. Apparently thousands of people do!<br /><br />I bought my first car this year - I finally buckled under the weight of two children (I actually cracked my ribs under the weight of both, abruptly applied), and I would love not to feel guilty every time I hit the road. The faint odour of chips wafting about my car as I drove would do me just fine - and I adore the idea of running out of the house with a watering-can full of fuel to pour into my tank. Just think of the expressions on the faces of the people walking past! Daft women drivers doesn't cut it!<br /><br />Anyway I came up with this plan to make fuel last Wednesday, 2nd July 2008, and I read through a biofuel recipe on the net (it's not easy; takes 8-9 months to perfect it in practise) and bethought me of my dad, now aged 60, back in Kenya. He loves chemistry, especially the do-it-yourself kind, so I sent him the link. Maybe we could run a parallel conversion attempt and encourage each other? <br /><br />The thought also struck me that the veg oil to turn into bio-alcohol must come from somewhere. The food prices must be getting a bit rocky in Kenya, and so that might be a problem. A practical problem, and a psychological barrier to takeup for biofuel - despite the fact that, assuming an average energy yield of 50,000 kilowatts per hectare, only 8% of the world's current forest, field and farmland acreage could provide enough cropping to suffice us all with fuel. <br /><br />But Hermann Scheer says 'in semi-arid regions there is an additional cultivable potential of well over 10 million square kilometres', so maybe there might be a chance there? So much of Kenya is semi-arid, 85% I learnt in school. I wrote to my Dad. <br /><br />He replied the next day that you can grow - a miracle plant really as far as I can see. Not only does it have 'a great yield of well over 2,000 barrels of oil per square mile per year; it increases the fertility of the land on which it is grown so that it can potentially be used for food crops in subsequent years. It's a perennial which can grow in arid conditions (even deserts), on any kind of ground, and does not require irrigation or suffer in droughts' - reuk.co.uk. I nearly fell off my chair. <br /><br />It's like a coffee bush with spiky leaves.<br /><br />So it looks like the future of the world is assured and I can slope off and attend to the next emergency, which is human rights. Because no matter how secure, healthy and wealthy we are, it doesn't count as long as one woman or child is being spoken to rudely in their own home, does it?<br /><br />The recipe I lean toward is the journeytoforever.org one. I need a shed, really, cos I can't have that stuff going on somewhere I can't lock my kids out of. But I'm turning over in my head how to do the first bit, converting 1litre of veg oil. <br /><br />I'd love to tile my roof with solar PV/thermal tiles, you can get those now. The single home wind turbines are great, but unfortunately my roof's 100 years old and needs replacing first, which pushes my costs up into the £30K area. Annoying, isn't it? I still need to get wealthy to save the human race! We've put in warm water underfloor heating, though, a thing I'd never have thought we could do this decade, so you never know. Energy autonomy may be closer than I think. It has to be pretty close, to do any good. I've borne two children in great labour, I certainly don't want them freezing to death in some hellish winter 50 years hence.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-79656883102391822822008-06-28T00:33:00.007+00:002008-06-28T01:28:30.664+00:00Fossil FuelThe energy state of the world makes depressing reading! Hermann Scheer's Autonomous Energy crossed my path the last time I went to the library ... I wonder if we <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">are g</span>oing to save the planet! Well, actually the planet's in not much danger, it'll still be here. We won't. Or not many of us. I keep wondering if we're going to behave like we do in John Wyndham's <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Kraken Wakes.</span> In that apocalyptic novel the world buried its head in the sand till most of it was buried in water. The resulting population fall would be perfect, from Nature's point of view.<div><br /></div><div>I think it's the fact that Scheer puts it all in terms of politics. It seems heart-rendingly senseless that millions of poor people are hunting for firewood with the sun beating down upon their backs, pouring free energy down onto them. When I think of that poor woman I saw in National Geographic last month, hacking up roots to burn for fuel in the deserts around the refugee camps of Darfur, with her toddler tied to her back ... what would it really cost to put a Photovoltaic cell on each roof worldwide, feeding an electric cooker and lights? Think of all the respiratory miseries that could be avoided ... the forests that would still clothe the globe. Bet it would cost less than will be spent this year on the never ending, never yielding anything, thankless quest for nuclear energy that nobody needs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many years ago my uncle - a climate researcher since 1979 - pointed out to me that the least efficient solar panel converts energy at 22% efficiency. All the energy in fossil fuels was fixed by chlorophyll at 1% efficiency. Now I find that the sun delivers 15,000 times as much energy as we need to every point on the planet for free! Every minute of every day! I discover that scientists in 1922 were warning us off fossil fuels! </div><div><br /></div><div>Then a quick search on the internet discovers people who bought a house in the English countryside with the aim of getting energy self sufficient in 2006 gave up in the face of government intransigence and sold it in January 2008. See:</div><div><http>www.green-house-effect.blogspot.com/ </http></div><div>That's horrifying. The whole entrenched energy business that continues to keep selling us stuff we really don't need and politicking us out of the power to change our energy habits. Why on earth are we sucking stuff out of the ground we need to stand on, and burning it to create all sorts of nastiness, when God's pouring clean energy down on us for free? Who can seriously believe that we have the power to split the atom and we can't develop the technology to capture enough solar and wind power to run industries? We're burning up the earth cos some of us can make money out of it. That is the sheer and simple truth. Moreover we are now dying for the privilege of so spending our money.</div><div><br /></div><div>That joke about how they got us to switch to using disposable nappies (by telling us were too stupid to use re-useable ones - so complicated!) is very true about petrol, gas, coal and nuclear fission & fusion. Shell & BP are getting us to use them by telling us we're too stupid not to. Oh, the sheer selfishness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last week I read Animal's People, all about the gas tragedy in Bhopal, India. See www.khaufpur.com. Why as humans are we so helpless in the face of selfishness? Bhopal reminded me of nothing so much as the Titanic, in the concatenation of neglectful evils that met that night in 1984. The horror of it since, though ... how can people keep buying Dow Chemical stocks? Why don't they just move the population, just make it stop? It's 23 years since, for God's sake. It really would be easier to fix it than to keep explaining why not. Just make it stop. Even one child gassed was too much, let alone the hundred thousand since.</div><div><br /></div>Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-38380731987204239652008-04-19T11:36:00.005+00:002008-04-19T11:51:44.014+00:00Zinging!I've just read this article about Mugo Kibati on the Generationkenya website:<br /><a href="http://generationkenya.co.ke/main/mugo-kibati-forward-into-excellence/"><br />Forward Into Excellence (Mugo Kibati) by Wambui Mwangi</a><br /><br />It's left me zinging! It's inspirational to see what an effect a father's belief in one can have - what a first memory to have! A sheer fount of power. I've just turned aside from the thought of taking the Landmark Education 'Being Extraordinary' Seminar, backing down from the challenge, and it's extraordinary to feel the effect on me of reading about someone who doesn't back down from that challenge at all, meets it joyously in fact. What a world we would have if all parents used their power so well, turning what we use to douse our children's spirits into something that charges incandescence. I'm actually scared at the thought of what my daughters could become with such affirmation from me.<br /><br />I couldn't leave a comment, the link wouldn't work, but I wanted to record this moment so I'm putting it here. When I consider what I could be, that I'm not, it could be depressing. I'm still becoming, after so many years. But I'm making progress! Occasionally my light shines through. Much more nowadays, since I've started doing Landmark Education stuff. I did the Forum, and the Advanced Course, and the Integrity Seminar (not quite finished yet).It has a fabulous effect of helping me rub off the stuff I cover myself up with, and strangle my light with.<br /><br />But it seems more and more impactful, to me, that I could gift my children a life without any of that rubbish. Well, I can always create that possibility for myself. The possibility of giving my children the freedom of all the power and joy they can generate. The possibility of powerful parenting. And then of course I could run my parenting courses, and spread that power.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-11039145350468894862007-11-20T18:17:00.000+00:002007-11-20T18:17:42.421+00:00Anything but ordinary: 100 things about me- # 1-20<a href="http://monagirlslife.blogspot.com/2007/11/100-things-about-me-1-20.html">Anything but ordinary: 100 things about me- # 1-20</a>Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-3843999459251758292007-11-16T11:23:00.001+00:002007-11-16T12:01:55.038+00:00HIV/StaceyWe exist in an age when "universal HIV treatment and prevention are medically and socially possible, and politically endorsed, yet remain poorly implemented" - comment by UEL social sciences professor Corinne Squire, who just wrote a book drawn on narratives from 37 people infected with or affected by HIV in South Africa. I found the comment in my local paper, the Newham Recorder, and I was very surprised.<br /><br />It's news to me that universal HIV treatment and prevention are politically supported - and while a Kenyan woman can lose her job because she's very ill from the effects of anti-retrovirals after a rape, this is one of those policies that remains pie in the sky.<br /><br />That fact that it's possible, yes, that's true. But it's a huge job, and I must say our attempts to help Stacey have not been effective in the long term. The next thing we tried just fell flat, and I'm not sure we're going to have another go. My sister and her friend hatched a plan to do a performance based on Stacey's story; they wanted to raise funds for her, or for an HIV charity that would support her, using her story, recorded and played back somewhere in the East End of London along with stage performances by various artists (my sister's a singer). Because it's very hard for people to put a face, get a deep human reaction to how it is, dealing with HIV and violence against women in Africa.<br /><br />Stacey said listlessly, "It's okay by me ..." but we needed her to be able to help herself in some degree, at least to meet someone to make a recording, and she couldn't pull herself together enough. I pointed out that her baby had just died three months before and she was still depressed, would be for years maybe, and we tried to collaborate with Joyce to figure out how to help her move forward, but the project died for lack of oomph.<br /><br />Also if she wasn't helping herself it became a little difficult to ask people to help her. When I was in a state like that, when all the world looked grey and scary shortly after the birth of my first born, my GP sent me for six months' therapy. That was three years ago. I'm still experiencing growth because of that six months of counselling, seeing one thing or another more clearly suddenly as a result of the trains of thought I started then. It seems so little to have had such an effect, sitting down and talking to someone for one hour a week. But that's not all it was, was it?<br /><br />My GP cared, he thought I had a problem that merited action. He didn't cavill and hedge about the cost. There was no question of paying for it. There was no problem finding the time or the energy, because I had a year off after the birth of the baby with no fear of losing my job. All I had to do was find another mum who could take care of my daughter for two hours a once a week, and other mums with babies the same age were all at home too. All these things were evidence of my society's support of me, of us, of my casually accepted right as a human being to be cared for humanely. I think much of the time health is a spiritual question. Certainly mental health is.<br /><br />Michael Moore was on telly the other day talking about his new film of the US 'health system'. He's not a pleasant person, I can see that, and he manipulates facts, but often the truth is more than the facts. He remarked that the poorest Britons live longer than the richest Americans, and this is certainly not because our medical gadgetry comes anywhere near theirs.<br /><br />He was saying that just because we don't have to worry about our ability to pay for any care we may need, we are healthier. No money worries = better health. Nobody is weighing up our illnesses on the bottom line. I've had a lot of dealings with insurance companies of late and I NEVER want anyone toting up how to make a profit out of my illnesses. I had to deal with them when not at my most robust, just before and just after delivering a baby, and as a result I'm £8,000 out of pocket and had a nightmare birth experience. I NEVER want to have to deal with them about paying for my care when I'm in pain. I pay the same NI payment as my uncle does in the US on his health insurance, but I get a much better deal.<br /><br />A universal health care system for everyone is what is needed. I think that would go a long way to erasing the HIV stigma. But what to do for Stacey, in Kenya? I don't know.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-2797488518780615572007-08-25T23:28:00.000+00:002007-08-27T21:25:24.979+00:00Breastfeeding Number two<div>Summer's six weeks old.<br /><br />Now that we are back in the house it's dawning on Jen that this chick is here to stay, and she's getting very upset. Screaming, wanting to breastfeed, refusing to eat. Then she's hungry, which makes her bad tempered, and wanting to feed, refusal of which makes her scream again, in an endless cycle. Sigh. If only she could suck without actually drinking the milk, that would calm her down, but she can't! I'm regulating her to one feed a day, after breakfast as she eats that meal best, and it's when I have masses of milk.<br /><br />Also my mum's here. I find that the last generation's approach to child raising doesn't prioritise respect for the child as an individual. I try to treat Jen as I hope I would treat a guest, respecting her feelings. Jen responded well to my mum's approach a year ago, at 18 months - my mum could always make her eat, but this time it's just making her upset. So it's a balancing act, trying to keep Jen, himself and my mum from getting upset.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>At first we called the baby Emily. I found it too similar to Jen, when it comes to short forms and endearments that go with it. It was encroaching on Jen's endearments, which was stopping up my mouth. Summer's in a completely different sphere, she's my summer blossom, or my sunshine, and Jennifer's my angel or my heart, and it works easily.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>Some things are not working that easily at present though. Sometimes I get totally furious with himself and think, if I were advising myself, I would advocate leaving, but I really don't want to break up the family. Then when it all calms down I'm glad I didn't do anything irrevocable. But if I had, it might make him hold on to his temper better next time he got upset. Or would he just have less reason to value me and the girls? Perhaps it would open his eye to the fact there are other women, other options. But then, for me also there are other men, other options, and I'm not taking them up.<br /><br />On the other hand, if I didn't have a neurotic male ego to take care of as well as my children, my life might be easier. But the thing is that he is a functioning housework doer, essential round the house, even when we're not talking to each other. I'd actually have a lot more work to do if I threw him out. I am pretty sure this is not a consideration that would stop one chucking out the average Kenyan man.<br /><br /></div> <div> </div> <div>On the other hand, if he was my daughter's husband I would be wanting to throw him out myself! So why I am accepting something I wouldn't want my girls to grow up and put up with? That's just self defeating. They'll grow up and do whatever they saw me do. So I'm being a coward cos I don't want to do all the housework. But ... successful long term relationships are about learning to live & let live, maybe what they're watching is a healthy relationship? I would call my relationship with my sister or brother a successful long term relationship, and he's never made me madder than they have. Ai! I guess this is a perpetual question.<br /></div> <div> </div>Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-72687016621054204482007-06-25T23:16:00.000+00:002007-07-02T07:22:44.923+00:00Best and WorstOne of the best things about late pregnancy is the toe-curling, absolutely frabjous orgasms. It's supposed to be because of the increased blood flow in the area. Myself, I believe it must also have something to do with the sheer size of the muscles involved. My uterus has got to be just about the biggest organ in my body right now, apart from my skin. I have informed my other half that as a more experienced mother I shall be putting up with no nonsense; he can expect no sex for at least three months post the passage of the (simply enormous - his fault!) baby, so he best get his quota in now.<br /><br />One of the worst things about being pregnant is that having children stirs up all sorts of stuff one thought was done, dusted and dealt with long ago. It creates new relationships between me and my family, which can be abused and neglected in new and creative ways. It presents novel opportunities for people whom one thought could never hurt one again to stick their boots in hard. It creates new causes of unhappiness.<br /><br />Within 8 weeks of no 1's birth I had a discussion, with my postnatal class, about not allowing one's own bad relationship with one's father to prevent one's children having a grandfather. Several people in the group had this problem. How to step back, and not get in the way. Lots of people are far better grandparents than they ever were parents. They're so much more relaxed, later in life.<br /><br />But what does one do when one's father is just not interested?<br /><br />Jen loves playing with her doll's house. She picked up a figurine of an old, bearded man from somewhere, a wizard, and often makes him knock on the door to be let in. He's Grandpa, which surprised me as the only grandpa she knows she has is my other half's housebound father. Once he's in, she's at a loss. What do grandpas do, exactly? My own father is 30 years younger than the other. He's physically perfectly capable of visiting her. In the last three years I've heard from him twice - an email congratulating me on my pregnancy, and a text message the day after her first birthday. No answering phone calls, no reactions to voicemail, no reactions to emailed photos. This is my father! I lived with him for 20 years! Now they will be two. Two grandchildren he can ignore. Is it so hard, even to send a card at Christmas?<br /><br />My mother has a theory that he's started a new young family and is too busy with them. I hope that's it. It would be better than him being ill with something undiagnosed, like depression or something. It would be better than finding out he just can't be bothered. I am always delighted to hear from people I knew only briefly, in school for a year or so. The efforts that people go to to stay in touch, the joy when contact is established, are quite phenomenal. Consider Facebook, and Friends Reunited. Surely, it cannot be that I made so small an impact on his life that I can just be dropped and never thought of again.<br /><br />It feels very odd, that I am so dull a person my own parent has lost interest as the years have gone by. I thought I'd come to terms with it, it stopped bothering me long ago, but with the advent of each child the wound is reopened.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-85071928254741164492007-06-23T10:37:00.000+00:002007-06-23T11:00:30.163+00:00SlugsWe started getting slugs in our kitchen, and the laminate started buckling in the middle of the floor. We thought, well, it's nasty cheap laminate they slapped down to sell the house and it's letting the damp through when we wash the floor. So we bought tiles to put down at some point.<br /><br />On Monday, the first day of my maternity leave, I got so sick of the slugs I decided to rip up the<br />laminate flooring. You couldn't walk across the kitchen at night without shoes on, so many slugs were coming up to populate the land. I knew ripping the laminate up wasn't a big job as I'd done it before, a couple of years ago when they came to do some damp proofing, and we could darn well just live with the floorboards till we got round to putting tiles down. This is all a complicated excuse for the nest building instinct hitting, btw.<br /><br />So I went ahead and pulled up the laminate. Only this time when it came up the underfloor insulation wasn't nice and dry as it had been, it was SOAKING. I had to send Jen to put on her boots. It was so wet, the hard cardboard underneath the insulation which you previously couldn't cut with a knife, was tearing off in shreds. And when I tore off the bit over the bulge in the middle of the floor I heard a hissing. I thought it was gas, and rushed to switch off the tap under the stairs. But it carried on, and didn't smell of gas ...<br /><br />Suddenly it hit me that it was water! We had a hole in a pipe, and the laminate, far from being cheap nasty stuff, was so beautifully waterproof it had hidden the damp completely, not letting a drop through onto the kitchenfloor. It was palatial accommodation in slug terms. If I were a slug I'd've wanted to live there, and sent out to all my friends and relations to join me. It must've been leaking for over a year. The floorboards and joists are all perished, the washing machine has started to fall through the floor, and Himself put his foot through a floorboard on Tuesday. It was a great comedy moment, but not what one wants on a floor across which someone will shortly be walking holding a newborn.<br /><br />So we've had terrifying conversations with builders all week. I scoured yellow pages for people who would book us in for a quote within the week - no easy task. You know what builders are, either they take one look and say it's too big a job for them, or else each comes with a new angle, worse than the last.<br /><br />Yesterday we had a man from a building company which said they were specialised insurance claims managers. They wanted us to sign a piece of paper saying they were our preferred contractors and letting them deal with the insurance company for us. Including talking to the loss adjuster, all for free, they said generously, which nobody else would do for us. Then they'd find contractors to do the job for us, how kind. For some reason what they had to say had me totally confused. I couldn't understand what was in it for them, and being a good Kikuyu I was particularly alarmed about why, having signed this bit of paper, we'd not get to find out what sums of money were involved at all (in a tone to suggest we couldn't possibly want to soil our hands with such details). Himself came in while this was going on, refused to sign anything and sent them packing. Concept Solutions, they were called.<br /><br />Later I worked out that they, as a company, make money solely from creating a difference between what the insurance company pays them and what it costs them to fix our kitchen. And they get us primed to pay for stuff too - e.g. tiles if they get broken in the removal of the units, because of course, they said, a new row of tiles would look different from the old ones so we'd want them all off and renewed. So having paid insurance premiums every month for years, we were to get ourselves into a situation where someone else could collect money from both sides, us and the insurance company. Oh, and no way it could possibly be done before the baby came!<br />We were talking at least two or three weeks' work, even after the claim went through! I can't believe there are enough mugs in the world to keep such a company in business, or that it's legal, but it is!<br /><br />Well, the way I'm planning it the building work starts on the 2nd of July and will be over in a week, thank you very much. How long can one live on takeways and microwaved food, honestly? With a toddler and when nine months pregnant? Thank goodness the slugs are all fled, though! I couldn't believe I'd moved 6,813 kilometres across the world to still have slugs in my kitchen.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-86402237085735659092007-03-19T23:44:00.000+00:002007-03-20T23:05:10.576+00:00Comment on abortion2<span style="font-style: italic;">"...what is it that really drives a woman,specifically, to an abortion? is it because she wants her life a certain way or needs it a certain way? that she wants the 'easier'/faster/ route out?"</span><br /><br />This comment is saying that a woman who chooses abortion does so for reasons of cowardice. A woman who chooses abortion does so for reasons of formidable courage. More, I find it to be a choice that shows very clearly the high value you place on yourself.<br /><br />It is contrary to the rules of society for a woman to value herself. Especially to the exclusion of all else, but after all if you don't value yourself, who will? Your children won't. I don't put my Mum first. She has put me first in her life for many years; but now, though she is very significant, she comes fourth or fifth down the list of important people in my life. New life is not kind to the life that went before it. It is immensely selfish.<br /><br />I am reminded of a tale I read (unfortunately I cannot ascribe it, I can't recall who wrote it. My apologies for the plagiarism) of a gamekeeper or hunter. He found a mother bear who'd been caught in a trap for a few days. He remembered the terrified expression in her eyes. She was still alive. Her starving, frantic cubs had eaten half her side away.<br /><br />I can imagine this very clearly. I can even tell you which bit they started with - her nipples. Babies will take what they need from you, no matter what. They're not here to care about your feelings, they're here to grow. A woman who's had trouble breastfeeding could tell you all about it - the baby will come to the breast for its milk no matter how sore you are, even if he or she comes away from a feed dripping blood like Dracula. Motherhood is too serious an undertaking to thrust on someone because of an accident. Responsible long term parenting is about taking care of yourself, first. I would compare the courage of a woman who has an abortion, to someone caught in a trap who chews off her leg to get away. All you can do is give lots of respect to that choice, and thank God it wasn't you.<br /><br />What does it mean, to put yourself first? In <span style="font-style: italic;">Further Along the Road Less Travelled</span>, Dr Scott Peck recounts an investigation the army conducted while he worked for them. They gathered together about 30 highly successful people, to study them and find out what qualities they shared. They chose people who were all round success stories - strong family lives, successful careers, rewarding jobs, popular with colleagues, active social lives. The exercise Dr Peck recounted was their reaction this question: Please List the 10 most important things in your life, in order of importance. There were hundreds of different answers to all but No. 1. The most important thing in all their lives was "Myself."<br /><br />Not, "My relationship With God." Not, "My Family." Yet far from being selfish monsters, these people who had clearly sorted out what to value highest were thereby able to give a full measure of value to everything else in their lives, each factor in its place. Spirituality, love, health, finances, joy ...<br /><br />Many women seem to have a gap where this item about loving themselves belongs. I have never yet met a woman who hasn't had an abortion who is able to really understand, to empathise about the choice to have one. Even women whom you'd think have had cause to really consider and study the mentality behind it. Abortion counsellors who let slip that they think it's intrinsically wrong. The actress who played Vera Drake, in that poignant film, involuntarily judging that strong, kind woman in an interview. There is always a veneer of the judgemental, especially among those who are more actively religious and therefore duty bound, you'd think, to be more humble and less uncharitable. One notes a tendency to skip the practice of that supremely difficult biblical sentence - "Judge not that Ye Not Be Judged." Empathy is hampered by the idea that It Could Never Happen to Me - Abortion Is Something That Is Only Done By Rackety, Lazy Women Who Deserve to be Punished Anyway.<br /><br />This is the easy, knee jerk reaction, because of course evolutionally speaking it's terrible for the survival of the species to terminate a life that's jumped enough hurdles to begin at all. What is interesting is that it's women who have trouble understanding it (unless they've actually experienced it, an unnecessarily painful prerequisite to understanding any human behaviour). This reveals something quite poignant about female psychology. Now that I've really thought about it, I've realised that the people whom I've met who are the most easily able to understand the choice to abort, without blinking, are men. It seems obvious to a thinking man that it's a sane, sensible, obviously necessary thing to do to put yourself first. The thinking woman comes up against a significant block on that point.<br /><br />Women! Learn to value yourselves! You are the most important thing in your life.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-19655581536600044662007-03-17T23:05:00.000+00:002008-11-13T19:55:14.891+00:00Stacey Wanjiru Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRAmBrfBca50BFTmZe0WeriLFzCQCyNbfgD8gmfi56KID3ZwFGq48ygPPxpeiE8LUwK0fMTfuonGzn7yohAYOdWn4AqN_iFtWZ4lBT_v23QxNj1fcJ3cWMLvxmxEh5u8vBdyHQA/s1600-h/faithsmileinhospital.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnRAmBrfBca50BFTmZe0WeriLFzCQCyNbfgD8gmfi56KID3ZwFGq48ygPPxpeiE8LUwK0fMTfuonGzn7yohAYOdWn4AqN_iFtWZ4lBT_v23QxNj1fcJ3cWMLvxmxEh5u8vBdyHQA/s320/faithsmileinhospital.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043035646683870546" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDeM0225cch2Qh9inXL88PXbOznj09blcCOf647csZir5w2nF4cslpBPbL0Md6Qtgstz-vx2cQyqIKWkbNoKYBtTy5dN4h2ryn2q2waBLoW4L1oLji8Pwv6EdJcnh_pwV8-WoPw/s1600-h/FaithnursesShirlyne.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDeM0225cch2Qh9inXL88PXbOznj09blcCOf647csZir5w2nF4cslpBPbL0Md6Qtgstz-vx2cQyqIKWkbNoKYBtTy5dN4h2ryn2q2waBLoW4L1oLji8Pwv6EdJcnh_pwV8-WoPw/s320/FaithnursesShirlyne.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043035436230473026" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">This is Faith, Stacey's baby. You can read Stacey's story on my post of Friday, Dec 15 2006. </span><br /><br />Last Wednesday, March 7th 2007, Faith died. She eventually died of severe pneumonia, which developed after her otitis media got worse. The day before she died Stacey sent a desperate text to Cathy, who forwarded it to me, but we were not able to act in time to get her prescription, and she died on oxygen at Coptic Hospital the next day.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />This is Stacey's email of the 17th Feb, about the illness:</span><br /><br />Happy New (!) year,<br /><br />Hope you are all well. I am also well and I thank God for the gift of life and friends.<br /><br />Thank you for your contribution of $440.00. Thanks for making my life and that of my baby comfortable. I know it takes love and the grace of God to sacrifice for others. It is touching because I may never be able to pay you back and so my prayer is that God bless you.<br /><br />I would like to apologize for the long silence. I was kept busy by some challenges. Faith was taken ill and admitted in two hospitals for fourteen days and then I lost my documents. <br /><br />My baby was taken ill on and admitted to Ruiru Private Hospital 23rd January 2007. I thought it was malaria. After four days, she had no improvement and she was transferred emergency to the bigger Coptic Hospital in Nairobi. They treated her then it was noticed she had a tremor in the legs and twitching in the hand. They discovered the fontanelle had closed and referred my baby to a neurosurgeon. After the brain CT scan the doctor said Faith should be taken for a follow-up clinic twice a month until she reaches her second birthday to decide if she needs an operation of the head. Please refer to the scan and discharge summary attached.<br /><br />Though Dr. Musau is one of the best of Kenya’s few neurosurgeons, I am anxious about my baby and wonder if there is newer technology out there that could help to determine and intervene sooner.<br /> <br />During the stay at the hospital I asked the doctor to do a HIV test for my baby. And despite the intense emotions at the time – she is positive –I have accepted her and her status and I still believe there is hope for her.<br /><br />Sadly, it was while at the hospital that my documents were stolen.<br /><br />The hospital bill came to Ksh. 75,739.00 <br />Ruiru Private Hospital 7,050<br />Coptic Hospital 61,189<br />Brain CT scan 5,500<br />Dr. Musau Review Clinic 2,000.( for last Tuesday)<br /><br />I managed to pay part of the bill and I have a debt of Ksh. 25,000.00. I need to raise Ksh.2,000.00 per visit for the twice-a-month review clinic bill, and cost of medication and further tests.<br /><br />Yesterday, I took her to hospital after I saw pus oozing from her left ear and the doctor treated her. They said it was otitis media. I do not know if it has anything to do with her other conditions. <br /><br />It seems to be a tough year for my baby but my faith is unshaken.<br /><br />Please remember me and Faith in your prayers.<br /><br />May God Bless you.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Stacey.</span><br /><br />My sister, may all the stars bless her, came up with the money to pay for the funeral, which was especially expensive as a municipal plot had to be paid for, Stacey's husband refusing to let the baby be buried at home. My friends and I were trying to rustle up a list of 20 people we could ask for £10 each, but it was just such a pressurised situation, and I was in class all day. Stacey is still in debt, abandoned by her husband after the rape, and HIV positive. Any help via www.ikobo.com would be much appreciated. Stacey's ikobo id is KS168658KE.<br /><br />I am awed by her love for this baby. Also it's a very beautiful baby! And she looks so healthy, you'd never think she was on the brink of death.<br /><br />Stacey's text of the 6th made me feel very uncomfortable. <span style="font-style:italic;">"Am stuck with a very sick child with a complicated condition, a prescription and appointments I have no idea how to meet. Please advise me what to do."</span> Why was I holding my phone with one hand, trying to cook and look after my toddler with the other, and providing moral support from the UK to a Kenyan woman I had never met, or at that point even spoken to on the phone? Why was I doing that, why was she so alone, when there was a perfectly healthy and capable man in the same country, who signed on a dotted line that he would stand by her <span style="font-weight:bold;">For Better Or Worse????</span> Or does the marriage contract say nothing of the kind, it's just in the ceremony and thus 'in the spirit of the thing'? Have generations of women been diddled by the church and state? But I'm pretty sure the spirit of a contract can be defended at law.<br /><br />As marriage is a legal contract, it should be enforceable by law. I called her the evening Faith died, it was nearly 1am in Ruiru and she was just getting home, from Coptic Hospital which is on Ngong Rd. She was all alone! Her baby had just died! She made her way alone by public transport late at night across Nairobi - a hideously dangerous proceeding - and went back to be alone in the house which she had left with her baby that very day. The baby died in her arms. Who was there to take her into theirs when the body was taken away?<br /><br />If the law is worth anything it should apply to everyone, and it should be possible to sue her husband for breach of contract. You can't just stop standing by the terms of a contract because you don't feel like it. You can't turn round and say, "Hey, I know I signed an agreement with you, but I don't feel like paying you any more rent for this house, so you can go whistle!" <br /><br />I am told that you can't expect fairness in a patriarchal society. But I thought patriarchy meant the men taking responsibility. My school friends and I are the ones taking the responsibility here.<br /><br />I end with my sister's comment on this idea, "Interesting thought. An obligation for men to provide support rather than a trap within which women have to put up with abuse."<br /><br />I'm sure many women walking up the aisle thought that's just what they were getting - we don't abandon ill husbands. We don't expect them to abandon us.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-71025843627539978172007-03-17T22:31:00.000+00:002007-03-18T00:27:25.167+00:00Comment on abortion<span style="font-style:italic;">"... personally, i dont believe that abortion is a need for any woman."</span><br /><br />I finally have time, between looking after my toddler and my relationship, resuming my studies, being 24 weeks pregnant and keeping my paid employment, to give this comment the attention it deserves. <br /><br />Wow! Not a need! Hearken to the thoughtless, dulcet tones of the fortunate girl who's never needed one!! I can tell you that no need on earth is so desperately felt, so panic inducing or so fiercely resented as the need for an abortion. Resented, because however involved your boyfriend is, it's fundamentally a function of loneliness, an occasion where you alone, the female, must make up your mind and face the music. Like contraception, abortion is one of those things which honestly would never exist if it weren't an urgent, powerful need.<br /><br />I agree that in an ideal world it would not be a need - a world where human females were only fertile for a foreseeable couple of months a year and only ever after attaining financial independence. But since we're constantly fertile for nearly forty years .. to callously suggest that abortion is not a need is willful blindness. <br /><br />What, after all, is the woman suggesting? That she is the only moral being in the universe? That the thousands of women who leave their front doors to look for an abortion every day, do so with a casual shrug and a smile and with their mind on their evenings' entertainment? A little reflection would discover that nobody would ever have one if they didn't need it! Does the phrase,"Hmm, I fancy an abortion today. I don't need it, but I'd like one!" exist in the language? No, the phrase is, "I need an abortion." <br /><br />Nor is it only a need for the woman. The clearest way to understand this is to consider an illustration. I have met women having abortions who already have children. Their knowledge of exactly what they are doing is grimly real. Leaving aside for the moment the mother's needs (please note that one's mind is only able to do this because the mother, at this stage, is always female. Were the pregnant person male, the thought of suggesting their life was less significant than the foetuses' would be offensive) - leaving aside the mother's needs, in a case where the woman already has children she is obviously catering, with her agony, for the needs of the baby who's already around, the unborn for whom there is no place, and her family as a whole.<br /><br />I reiterate, organised religion should devise a suitable ceremony to reflect one's grief, to provide an arena for both the grief and the courage, the absolute, unwavering assumption of sole responsibility, to be expressed and recognised.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-73496514445578504992007-02-24T01:56:00.000+00:002007-03-18T00:22:05.855+00:00A.S Byatt on ContraceptionMy attention is drawn to the bravery of the challengingly named Enoch Kibunguchy, who apparently wants to take on the wolves on Kenyan women's behalf:<br /><a href="http://kumekucha.blogspot.com/2007/02/assistant-minister-wants-abortion.html">Assistant minister wants Abortion Legalised</a><br /><br />A.S Byatt can be hard to read, but her latest on contraception (and by implication abortion) is perfect for Kenya: "... the Church's interference in processes he wanted to believe were human and natural. (That included contraception. Human beings were not animals. They cared for children for perhaps a third of the normal human life. They needed to have the number of children they could decently and responsibly care for. Their sexual desires were unfortunately not periodic in the way of cows and bitches. Women were perpetually on heat unless, as in the case of his wife, the heat had been turned off. It followed that contraception was natural.)" - A.S Byatt, <i>Little Black Book of Stories.</i><br /><br />I agreed with this strongly, although I doubt that it will get a rational audience in Kenya. Kenyan men have too great a stake in keeping women cowed about abortion, and I have a theory about why. It relieves them of responsibility, and releases them from the dire threat of natural selection. It means that the most carelessly sown seed has a chance to become a baby, because it will be someone else's burden. As long as the anti-abortion brainwashing goes on, then the pregnant girl will hesitate over it long enough to make it too late; and a man is successfully launched on a career of fatherhood which will include turning up occasionally to beat some money out of their baby mothers, and maybe attending a graduation if one of their offspring gets so far. What easier method of reproduction could there be?<br /><br />If abortion were an option for most women, men would have to behave a whole lot better if they hoped to reproduce at all. <br /><br />This is such a misuse of the Church, such a missed opportunity. If ever any act needed a sacrament to support one through it, then that act is the decision to have an abortion. I used to think of it as a bitter joke, the saying that if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament. But it's true. <br /><br />It's a such a huge thing someone's asking of you, the chance to be born; the decision to turn them down is so difficult. At very few other points in life is one so in need of moral support, and at every other such point a ceremony is available to reflect the seriousness of your undertaking. Baptism. Death. Marriage. Why the savage trivialisation of Termination? It would be understandable in the aftermath of a holocaust when Earth was desperately trying to rebuild population - but today! When we have the opposite problem! Money and effort is thrown into IVF, which is surely counter to the current needs of the planet, in recognition of the fierce human need for it. We need more women to get more power, so the world must recognise that everyone's needs should be met.<br /><br />Girls - go out and get rich and powerful.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-68669805664824557692007-02-20T22:17:00.000+00:002007-03-18T01:17:49.723+00:00Keeping His Temper for HimThis a trap, lying in wait for any woman who has spent her growing up years learning that any level of male savagery has to be lived with.<br /><br />I have caught myself doing it.<br /><br />I had a meeting of African women at my place in early Feb. Well, I meant to but only 3 turned up. We had a great gossip. That's how people know what they are doing is normal, by discussing what other people are doing. One of the main things we discussed is domestic abuse, because we are at an age now, in our early 30s, when our contemporaries are going through it. Guys we went to school with, sane and normal men we talked and laughed with, are battering their wives. Women we admire and associate with are turning up with bruised kidneys and black eyes. Trophy wives are living with thumping, and coming up smiling tautly at us. "So and so broke off her engagement quoting beating. She went back in time for the wedding, and we don't think it has stopped..."<br /><br />Why is this happening? Is it political, because Kibaki is a laid back guy who is tolerant of the current extremes of Kenyan male misbehaviour? Is it written somewhere as a condition of marriage? As Julian Rathbone put it in A Very English Agent, 'Nobody wonders at it if a married woman turns up with a black eye, everyone knows how she came by it. A single woman with a black eye, though, is an occasion for comment.'<br /><br />I was once at a party (in England), where one elderly lady had a black eye. It was obvious from her husband's hangdog, solicitous behaviour how she came by it, though she murmured something about a door. The truly appalling thing was everyone else's behaviour. It was my grandma's house, I took my cue from my elders (Why? Brutality is brutality, why should I condone it? But the woman was so plainly trying hard to make her world normal again, one went along in sympathy) and pretended I saw nothing. After all, if she thought it was so normal she could appear in public with it ...<br /><br />I was told something vital by a Kenyan guy long ago, and didn't really believe it at the time. He said the woman has total power in the relationship. Any male/female relationship is completely in the woman's control. She conceives it into being and says what goes, what is acceptable behaviour.<br /><br />It follows that the way to address the domestic violence issue is to tackle the women. Domestic violence is part of a continuum of disrespect that contains, among other things, men in their 40's footling off with ndogo ndogos in bars every evening. Never mind what they say, this is not because the girls are young and beautiful and the wives are not any more. This is because the wives are over thirty. 'By then women have lost their docility, they have awareness, they know too much,' - Nicky Gemmell, in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bride Stripped Bare</span>. the best book about sexual awakening I have ever read.<br /><br />Imagine what would happen if you started running How to Have Sex And Enjoy It Immensely classes, for Nairobi women. The most erotic thing is having personal power, and the biggest turn on for a sexual partner is for you see to it that he turns you on. Imagine the stiffening backbones, the brightening eyes of diffident suburban housewives, as husbands began to turn up at home sober, every evening. As men began to concern themselves with what they might need to do to ensure that their wives got to bed not too tired and in a good mood, in the hope that today they might feel risque.<br /><br />As men began to concern themselves with what behaviour their wives like. I'm getting so side tracked here, but I must just digress to eulogise this potential route to getting great head.<br /><br />Women have not needed to be placated enough in this world for a culture of giving great head to your woman to develop. This is yet another indicator of the different ways men and women handle their tempers; any sex manual you pick up will have a chapter on 'How to Give your man the Perfect Blowjob/Handjob'. There's never 'Ten Steps to Giving your Woman Great Head'.<br /><br />Proof positive that personal power increases your erotic capital. The art is so worth studying, and so neglected. Did you know a man can make you come with his tongue even when you're not in the mood? It was such a surprise when I met a guy who could do that; I thought cunnilingus was THE most intimate thing that only works when you're totally in the mood and totally in love. No, it just needs a guy to listen hard when he's learning and do EXACTLY as he's told. I didn't even like him that much, but my, could he get results every time.<br /><br />Well, to get back to the nitty gritty. Things have been hard around here lately. We work awful funny hours, to facilitate childcare, and Himself hadn't been getting enough sleep. This meant constant war with me, and accusing me of everything under the sun. Why? When I'm out of sorts do I blame Himself for everything? No, I figure out why I'm out of sorts, and I deal with it and/or explain it.<br /><br />It was reaching ridiculous levels. I was fighting from my back foot all the time. My daughter got to watch me fight a losing battle every time he lost his temper. Raising bewildered defences which somehow always missed the point, against accusations of laziness, of lack of understanding about the difficulties of the racism at his job, of greed for money ... with the constant assumption that it was me, my fault, I was making him angry, I was doing the wrong thing, the selfish thing. <br /><br />I worked later and later to stay away from home, and then got yelled at for not being there to take the baby so he could get his last hour of sleep. I could feel myself cringing sometimes, flinching, waiting with truly no idea, to see if the next time he came through the door he was going to shout or smile, trying hard to keep the smiles going if they came. They could so suddenly disappear, one moment to the next. I never knew which trigger would hit the shout this hour, and I could never safely risk discussing it in a sunny moment either. This is a bitterly humiliating situation to be in. I got to wondering if I was doing it, if it was something about me that forcibly made a domestic abuser out of any decent man I might end up with.<br /><br />I stood at the sink one evening trying to plan my next day to cause minimum aggravation, and I thought, why is that my responsibility? Sure as eggs is eggs, Himself isn't planning his day so as not to aggravate me, because if I get aggravated that's my business.<br /><br />Next time he came downstairs and opened his mouth to shout I said, "You hold onto your temper."<br /><br />"Ah?"<br /><br />"I keep my own temper. It's the only temper I keep. You look after you own one," and I glared.<br /><br />He opened his mouth, closed it, turned away into the sitting room ... and next time he started losing it, the conversation suddenly turned, halfway through, as he talked himself into calm just like I would. "I'm really hungry, I don't mean that, let me just go get something to eat first ..." you know the kind of thing. Now, weeks later, he's saying things to try explain to us both why I might be upset when I've lost it. It looks like I finally managed to make the man think by refusing to think for him.<br /><br />The relief.<br /><br />The broadening out of my life into having energy to think about other things.<br /><br />More than that. The continuation in the improvement. Nothing else I've tried has had an effect half so long lived. This one seems to be growing from strength to strength. I tried fear once, a wonderful story that deserves a post to itself, but I highly recommend refusing to keep his temper for him. Maybe it's me the change has happened in. I have refused to take responsibility for things which aren't in my remit.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-10977004699135379292007-02-20T21:10:00.000+00:002007-02-21T00:10:40.762+00:00Subjection ConditioningThank you all for your responses to my last post; it's lovely to be understood! <br /><br />This is only one story about my mother, and many responses have been, well, severe about her. I'm not saying the severity is not called for in this situation, and I'm sure if she ever reads this blog she will still not understand where her critics are coming from. The journey from one viewpoint to another is a very long one, and it's less than 10 years since she left my dad. We find it hard to understand her, but in my father's world she is an anarchist! One of his brothers has forbidden his wife to associate with her at all in case she 'gets ideas'. I owe all my capacity to grow, to her. <br /><br />But you cannot be abused without participating in it yourself, mainly by finding reasons to acquiesce. The longer you live with the situation the further your appreciation of what's actually happening differs from the truth. The same as any situation you live with daily. Only hindsight sees clearly. You look back across a vista of years and think, Cor, I was miserable in my teens. But at the time you didn't think so, you just survived, one bright spot in life to the next.<br /><br />In this situation she was putting the blinkered viewpoint of a battered woman, one whose entire sense of the world has been warped by her abusive spouse. When you live in that situation your life is a series of deeper and deeper compromises, of continually persuading yourself that something you are experiencing is normal. This is why abuse persists, generation to generation. She was utterly, beyond words, astonished that a girl child growing up in that world she lived in had the temerity to disapprove of her treatment. It was news to her that such an attitude was even possible. <br /><br />When she failed to keep her husband sweet, when he roared and rampaged, my mum thought she was the problem, that she was failing to fully enter into her adopted culture. I like to think that Kikuyu women are on the whole quite dangerous, intolerant of male misbehaviour. My Dad had to travel 6813km, to find a suitably brow beatable woman. In that inimitable way in which bullies recognise their victims, by arcane signs known to no one else, he recognised a woman whose Dad and upbringing had suitably primed her for his attentions - perhaps only by leaving her with a shaky sense of self worth and an acculturation to living with misery. At the point in our lives when I told that story, my mum had had over 40 years of subjection conditioning. I'd only had 16. <br /><br />It makes a difference.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-29520295113834974662007-02-17T22:43:00.000+00:002007-02-18T00:35:09.423+00:00How to beat Girls and WomenOne sunny afternoon in Uthiru, when I was 16 years old, my father sent me indoors to fetch the belt. This was a part of the punishment ritual. It started with a lecture which you listened to in a search of the spots you might massage to prevent an escalation to beating - was he tired? Could you make a long explanation and bore him off? Create a distraction? Be sick? Or was he dead set on his entertainment? You knew the final judgement leaned towards beating when he said 'Fetch the belt.' This might mean walking all across the compound and round the house to the corner of the sitting room; or it might just mean turning round and unhooking it from the nail. But whatever the journey, nobody ever saw you do it. Even if they were sitting right there trying to work out how to melt away into the floor. <br /><br />When I brought it back he took it and stood weighing it, looking down at me, and said invitingly, "Can you think of any reason why I shouldn't beat you?"<br /><br />I stared at the ragged grass beneath his feet, on the path under the washing line. I thought of my bullying chemistry teacher turning away abruptly to the board and saying, "Go!" to a girl he had just been about to refuse leave to go the loo, when she said why she needed to go. I said, "Please don't beat me. I'm having my period."<br /><br />"What??!" he gasped.<br /><br />"Please don't beat me. I'm having my period," and he turned abruptly away from me, dropping the belt to his side, and marched away to the end of the path to stand staring at the fence for a few dangerous moments. Then he turned and marched back to me and handed me the belt. My heart leapt.<br /><br />"What you just mentioned to me," his voice had gone low. "Never mention it to me again. Never. That's between you and your mother. Go!"<br /><br />I was never beaten again. Nor as far as I recall was my little sister. Psychological torture became the punishment of choice, and it is so much more far reaching I don't know that we did any better. But I never lost the edge I had gained by daring to raise my unassailable objection. That wasn't the end of that episode, though.<br /><br />A few days later I was walking home with my mum, down a steep rutted path, when out of a silence she suddenly asked, "Why did you ask Daddy not to beat you because of your period?"<br /><br />"Pardon?"<br /><br />"The other day, when you asked Daddy not to beat you because of your period. Did you think it would make you bleed more heavily or something? Why did you - ? What did you think would happen?"<br /><br />I was puzzled. I decided to stick with pure fact.<br /><br />"I wasn't having my period," I said.<br /><br />"What? You weren't?"<br /><br />"No. I wasn't," I waited for her to burst out laughing and congratulate me.<br /><br />"You mean you lied?" she was shocked.<br /><br />"Of course!" so was I.<br /><br />"But why?" she asked. Of all the absurd questions an abused woman has ever asked the world, that has to rank among the strangest. I stole a glance at her. Was she serious? Yes, she really wanted information here.<br /><br />"So that he wouldn't beat me, of course," I said.<br /><br />"Seriously?" she gaped at me.<br /><br />Nine years later, my boyfriend picked me up and threw me at a wall. He then kept me up the whole of the rest of the night with various torments. In the morning he sat heavily down as I dragged myself about getting ready for work (he didn't work) and said, "But you know I would never hurt you!"<br /><br />That statement, and my mother's question, come from the same league of thinking. What do you mean, you'd never hurt me, you've spent the last 8 hours doing nothing but, and the damage will continue hurting me for days yet. Do you expect me to ignore my bruises and welts, my aching bones, the care with which I have to turn my head, to stand and sit down for days, and believe your words instead? What on earth do you mean, it wouldn't matter if I was beaten during my period? It matters if I'm beaten any time! My nerves don't lie! What twisted scale of values are you suggesting here?<br /><br />My daughter, who is two, runs a finger down the scar on my upper arm where the belt curled round it and the tip bit into me. I told people for years that the cat scratched me. Only one person ever looked at it doubtfully and said, must've been a very deep scratch. She says, "Mummy hurt." Am I supposed to tell her, "No, not really, women don't feel pain?" No way! I'm not bringing up a woman anyone can beat! "Yes, Mummy hurt," I say, "but I'm all right now." <br /><br />For your information, being beaten during one's period definitely is extra painful and humiliating. There wasn't time to change my sanitary dressing to a tampon when fetching the belt, and asking to go to the loo first didn't work, as I couldn't bring myself to say why. Anyway I'd've had to go to the bedroom first, for the tampon, though I did frantically reflect that if only I could get to the loo, I could just throw out the pad and roll up some tissue paper to stuff up myself for the emergency. <br /><br />In those days, pads didn't have huge expanses of glue on the back, they weren't gossamer thin and fitted to the body. They were pinned into my undies with a safety pin, and the beating belt dislodged it, and the blood went everywhere. My legs were sticky with it, and my clothes. Every item I wore had a puddle of blood through. It's very difficult to squat over the loo (we had a long drop toilet, not one with a seat) when your thighs are trembling with pain and your body's shaken with sobs, and try to get clean with one wet flannel that all too swiftly dries. You can't really take along a whole bowl of water without everyone noticing, not unless it's dark. The welts sting when the water touches them, and then the blood dries on you and it's hard to walk, fetching water and boiling it for a bath, waiting in front of everyone when you want to just hide and cry.<br /><br />But none of this "would really hurt." My ex-boyfriend pursued me for years, eventually accusing me of using that night as 'just an excuse', because I knew that 'really he would never hurt me'. Really he did! I had a responsibility to myself to really listen to my stinging eyes and aching bones! It was a final warning! Yet the making of a woman who would believe him, rather than her nerves, begins in such statements as my mother's, when a woman is told that her pain doesn't count. <br /><br />It's just a question of mind over matter. It 'doesn't matter' if Daddy beats you, it's important as a good daughter to let him, to swallow the pain, to let yourself down into your seat for days afterwards with a gasp and dismiss that pain as just your womanly due. Because if you don't he will complain later of having been baulked of his rights. I can only imagine that's why he brought himself to bring it up. Was he swapping stories of how his day went? Was he complaining that I brought up a forbidden subject, she hadn't told me never to mention it? Maybe he asked her to reassure me, so as to clear the way for him to beat me in future. Or did he just use it to explain why he was mad?Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-83490051619314160202006-12-29T20:10:00.000+00:002007-01-04T16:08:41.811+00:00Kenyan Diaspora Investment ForumI'm sure tons of people have blogged about this event, so I won't say much about how it went; except that it was very well run, for a Kenyan event! The last one I went to was four years ago - it put me off completely - and the food especially was a terrible scene. In this case the event was free and they still fed us, in a very well thought out fashion. They seriously want our money.<br /><br />I'm a very well trained Kenyan woman. It wasn't until I was on the tube afterwards that I suddenly realised I never even thought to bring up the main reason why I'm not going to be making those Kenyan investments. I didn't even think to think it, in a public forum, but it will control my investment decisions in a big way. The only reason I would send my money home is if I hope to follow it one day. But if I'm going to face as practically standard the risk of being gang raped if I get car jacked, I have to think twice about going. I have to think four hundred and twenty times about going with my daughter. Never mind trying to explain to my partner (who is very keen on the idea of emigration, as many of the English are) why he should risk the safety of the females in his life by moving to a country where the police laugh when a woman turns up to report she's been raped. When I hear that in low income areas of Nairobi a woman can be gang raped in her own home twice in three weeks, and the social climate in which she lives is such that nobody says anything, how is that supposed to make me feel about my significance as a woman to Kenyan society? <br /><br />The finance minister, Mr Kimunga, made a very impressive two hour presentation (he was only supposed to have 15 minutes, and he needs to learn self discipline and editing, it ruined everyone's day. I had to miss the breakout sessions at the end, as babies waiting at home for their mothers brook no such excuses) on the wonderful effects being seen in Kenya of good governance and serious fiscal management. He highlighted tax spending on health, saying one could now afford to get sick anywhere in the country as all dispensaries have medicines. Are there any effects of all this progress and good governance on the police? Five years ago if I turned up at Kileleshwa police station to report a rape I would be laughed at, and the same obtains today. What are they paid? When I left Kenya it was something laughable like Kshs 5,000 per month. Do they get any training on how to handle rape victims? Does anyone remind them occasionally of their duty of care?<br /><br />This is a matter for Parliament to concern itself with in a big way, because these are crimes of disrespect. Nowadays we even hear of 'revenge rapes'. A culture is seriously ill when it can produce a man prepared to hire himself out for such depravity. It is only possible for men to leave their homes to do such things because they are aware that their victims do not matter, that the senior men of their society simply do not care. This is a matter that needs to be addressed from the top down, as corruption has been. Anyone looking for confirmation of the power of parliament to affect social behaviour has only to see the look at the amazing proliferation of the cases of gang rape since the perpetrators got a tacit message of tolerance in the throwing out of the anti rape bill. <br /><br />All the progress and good governance in the world is of no moment if a society fails to make provision for its vulnerable members - if only because we're all going to be vulnerable at some point in our lives. So why the wait, for a categorical message of intolerance from the government? For a clear declaration that such behaviour is unmanly and unKenyan? If the problem is lack of exposure among MP's, can we please do something creative like requiring them to do a day of volunteer service at Nairobi women's hospital. Let them help handle emergency admissions, let them do bedside visits and meet some of the victims. Or are our MP's just big men who eat well, sit back and smile, expecting that this can never happen to them? Note that it's not just women getting raped. Perhaps they are waiting for someone to get really creative and hire a gang to gang rape some MP's. <br /><br />Still, it remains mainly a female problem. On the day of the forum, there was a sad declaration from the podium. Someone stood up and admitted, to hearty laughter, that one of the hardest things for Kenyan men to adjust to when they move to the West, is not being able freely to beat their wives and children - to acknowledge that the abuse of women and children is wrong. Nobody shouted shame at him. People laughed. Kenyans think it's funny for a woman to suppose that she's fully human. Where is the message from Parliament to help start a sea change in this social attitude? To make it plain to all of Kenya that when a woman is raped (or beaten by her husband) the shame belongs only to the rapist (or wife beater), and the woman should be praised and respected for her resolute survival. <br /><br />At present my investments are in the UK, and one pays tax on investment income. The UK has many faults, but in this country if an HIV positive man goes about having consensual sex with unwitting partners, he can be and is prosecuted for murder. In Kenya he can combine the sex with GBH and snigger at his victim on the street the following week. What's more, if she's fortunate enough to get the care she needs immediately, including surgery to restore her continence to some degree, and a course of anti retrovirals to protect her from HIV, employment law doesn't protect her from losing her job. Her company may freely choose to fire her for being off sick so long due to the effects of the ARVs. Human rights issues affect investment in many ways, and I can tell you they're affecting mine. You don't come asking for my money with one hand while withholding all respect and caring with the other.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-5134749224504755252006-12-15T13:53:00.000+00:002006-12-15T20:10:06.596+00:00Stacey Wanjiru KariukiI have finally achieved a major first step in a project I've been picking at for over 6 months; how to help a woman called Stacey stay alive. She is now equipped with a reloadable visa card! I was wondering how to fundraise to get her some serious money, toying with ideas like doing a sponsored walk carrying my baby on my back. But the directness of the internet appeals. She's a such a good writer! You read her story and you feel everything she felt, your stomach churns, and then you can give money straight into her hands, for vegetables and medicine. Here's the story:<br /><br />STACEY - IN HER OWN WORDS<br /><br /><span style="color:#800000;">My name is Stacy Wanjiru. I am a Christian and a mother of two, a son, eight years old and a three months old daughter. I was born in a family of two(my sister and i) and was brought up in Webuye until 1986 when our family moved to stay in Eldoret. I am 34 years old now, HIV+ and a divorcee. I had been happily married for ten(10) years since 1996 to 2005 when one day i plunged into a misfortune which changed my life completely.<br /><br />It is the events of this fateful day that have resulted to my present situation which i find very challenging. On that day i was with my husband and our son, driving home from a party. Three men car-jacked us and mercilessly raped me infront of my husband and son when they couldn't get money from us (which is what they were asking for in addition to our mobile phones). They then left us in that traumatising mess. My husband took me into the car and drove us home speechlessly. He left home immediately not even taking me to hospital and come back drunk the following day. This strange behaviour continued for a week after which he said he would never want to see me and i should leave his house.This became unbearably painful for me. I had to seek help.<br /><br />A this point i approached a friend who gave me refuge in her home. She also took me to Nairobi Women's Hospital for check up. It was then that i learnt i had conceived and cotracted the HIV Virus following my predicament. It was painful. I became hopeless and helpless. I felt like i had reached the end of my life. I did receive Counselling at Nairobi Women's Hospital though it all sounded void. With time however, after interraction with other HIV+s, i started thinking positive and accepting my situation. The Cousellor at Nairobi Women's Hospital wrote to the Wholistic Caring and Counselling Center requesting for my accomodation. My mind shifted from abortion to adoption for the child i was carrying. I had no way of sustaining the child and i was HIV+. I thought it impossible to take care of this baby.<br /><br />I was taken in at Wholistic Center and have received great help ever since. I gave birth to Faith (through Ceaserian Section) three months ago, 9th December 2005.<br /><br />I am now a mother to a healthy baby girl (my 2nd child). I have come to love this child regardless of how i conceived her and would want her to have the best in life. It is not easy though. It is very disturbing and actually worrying to imagine a life with my situation alone and with a nursing child. I could say so far so good. I have been housed and fed. It is not going to be easy to be this dependent for long, soon i will be out of Wholistic. My thoughts are that if i could get a funding, some financial assistance that could help me to stand on my own, that is, find shelter, fix my baby's care, feed myself well and have a business to sustain our needs, then life would be less challenging. I am hereby writing to solicit any funding that anyone could offer to help me stand on my own. My hopes are that, i would start selling second hand clothes and make a living.<br /><br />I appeal to you or anyone through you to consider my plight positively, and assist me because you will have saved both my life and my child's. </span>I kindly request that you may have the heart to help me in settling down to a normal life. That would include;-<br /><br /> House rent<br /> Baby's formula milk <div><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"> Personal effect</span></div> <div><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"> Business Capital (As a one time gift)<br /> Furniture inclusive of kitchenware<br /><br /> This would be the breakdown of the cost of the above in Kenya Shillings and US Dollars<br /><br /> House Rent<br /></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Ksh. 4000.00(US 56) monthly </span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;">Ksh. 48,000.00 (US 676) annually <br /> <br /> Formula Milk <br />Ksh. 5000.00(US 71) monthly <br />Ksh. 60,000.00(US 845) annually<br /><br /> Personal Effect <br />Ksh. 4000.00(US 56) monthly <br />Ksh. 48,000.00(US 676) annually<br /><br /></span></div><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;"> Business Capital Ksh. 50,000.00 (US 704)<br /><br /> SUB TOTAL 206 000.00 Ksh (US 2901)<br /><br /> You have noticed I have not included the cost of furniture (kitchenware etc) .I was suggesting that with your goodwill you would probably contribute " hand me downs" or used furniture to minimize the expenses incurred<br /> If and when my business picks up I will let you know (whether be in the cause of one year or earlier)<br /> I thank you in advance for your concern and genuine help. More that I ask that you pray that my strength will prevail and that my baby will grow healthy. It's a long and weary journey but with friends like you somehow things work out. God bless you mightily.<br /><br /> God's Best.<br /> Stacey Wanjiru.</span><span style="color:#800000;"><br /><br />HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO STACEY'S RELOADABLE VISA CARD<br /><br /></span> <div>G<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">o to <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.ikobo.com/" target="_blank">www.ikobo.com</a></span></div> <div><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Register for an account<br />Click on the Add Recipient option<br /></span></div> <div>Check "The recipient already has an Ikobo Account"<br />Enter:<br /></div> <div>Stacey Wanjiru Kariuki<br />Account Number KS168658KE<br />Enter the amount you wish to donate. You may get a message saying:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The recipient has reached their limit for the month.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span>This is because Ikobo allows only $2000 per month per account. If you get the message, just wait till next month and try again.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></span></div>Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-1164592631824113102006-11-27T01:57:00.000+00:002006-12-14T18:52:07.020+00:00What are Jobs For?<span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" >“In 10 or 15 years it’s going to be great to be a third world country. By that time that’ll be the only place where labour is affordable and they’ll be outsourcing all their work to us.” This hopeful statement came from my girlhood friend, an African IT professional working in London. She goes to work every day and grapples with the rising cost of employing labour in Britain, so she has made this observation over time, she’s educated and observant, she knows it’s looking good. Look at what’s happening in India, she says, where all the call centres have moved to. We hear about data entry companies in Ghana, where they upload the credit card data from Accra by satellite, bringing work to hundreds of typists. Soon, when you give your company’s IT Helpdesk a call you may hear a Kenyan or Congolese person on the other end, in their own countries. This is good news, right? </span><br /><br />You can picture all the trapped rural women, currently unable to access healthcare, suddenly accessing civilised jobs, travelling on tarmacked roads to clean computer centres in the bundus which use the miracle of the internet to create a seamless, softwired connection to an income. You could set up environmentally non-invasive industries to bring security and self respect to people who now get passed on from husband to husband as each dies of HIV. They could feed their children vegetables. Learn about balanced diets. Get health insurance. Save up for their old age. Build their communites, investing in clean water and good roads. Imagine what the salary of a data entry clerk in London, even halved, would do to a secondary school leaver in Nyanza who had a good computer lab in her high school.<p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >Unfortunately, however, she won’t be getting that kind of job, with job security, maternity leave and sick pay. She’ll be getting the jobs they had here a hundred years ago. The mindset which outsources labour does not do so for the worker. Women who work in the garment industry, in Export Processing Zones across the world, are currently living in pre 1930’s New York. They get locked in to keep the union organisers out, worked viciously hard for many hours for a pittance. A job which used to earn the American seamstress $10 to $18 an hour earns a Chinese one $0.13 cents, when a living wage would be $0.87. The companies made a profit at $18 an hour, but not enough to please the shareholders when Nike started the great outsourcing race. Not to bedevil Nike, as someone would have started it sometime. That’s capitalism. Good business. 28-day contracts and sanitary pad checks monthly to prove you’re not pregnant. Keeps the costs down, girls. How did you think the British high street has such good quality clothes so cheap?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >The methods are tried and tested. As colonial governments ruled us indirectly, using the inimical among us to their ends, so they set us third worlders to watch each other. In the EPZs in Nairobi the supervisors are from Jordan, Vietnam, China. Kenyans can’t be trusted to be hard enough on the girls. In 1990 a toy factory in Kader, Bangkok, went up in flames. It was a firetrap, piles of cloth and dust everywhere. The girls were locked in, to keep the labour organisers out. They threw themselves from the windows wrapped in bales of cloth, so their families would be able to recognise them for burial. This is exactly what happened in 1927 in that shirtwaist factory in New York. The demographic of the dead girls matched up exactly. Young girls, peasants who had travelled far from home to feed their familes, girls who were unlikely to know their rights or how to agitate for them. In New York they were Italian and German. In Kader they were poor Thai girls. Nearly a hundred years apart, the same greed and irresponsibility killed them. Fires and industrial accidents rage through sweatshops in Bangladesh, too. You can’t run factories so cheaply in the West any more, there are labour laws and health and safety regulations. You have to go elsewhere, so you take the bad conditions with you, built into the ethic of the system.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >I have a friend in England who is entitled to one tonne of free coal every year from the Coal Board (Yes, there’s still a Coal Board, there are still people who heat their homes with coal). It’s because her father died of the black lung, through being a coal miner before health and safety. But the coal she gets isn’t British, because British coal is too expensive nowadays. It comes from Czechoslovakia, where someone else’s dad is dying of the black lung instead.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >These are the jobs they’ll be sending our way. Unregulated, tax haven jobs where computer controlled contracting systems that are the envy of the free world, add figures and award contracts that leap lightly from point to point on the globe in pursuit of the weakest labour laws, the most desperate work force, currently China. It’s a system where the jobs chase the misery, and increase it wherever they land. The World Trade organisation does not uphold the right of free speech the way it does tariff barriers. Clothing companies do strict quality control on T-shirts, not on labour rights. The companies growing the fastest, getting the most kudos in the business press, are the most inimical ones. Even in the West, now a world of service industry jobs, the working life of the poor is controlled by award winning computer systems which keep track of the time when you ring up the most lattes or burgers, and print you out shifts to match. So that mothers find themselves unable to get shifts longer than 3 hours, and people who roll out of bed to get to work by 0530 hrs have to head home at 0930 when the latte flood slows a little.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >If you think about it, your own money management systems give the game away. Good money management damages the world. When the poor earn money they instantly fritter it away, splurging unwisely. But when the rich earn money they save it. Do you not congratulate yourself, when you manage to leave money in the bank rather than spend it? That’s what money’s for, isn’t it? Save it for a rainy day. Well, banks keep your money in the stock market.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0pt; font-family: arial;"><span style=";font-size:100%;" >When the poor earn money, they feed it back into the economy. The rich earn money (count everyone who doesn’t live hand to mouth here) and they feed it into the stock markets. So gradually all the money in the world gets fed into these markets, where 60% of the world's cash is currently sloshing back and forth in massive hedge funds. What for? Meanwhile a poor woman who needs a caesarean dies a horrible, suffering death on the shores of Lake Victoria because, between all her friends, neighbours and acquaintances in the neighbourhood, no one has £3 for fuel for the boat to get her across to the hospital. She stood no better chance of having that £3 if her community had been broken down and its earners taken away to work in an EPZ and live in dorms, with sleeping spaces outlined in white paint. But the real problem is why she needed £3. The infrastructure to handle emergencies has to be a countrywide construct. Why were they looking for fuel, when you and I have ambulances and midwives on demand? Tell me again, why do we continue to subscribe to this stupid thing called capitalism? Why do we allow ourselves to be convinced that market forces work everything out fairly in the end? That’s not what they’re for.</span></p><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" > </span>Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-1156281294260754802006-08-22T20:57:00.000+00:002006-08-22T21:14:54.326+00:00Difference between Me and A TerroristAt the big new exhibition centre down my end of town, which my council tax helps to fund,the yearly UK Arms Exhibition is held. That's ordinance. Bombs. Tools to kill lotsa people quick. <br /><br />I noticed it a couple of years ago, when girls were tying themselves to the railways to stop the metro running the exhibitors and customers there (who ranks as the terrorist in this situation, do you think? The guys buying the guns or the girls trying to stop them buying the guns? The Met Police were deployed against the girls trying to stop the buyers of guns. They might've have made their current job a little easier by siding with them instead.) That year a journalist managed to get in there. He stood over a display case where a lovingly spotlit glossy copper object lay in a case, and the salesman said enthusiastically, "This is a thing of beauty. It features a caseload of little bomblets, which are scattered on impact AND - are delayed action to maximase impact!" The journalist goes, "Impact. You mean dead people." The salesman drew away, affronted.<br /><br />The arms industry is now the main UK manufacturing industry, products all exported. The government loves it, as 75-85% of the cost of guns is tax. Our main use for taxes is to fund our health service. So we pay our doctors by exporting murder. So the difference between me and a terrorist is that he knows the names of the people he killed. Also they probably died with full stomachs.Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13443240.post-1154649965357509362006-08-04T00:06:00.000+00:002006-08-04T00:08:51.013+00:00Babies and BedpansMy mother is here from Kenya for the month of August, and I've taken my summer leave to coincide with her visit. She, my sis and I are planning a train trip to meet up in the peak district next week to see my grandma. And my mum just asked if I would arrive as late as possible so she and the other two could go out and enjoy themselves during the day without me and the baby. She's worried about room in my gran's car, and car seat issues.<br /><br />I feel like a pariah! I picture us sitting around the breakfast table as we plan for the day, my child on my knee, as my fellow holiday makers cross off joys unreachable by them due to my lumpen childladen presence. Ouch!<br /><br />Why oh why are other people's children so unpleasant to have around? I have a scenario I keep before me whenever I am discussing, say, desirable early childhood and family supportive policies and political stances.<br /><br />One day I hope to be 95, and someone may need to bring me a bedpan.<br /><br />And when I need her, this bedpan bringing person, I hope she will be doing her job because she chose it. I hope she will be well paid for it, not because I'll be filthy rich but because it's standard. I hope she will have grown up in an atmosphere of kindness and dignity, in a world that valued human dignity. I hope she will be gentle and unharried, have time to smile, not too many people to take care of, not too long shifts so she won't be tired. I hope she will have seen her mother treated with respect from when she was tiny; I hope she will have seen around her that the young, the weak, the old, the infirm, were treated with care, and with the consciousness that they are people.<br /><br />I hope I will have helped build a world where she is not worrying, as she walks in, how she's going to feed her children, about her childcare arrangements, about her roof or her energy needs. I hope the political systems I have ushered in over my lifetime have safeguarded her clean water and her pension, and not ripped her off. I hope this reflection keeps me conscious of the impact of my decisions! And I hope it keeps me kind! Because anyone whose kids I'm nasty to may be the great grandparent of that person, I may be helping create the atmosphere she grows up in.<br /><br />So should I stay home next week, cowering in my house inoffensively with my inconvenient child? Ai. What a world!Mama Wangarihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12006416899769717487noreply@blogger.com0