Apprentice Africa : Who I am Rooting For!

Eddie, Nairobi Kenya Born Ngugi Edward Mbugua, Eddie as his fellow housemates call him; is a consummate reader of literary materials. He reads Shakespeare, Frederick Forsythe, etc. A legal citizen of Kenya, this 30 year old sales and marketing manager and part-time actor, who acquired his psychology degree from the United States International University, Nairobi, Kenya, is humorous and witty. Imagine his response to the question “how important is money to you?”- “Very…How else shall I date Janet Jackson”. Eddie’s strengths lie in his deep sense of professional responsibility, and he brings to The Apprentice Africa an itinerary of an analytical mind, a competitive spirit, a calculative disposition, and a dose of humour. According to him, if he becomes the Apprentice, he would dedicate his time to encouraging children from single parents, because he believes it is not a disability to be born into a single parent home, but a challenge. He offers a word of advice, “If I can do it, anyone can”.

As of week 6, Eddie is still in the running! All the way dude~keep them guessing!

Alas, but this lovely chica left the race this past week. As a commentator said, Joyce, you were not hired, their loss. Kudos !

Joyce, Nairobi Kenya Joyce Kathomi Mbaya was born 25 years ago in Kenya. Joyce proudly declares to new acquaintances, “Nairobi Kenya is the best city in the world”, as she flies the flag of her country proudly. Despite her being educated in the United States where she acquired a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Central Missouri, she still flaunts her Kenyan accent, unlike many Africans who will rather speak with an American accent. She’s a naturally lovable person who describes herself as “not simple but complicated”; in a room, her heart glows more than the light bulbs, and that is the kind of warmth she’s come to The Apprentice Africa with. Joyce is a very emotional person who considers her late grandfather her greatest role model for what he said to her as a child, “Joyce, you have a crown on your head, and a crown is something important but also very difficult to carry-you can never carry your crown by yourself but you must be careful not to give your crown to the wrong person”. She is coming to The Apprentice Africa with a friendly and amiable personality, laden with her ‘crown’ which is her humane disposition to her fellow housemates. She believes she is a perfect leader, who would gladly give her life to save the lives of those she’s been chosen to lead.

STOP…Violence against women continues…STOP

This post is like a telegram and because that is what the urgency is. If you have a sister, or a mother or a girlfriend, a spouse, a daughter or you have been held dear by a woman, you need to keep reading this post on the kind of violence against women that has been going on, in light of International Womens Day and Women’s History month.

I give credit where I can, since these were emailed to me.(Emphasis is mine and my quotes are in ITALICS)

NOTE: The references in some of the quotes I have made may be quite stark to the casual reader.

1)The Violence Continues in IDP camps (4 March PLUS News)

“Since the violence started we are seeing similar numbers of cases to what we would normally see over the same timespan, but there is one major difference: 90 percent of the cases we are seeing since the political crisis began are gang rapes,” said Lucy Kiama, head of the Gender Violence Recovery Centre at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital. “The gangs range from groups of two men to as many as eleven.”

Women are travelling form all over the country to seek treatment at the NWH, many arriving too late to receive prophylaxis for HIV/AIDS which prevents HIV infection following exposure. And why women? “…these are crimes of opportunity…” and “…the spike in gang rape in a situation as violent as Kenya was at the beginning of the year was not unusual.”

My emphasis here is to highlight the fact that there is a bad precedent of violence against women in times of conflict that goes unchecked, and this lack of media exposure et al, is the primary cause of a lot of the continued anguish of these women.

The lure of assistance

“An interagency assessment of GBV reported that in the early stages of camp development at the Nakuru showgrounds (an agricultural exhibition facility), community members reportedly took girls from the camp to serve as domestic help, likely increasing their risk of sexual exploitation.

The same report said women had stated that men in the community around the camp set up on the showgrounds at Eldoret, another town in Rift Valley Province, were inducing girls to leave the camp with the promise that they would “eat something sweet”.

“In some cases, team leaders responsible for handing out food have been making girls give them sex in exchange for the food they are actually entitled to,” Kiama said. “So even when the sex is consensual, it is often survival sex - the girls and women don’t feel they have a choice.”

And we say there is peace, and an agreement. Help a gal understand where these arrangements of national peace help our women and girls

So there is a precedent.

On to the article that had me livid when I read it.

*Writer/photographer Ann Jones is working as a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on a special project for their Gender-Based Violence unit called “A Global Crescendo: Women’s Voices from Conflict Zones.” Her blogs about the project can be found here http://www.theirc.org This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute.

This article from Pambazuka News Digest Vol 93 issue1 written by Ann Jones, looks at the various ways in which the war against women continues long after the peace deals have been signed. It had me thinking over and over, just what this peace means. Does it mean that we keep the stories even quieter about Africa? about our women and girls? A few things I did not know stand out.

Ann Jones has been working with women in three neighboring countries, all recently torn apart by civil wars: Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. While we in Kenya and of course friends of Kenya all over the world are not at the point of civil war, we share many of the same characteristics.
She says, “When any conflict of this sort officially ends, violence against women continues and often actually grows worse. Not surprisingly, murderous aggression cannot be turned off overnight. When men stop attacking one another, women continue to be convenient targets. Here in West Africa, as in so many other places where rape was used as a weapon of war, it has become a habit carried seamlessly into the “post-conflict” era. Where normal structures of law enforcement and justice have been disabled by war,male soldiers and civilians alike can prey upon women and children with impunity. And they do.”

I was indignant . Why should these women not report these perpetrators?

AJ adds ” Human Rights Watch points out that “cases of sexual abuse may be
significantly underreported,” because women fear “the possibility of reprisals by perpetrators… ostracism by families and communities,and cultural taboos.”

So every time a woman is attacked, she is blamed and then she is ostracized and, if she decides to keep the child product of her attack, she is labeled as a loose woman.

Physical emblems of the post-conflict on a woman in these areas; Ann cites the Amnesty International report on post-conflict in West Africa:”The brutality of rape frequently causes serious physical injuries that require long-term and complex treatment including

uterine prolapses (the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond)” — one has to wonder what lies “beyond” the vagina –

“vesico-vaginal or recto-vaginal fistulas and other injuries to the reproductive system or rectum, often accompanied by internal and external bleeding or discharge.”

It notes that such women usually can’t “access the medical care they need.”

Some still find it hard to sit down, or stand up, or walk. Some still spit up blood. Some have lost their eyesight or their memories. Some miscarried. Many contracted sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. No one knows how many of them died, or are dying, as a result.

I sat in stunned silence, still reading this article…

Surviving women as per the UNFPA/CDC survey in Lofa County, Charles Taylor’s backyard:

More than 98% said that, during his war (1999-2003), they lost their homes; more
than 90%, their livelihoods; more than 72%, at least one family member. Nearly 90% of them survived at least one violent physical assault; more than half, at least one violent sexual assault. No one inquired about the number of women now caring for the permanently disabled.

They are not called crimes against women

” In recent years, every kind of horror has been inflicted on girls and women in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire because they are female. If females were a particular ethnic group — Albanians, let’s say, or Tutsis — or if they espoused a particular religion, as did Bosnian Muslims, we could recognize what goes on as a kind of “gender cleansing” or mass femicide.”AJ article

Also, there is the idea that women are willing, and this next quote reminds me of when a certain Kenyan politician and published legal scholar, who graduated with top graduate honors in Law from a certain small school in Boston no less, made a remark on national TV in Kenya that likened some political move that “was like raping a woman who was already willing…(laughter by him)” Go figure that he lost respect from me right then. He was chided lightly and barely apologized to the nation. So rape is a joke to a lot of people

AJ reports,” Interviewed for a TV documentary on mass rape in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, a smiling guerrilla says he’s “made love” to many women. The interviewer asks if all the women were willing, and he laughs. He admits that many fight him, and he says — still grinning– “If they are strong, I call my friends to help me.” Despite his use of euphemisms, he knows just what he’s doing. When the
interviewer labels his love-making “rape,” he typically insists that rape happens in wartime and that when the war is over, he won’t do it anymore. The state of war excuses men’s crimes against women because rape — so the claim goes — is something that just naturally occurs in war. “

This long quoted article caught my attention. I hope it gives you some basis to begin thinking about International Womens’ Day and the women in your life, and how you can play a part in making their world safer.

Women in March: Blog and Article Highlights

I recently tried to stumble across various peoples’ blogs to see what women are up to globally. It is women’s history month already, and two days to March 8 the International Womens’ Day. I shall wear my gender proudly. I shall remember all the sacrifices that have been made so that I can be studying, living and learning.

Seasons and Reasons is a Kenyan blogger who highlighted the woman who set herself on fire to protest racism. Check out his pictures and words about this story that barely emerged as a top story, but highlights the kind of despair many people of color face in trying to make their lives in a predominantly white world.

Nyarshady writes about being in a society where there is always someone telling you how you should look or commenting on some change in your life. as a woman who feels the same way I declare, like she did and say “I am a Woman”

Crystal Balls looks at why people get married, and I think that her examples of the women in perspective lend a third look at women centered Kenyan posts for the day.

International Women’s Day 

Is 97 years old, first celebrated in Copenhagen

The Bend Down Boutique

If you have ever walked down the street behind our home, or any home in Lusaka, Nairobi, Dar Es Salaam, Accra or Blantyre, you must have seen the different shirts, shoes, belts and other second hand clothing. But have you ever been a young person in any of these cities? Many people have never had the chance to go into a freshly opened bale of clothes to get a steal of an item, often a pair of jeans with the tags still on it, or a slew of tshirts, sold ten for a dollar. Young people, who are the majority of new urban residents are selling, buying and otherwise participating in the sale of these cast-offs in Africa.

I just watched T-Shirt Travels, a Zambia documentary on the abundance of second hand clothing in Africa.The documentary could really have been shot at Toi market in Nairobi(among the first to be razed in the recent violence), where many afternoons were spent scouring for bargains. And what was a bargain? A $2 sweater which you could only really get for $50 in a regular store or some belts which were three for a dollar. In Nairobi, where people last bought locally manufactured clothes in the early 90s, the documentary seemed to have a natural twin setting.

You ought to try and catch films on Africa after structural adjustment programs, like this documentary on the life of a second-hand clothes dealer in Zambia.  I watched feeling an acute sense of bittersweet emotion. Bitter, because what this meant was that there was no opportunity for many Africans to get clothes apart from these ‘dead mans attire’ and the potential insult of accepting something that someone else has already chewed on. My sweet sensation of novelty in these clothes, was in that by donning these Titanic commemorative tees and our third hand Keds, we were partaking in global consumer culture at its best. we were part of Mickey Mouse and Club Med and never even realized that the tees that were made in our own export processing zones would only ever return to us long after their initial use in the free world.It is hard to imagine me living here and seeing people diving for second hand clothes. Will there ever be a time when people in the United States do that for their daily gear.

Great Expectations

If there were one thing that the new shiny globalized world is telling its developing countries, it is that the new world market needs players who can compete on a global scale. This strained family relationship could not get any more aggravated than it is right now. If the earth off the coast of West Africa could speak right now, it would groan for the millionth time, wondering why Africa allos itself to be pillaged over and over for the sake of a faceless global force. “Children of my beloved seed,” the earth says, “why are you still allowing the idea that you are beneath on the world totem pole to dominate you?” It might also ask the person wearing that flannel gown as a day shirt whether he was aware of his faux pas, even of he was warmer for it.

Today, my prof said something that haunted me through the lesson, that the west was slowly becoming like the third world countries that it traded so freely with. More people than ever have no access to affordable health care the United States, the education system is not uplifting the society as a whole, and there is a greater push than ever that is displacing many people into poverty together with their families. The middle class is the most devastated from the current sub-prime mortgage crisis, many families of which took on increased debt burden without the safety nets to weather a bad market. And forget selling your home, the market rejects it.

So as the more forceful of the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund analyze the results from the last 25 years of change around the world, in the form of structural adjustment programs, what can they prescribe for the future. Many of the countries that they worked in remain as needy as when the first prescriptions were made. More specifically, the sweeping policies that liberalized the market and closed down jobs in industry remain the lead on dealing with the growing urbanization that brings people to the city to look for those bright lights and to move away from all the poverty in the village.

Will there ever be a bend down boutique downtown here? ‘Many moons’ may be the only reply I ever see in my life time since this double standard of treatment dominates the second hand market. You decide your take on this.

NB: I have been on break due to local commitments, and I appreciate the emails and messages that I ought to share once again