Top Quotes: “I Am a Girl from Africa” — Elizabeth Nyamayaro
“Gog, responds with our proper Shona greeting, “Aaaa, tiripokana makadiyiwo,” which literally means “We are well, as long as you are well.”
Gogo says that our Shona greeting is important because it is a daily reminder that we all belong to one community, and that if one of us is unwell, then none of us is well.”
“When I turn fourteen and start secondary school at Roosevelt Girls High School, I keep volunteering at Parirenyatwa Hospital until one day Aunt Jane says, “I must do more,” and takes an additional job at the HIV/AIDS clinic at Gomo Hospital. This hospital is on the outskirts of the city and within walking distance of the main Mbare bus station, which services all the surrounding villages in Zimbabwe, including Goromonzi. She keeps her job at Parirenyatwa, but also begins providing services to patients from underprivileged communities, including those who travel from rural areas seeking treatment.
I follow Aunt Jane to Gomo Hospital, where she works two afternoons every week; there, the patients look much more like the sick ambuyas and sekurus in Goromonzi. They are skeletally thin, their bones simply hangers for their clothes; their eyes are large and sad. Inside Aunt Jane’s treatment room, I listen and watch as women hold up their hands with embarrassment, trying to cover the weeping wounds around their mouths and noses. I watch men with wilted hair slump over with despair. I watch sick young girls hold tightly to their dying babies, and see a terrible pain overcome their faces as their bodies refuse to recover, worsening day by day. When Aunt Jane throws her arms around her patients to comfort them, I look away and shield my eyes from the pain. Sometimes it is simply unbearable to witness.
At some point, Aunt Jane comes to understand that because more and more patients are flocking to both clinics, there is no longer enough medicine to treat everyone, and the little that is left is very expensive — much too expensive for most. “I must do more,” Aunt Jane says, and takes a third job at the Blair Research Institute, where she works two mornings a week with other doctors to successfully manufacture HIV medicine that is affordable for Zimbabweans.
Eventually Aunt Jane realizes that HIV infections continue to rise because people don’t want to talk about the disease. “I must do more,” she says again, and takes a fourth job, as a radio doctor at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, where she goes on the air for an hour once a week to give medical advice to all Zimbabweans around the country about how to prevent the spread of HIV. I help Aunt Jane by being her eyes and ears with young people my age so that she can better understand what we think and feel about the disease. Some mistakenly believe that young people can’t get infected, and some are adamant that the disease is a hoax invented by Westerners. On the radio, in a calm and straightforward voice, Aunt Jane separates fact from fiction, calling on young people and communities to openly talk about HIV/AIDS in order to end the stigma and change their behavior accordingly.
When Aunt Jane realizes that she is still not reaching the most underserved communities, she says, “I must do more,” and opens her own private HIV/AIDS clinic in Epworth, which I now understand is one of the most impoverished areas in Harare.”
“As we drive through Harare’s city center, I notice flocks of young boys and girls milling on the streets, begging for money and food. Aunt Jane explains that according to official statistics, at least ten thousand Zimbabweans died the previous year from hunger, and that six million people, roughly half of our country’s population, will need food assistance in the upcoming year. The food insecurity is astonishing, and its devastating impact is only beginning.”
“A few months ago, the Icelandic government made a HeForShe commitment to close the gender pay gap in the country by mandating equal pay for equal work for all companies doing business in Iceland. This groundbreaking commitment means that every business in Iceland must ensure pay equality for their workers, and any company that has not implemented this standard by 2022 will be asked to cease doing business. To achieve this hugely ambitious goal, the government — working alongside Icelandic women’s rights groups, UN Women, and other key stakeholders — has developed an auditing tool that will detect discrepancies in equal pay for any company in Iceland that employs more than twenty-five people. Once a company achieves equal pay for equal work, they will receive an equal pay accreditation from the government.”
“A few months after our visit, Iceland manages to complete the pilot phase of their pay parity commitment — certifying seven companies after each met the equal pay standard and reaching an important milestone.
What I don’t know in this moment is that in 2018, the world will wake up to the breaking news that Iceland is the first country to make it illegal to pay men more than women. A huge weight having then lifted from my shoulders, I collapse onto my desk with relief and thank God for everything. All those years of hard work — all the travel and listening and diplomacy and determination — all of it will pay off, making me feel part of something very important. On January 2, 2018, the government publicly declares that Icelandic women are now guaranteed, by law, to receive equal pay for equal work, the legislation requiring that women be valued and treated as equal to their male colleagues. This historic milestone is literally world-changing, and I feel honored to be both a facilitator and a witness to this seismic shift.”
“She explained that she had tried twice to run away from her abusive husband, but unlike Nira, none of her family agreed to take her in. When she sought refuge at the women’s shelter, she was turned away because she was not yet eighteen, and as a legal minor, she required parental consent to stay. She decided to live on the streets rather than return to an unsafe home, but she was arrested both times by the police, who brought her back to her husband, because again, she was a minor and considered a child in the eyes of the law.”
“”My little sister was only eleven years old when she got pregnant,” Memory told me. “As is the custom in my culture, she was sent to an initiation camp, where young girls are taught how to sexually please a man once they reach puberty. There is a special day, which they call Very Special Day, where a man who is hired by the community comes to the camp and sleeps with the little girls. Some girls end up contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. My little sister ended up pregnant. Now she has three children even though she is only sixteen years old.”
There was so much pain on Memory’s face as she shared her sister’s experiences. But that’s not how the story ended. After having refused to go to the initiation camp herself, Memory was ostracized for disrespecting traditions. She turned her pain into action and started advocating with both female and male village elders to end harmful practices in their village. This wasn’t an easy task, but Memory persevered until, one day, the elders relented and agreed to end child marriage.”
“Rwanda put in place substantive, targeted care for survivors of domestic violence, establishing a network of centers across the country called the Isange One Stop Centres (IOSC). At these forty-four facilities, victims and survivors receive appropriate and comprehensive medical, psychosocial, and legal services, all free of charge.
In Finland, the government is addressing the issue at its source, rolling out a course on gender-based violence and how to manage aggression across the entire Finnish army — which is mandatory for all Finnish men. As a result, incidents of domestic violence are on the decline as men get better at managing aggression and take responsibility for their actions.
In other countries, I have also encountered countless men whose perception of male responsibility in ending gender-based violence is starting to change. Men like Paul, from a rural community in Uganda; a father of four daughters, two of his girls had been raped while going to fetch water from the river in the forest. Pain was seared into his face as he told me this story.
Often after an incident of violence, or in the face of consistent violence, women and girls are given the advice to avoid going out when it is dark. But instead, this father explained, “Us, we decide to create a team of HeForShe bodyguards. I invited other men and boys in our community to join me so we could go to the river with the women and girls to fetch water together. Now we carry more buckets and share the load. Now our wives and daughters don’t have to go back to the river too often or feel afraid to go because now we all walk together,” Paul explained. I felt myself choke up with emotion at this visible action of solidarity.”
“I Am a HeForShe Tavern:
• NO selling alcohol to underage and pregnant women
• NO harassment of women in the Tavern
• NO form of violence will be tolerated in the Tavern
• Weekly community dialogues on gender-based violence will take place in the Tavern
• Organize at least five community actions per year as part of awareness raising against women and girls abuse
• Organize at least three health testing sessions in a year for clients”
“We started visiting tavern by tavern, telling tavern owners about our HeForShe plans, asking them to join us in turning their taverns into HeForShe taverns. When they agreed, we all came together as a community and created our own HeForShe tavern rules, the ones you see on this poster,” the facilitator chimes in, pointing to the poster on the wall.
“And if a tavern owner does not respect the rules, then they must stop being a HeForShe tavern. And no one wants to stop because less people will visit their tavern. So being a HeForShe tavern is also good for tavern owners,” another man chimes in, chuckling softly.”
“”Us, we started with just one HeForShe tavern in the beginning, but now, aaaa, we are more than one hundred forty-four taverns here in Klerksdorp, reaching four thousand men every week. But we are just getting started, we won’t stop until all the men in our country become HeForShe,” the facilitator explains with passion and conviction in his voice.”
“In Japan, over a million women are rejoining the workforce as part of the prime minister’s gender commitment, which we are hopeful will change the day-to-day realities and future prospects of young women like Akiko, whose husband left her when she decided to pursue a career in medicine. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a global professional services firm with 276,000 employees, is reaching parity in their global leadership team as part of their gender pledge, moving from having only 18 percent of their leadership positions held by women to 47 percent equal female representation, finally achieving a goal that had remained elusive for more than sixteen years.”
