International Women’s Day 2015

Who is this grey haired old Bibi?

We celebrated early with an afternoon of activities on Thursday March 5th aimed at informing students about gender discrimination and women’s rights. The theme this year is “Make it Happen” so we were looking at practical ways of improving women's lives and making a difference here and now.

We have been planning this for a while and I was co-ordinating activities.  My first challenge was teaching the students Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman”.  This was a challenge because I cannot sing a note, so we were doing it by singing along to a YouTube of a live performance. Some of the boys were not so keen but I talked to them about solidarity and empathy.  It doesn’t help that Swahili doesn’t have any of the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ so the students do not get the distinction between ‘I am Woman’ and ‘I am a woman’.

The afternoon started with a welcome and introduction to the proceedings and then the students sang.  We should have had a practice beforehand because this first performance was less than impressive – but they had two more opportunities over the course of the day and they did get better!

He may be a sleaze but he uses a Mac!

The students had also had to do some preparation in their teams – each team had to put on a short drama that they had written on the theme of women’s rights. The first team tackled discrimination and rights in the workplace – a sleazy boss got his comeuppance after asking female job applicants for their phone numbers and pressing them to go out with him to enhance their prospects. In the second team’s production a father is encouraged to see that his 12 year old daughter should be going to school rather than being married off to fill his pocket with money and his boma with cattle.

We watched the first half of a Ted-talk “We should all be feminists”, by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie.  It was quite inspiring as well as being entertaining and amusing.  It’s worth watching and you can find the YouTube here.  A fellow AVI talked to the students about Goal Setting as a way to “Make it Happen” and set them a task of researching their choice of Malala Yousafzai, Jane Goodall or Anita Roddick – three inspirational women! We had technology issues getting the data projector to talk to the computer and had to change to plan B transferring the video to a different computer using a USB stick but that gave the students another chance to sing “I am woman” with an emphasis on I am invincible and I can do anything! And the power failed just as Leeanne finished her powerpoint presentation. So that was good timing and most un-African as power failures usually happen just as you are starting!

 

Then we had some more student activities – this time art-craft and a game.  

Evaline and I had sewn 120 purple, green and white flags on to bias binding to make “bunting”.  The students added women’s rights symbols and messages to the flags.  They designed t-shirts with women’s rights symbols and slogans.  Some were a little confusing.  I think Emanuely’s message of “Big up the women” is saying we should be encouraging women in their ambitions but that wasn’t exactly clear! Many girls chose the Margaret Atwood quote “Men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them” for their t-shirts. 

I had made a game called “Lottery of life” where students had to read a chance card then throw a die to determine whether they were male or female. It was good for the students to see the disadvantages as well as the advantages of the two genders.

The Lottery of Life

 

The students had been told that only those who sang with gusto would get soda and cake so we had another rendition of “I am woman” before students and staff had cups of soft drink – including a choice of Mirinda Purple! – and purple iced banana muffins.

T-shirts and bunting

It was a good afternoon.  We now have the bunting up decorating the IT room – all 25 metres of it - as a reminder of our day and I hope that we have changed attitudes or made the students reassess at least a little the patriarchal sexism endemic in Maasai culture.