Reflections on Women and Power — Part One
The Power of Hope
Women’s Day
Why do women have a day? This was the question on our family WhatsApp group that came from my brother. He is a thinker and a joker too so it was neither from a place of ignorance nor of malice. It was a genuine query and also a moment to start a light-hearted conversation as we mentioned that all other days apparently belong to men so they should not begrudge us the one day!
Later on that night of Women’s Day, March 8th, I lay on my bed and pondered the idea of ‘all the other days belonging to men’. I wondered how true it was and who got to assign these days? A day doesn’t belong to anyone since there are, literally, billions of people on the planet sharing that very same day, minute-by-minute. Not even a ‘birthday’ or ‘bornday’ is your own because many others share it. This means that men can’t possibly own all the other days but neither can women for that matter.
At one point I interrupted my thoughts as the realisation hit me that it is not about the technicality of a calendar day and who gets to own it. Rather, it is about the narrative that gets to be the unabashed focus for a certain period of time when it would otherwise have, perhaps, taken a back seat in our minds, our homes and in the media. It is important for us to voice our stories that may not be heard otherwise. This was, in fact, the experience I had on the morning of International Women’s Day as I finally got to hear an untold story.
A Powerless Young Woman
There’s a young girl that my flatmate and I decided to hire to help with a few things around the apartment. She comes in early on Mondays but because March 8th was a public holiday, I did not expect her to come in although we had not discussed it. That’s why I was surprised when the bell rang. I opened to find Anita (not real name) waiting to be let in.
As I let her in I joked that I expected her to still be in bed on this special day for women and that’s was when the floodgates opened. In her deep husky voice, she mentioned that her dad was in a coma and that she could not afford not to work. I was shocked because she is always well put-together and seems to have her sh*t together — well-done fake nails, nice hair and good clothes. But, as well all know, looks can be deceiving. Her mother died almost twelve years ago and her father kept her, the eldest, with him while he sent her two younger sisters (who were too young for him to care for alone) to their grandmother in the village.
Over the years, Anita’s dad developed high blood pressure which was probably due to the stress of being a single dad. He was managing it but not well and Anita, being the eldest, was buying him meds and was also his primary caregiver. The reason he was in a coma was because her sisters had not given him his shot. She had left him to come to work last week and told them to take care of him. When she returned they told her that they ‘forgot’. At first, I thought it was possible for kids to forget to give their dad his injection but then she told me that her sisters, who had returned from the village recently and were staying with her and their dad, were fourteen and eighteen years old! She then said that as the firstborn, her mother had taught her how to take care of a home and how to be hardworking but her sisters were too young to learn. When their mum died and their grandmother took over their care in the village, grannie treated them with the over-the-top leniency that, unfortunately, most grandparents mistake for love. As a result, Anita’s sisters are spoilt and, even worse, mean and cruel. They talk back to her when she tries to correct their behaviour and they cannot even lift a finger to cook for their dad or clean the home. Anita is left to go to work to get money for the whole household and even then her sisters force her to buy them clothes, pay their school fees etc.
Anita also said that her father always takes her sister’s side and so she feels like she is alone in her fight to keep them alive whilst also keeping her hopes and dreams alive. At this point at asked why she stayed and she said she was afraid that her sisters who leave her dad to die and rot in his bed because they couldn’t even change the sheets he slept in. Whenever she returned from work she had to then take on the role of caregiver, chef and cleaner while her sisters simply watched and waited to eat. Most days she came to work hungry and even went to bed hungry if there was nothing to eat when she got home. I immediately made her some pancakes when she said that and have taken to making breakfast for her to eat before she gets on with her chores.
It was at that point that she started crying and I was lost for words. I did not know what to say. I remember selfishly thinking, in a stupid moment, that I thought that I had problems but mehn! I asked if she wanted an advance on her salary. She said that she did not want to spend that money as she needed it. I asked if she had relatives to ask to take care of their dad. She said they did not even pick up her calls because they did not want to be involved. After going through all the ideas I thought could be solutions but weren’t, I accepted that I just needed to comfort her and pray with her as she was not only in a toxic home situation but her emotions were raw and fraught as she confessed how she genuinely hated her sisters.
Education
You see, Anita’s father had refused her to go to university after she completed her Senior Six (final year of high school) because he wanted a) to use the money he would have paid for her university fees to educate her siblings instead (he said it was their ‘turn’, and b) he wanted her to stay to look after him as well as her sisters because ‘no one else is there to do it.’
Thinking of Anita as I do on most nights, I am reminded of the poem Bluebird by Charles Bukowski and the first lines — There’s a Bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. Sometimes, life becomes a cage that traps us inside it. We know we have wings but they are useless in a cage. We know we have dreams of flying but we don’t know how to open the cage and let ourselves out. Most times, someone has to come and let us out and teach us how to fly. Sometimes, if we’ve been in the cage long enough, even when we are let out we find that we might no longer be in the cage but the cage in now inside us. That’s when the real work begins. However, getting out is still crucial and letting our dreams out is also vital.
In my literature classes at school, I always felt like the cage of my life was being slowly opened. Books taught me that life is has a way of surprising us and bringing the unexpected to our doorstep — both positive and negative. However, there is always hope!
Education is hope! It allows us to have the power to walk through doors that would otherwise be closed to us. It’s a key to our aspirations and it also unlocks our potential. I think that Anita’s father is trying to give his younger daughters hope but in so doing he is crushing Anita’s. There is an imbalance and the weight of it is crushing Anita, sapping her joy and stealing her peace.
Getting an education would allow her to help her family even more but they don’t seem to see that. I can only imagine what her mother would have thought. The presence of her mother would have kept the younger ones on the straight-and-narrow and also given Anita someone to fight for her. Someone to let her into the space that let her bluebird out, learning spaces like a university. Perhaps her mother would also have allowed the father to be all that he believed himself to be so that the guilt of having sent his younger daughters away did not make him fail to see their flaws or Anita’s strengths.
But learning is not just in institutions. Life is a great school and we can learn many lessons from living it if we allow ourselves to be students every single day.
That is the prayer that I am saying for Anita and her family. That they would learn the lessons they need to learn quickly so that they can find each other again.
I also pray that we would learn to let women have their spaces to share their narratives. That women would have these spaces every single day and not just on March 8th.
Update
Anita and her sisters had a family meeting with their father’s sister (their aunt) and they have resolved their differences. Also, their dad is on the mend! God is good!
