Kampire

One of the things I really miss about being a college student in the U.S is access to reproductive healthcare. A year or so ago, I could simple walk down to the health centre in between classes, pay little or no money and within a few minutes of waiting, be ushered in to see a friendly and understanding nurse practitioner. This non-judgemental and knowledgeable woman, would not blink at answers to questions about the number or gender of previous sexual partners. She was happy to recommend a free trial of the latest in contraceptive innovation like the Nuvaring (which I am sure had been asked to punt by pharmaceutical representatives). She even left me voicemails of my test results or mailed them to me on a cheerful card so I did not have to come into the centre a second time. Going to see the gynaecologist is rarely a fun experience, but it really should always be so easy.

I am here and I am not here.

A local TV station has been running a sickly-sweet promotion in honour of Mother’s Day all week. Their spots come complete with quotes that are real gag-reflex ticklers, such as “Being a mother is one of the highest paying jobs in the field, because the payment is pure love”.

I call bullshit.

Maybe if we actually thought about what it would cost to pay mothers for the work they do at home we would have a real appreciation for them, one that extends beyond a single day every year. Just in case you were wondering, salary.com estimated the monetary wage of a stay-at-home mom based on the top ten jobs that moms perform and came up with $116 805 a year. Mothers who work and then do a “second shift” at home would make an extra $68 405 on top of their salaries. . And this doesn’t really take into account that moms are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as well as the fact that moms perform a whole lot more than ten jobs. In spite of all this, talk to any mother re-entering the workforce after years of being homemaker and she will tell you about prospective employers who act like nothing done in those years can be of any value in the formal economy.

Sometimes I get excited about vaginas and have no one to talk to about it.

Sometimes I don't really care if you think its gross or wierd, I am going to tell you anyway. Like after I got my Divacup, I just had to show it to as many people as possible, including my Dad who was just amused.

I've been tracking my cycle for a year now on monthlyinfo.com . It's cool to see exactly how my cycle tendss to work. Before I only had a vague idea of when my period would come and it seemed quite arbitrary at times, particularly because I was forgetful and often too lazy to do the counting. But this website does it for me!

This weekend I was dumped.
Like a baby in a rubbish dump.

Via text message.

I know, I know, but don’t cry for me Argentina, he clearly was not the one (or the ten, if I may be lucky enough to have so many loves in my lifetime). By way of explanation for so abruptly bringing our 5 month getting-to-know-you dance to an end (if you can call anything within a 160 character limit an explanation) he typed “I guess your feminist dialectic jus pushed this sucker out of the yard”.

Backstory: the background to my mp3 player is an image which includes the text “My Marxist-feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” I thought it was cute. He noticed it once or twice and remarked (what I thought was casually) about it. Something along the lines of “Uh-oh, you’re a feminist,” at which point I think we riffed for a couple of minutes about castration and how he should be scared. Stupid me, I thought we were joking around, I didn’t even go into my speech about how if you believe women should have equal rights then you’re a feminist too. Honestly, that is the extent of all talk about feminism in the time that we hung out. I just assumed (again, stupid me) that since he was young, educated, liberal, since we were on the same page about a lot of things that we were on the same page with this even though he clearly didn’t want to stand under that scary banner of feminism.

So,

first day interning for an awesome women's NGO in Kampala. Looking forward to spending the next three days taking part in some grassroots organising in the village. I am sitting at lunch, being the new girl when horror of horrors, the conversation turns to the latest bee in my bonnet; homosexuality.

One girl is talking about how she went to a meeting discussing homosexuality, and could not keep her head up because they were actually advocating for the rights of gay people. Which she believes is wrong. To paraphrase her words; if the meeting had been about how homosexuality is wrong, then she would have been able to put her head up without fear of being seen by the TV cameras present.

Returning to Africa after 3 and a half years in university in the United States comes with a certain amount of “reverse culture shock”. Not just culturally but personally because my views on life have grown and expanded due to the immeasurable impact of higher education and expatriate living. Coming home for me has had to include the unfortunate experience of wrapping some of my more radical opinions in tissue paper and putting them away, until I am better able to express them and the society I live in is more ready to accept them. When people are still struggling with the issue of basic human rights; having enough to eat and electing political representatives whose sole purpose is not self-aggrandizement, then the more abstract issues must be set aside, or at least related to this bigger picture.

“That Girl”

I am not that girl
Not supposed to be that girl
Emotions a-whirl
Does he like me? Does he want me?
Wondering “where is he?”
Not where he said he would be
Next to me,
Touching me.
Hand between my knees ‘till I think
That I can’t see.

I keep “that girl” inside of me
Won’t speak her into being free,
Into being real.
Can't let you feel
Trapped,
or judged
or whatever it is you guys are supposed
to fear
So much that you can't deal
With "that girl" when she kneels
at your feet.

Don't want to feel weak
or needy
or greedy,
like some kind of freak

It has been disturbing me for months now, the image of an Afghani girl shivering with pain on CNN infomercials, her face covered with a translucent slime that looks like Vaseline. A man attempts to put drops in her eyes via a long tube but she gestures him away the way a screaming toddler would a nurse with an approaching syringe. The question that has been a permanent fixture in the revolving doors of my mind repeats itself one more time. What kind of person would throw acid on little girls who just want to go to school? What kind of world do we live in that allows this?

I had heard of acid attacks before but only in the context of personalized violence against women; jilted lovers in Uganda and Bangladesh and other developing countries who seek revenge by scarring and maiming their former partners for life. It filled me with disgust then too. But the recent attacks in Afghanistan, illuminate the political dimension of Gender-based violence (GBV). I guess I can understand personal violence, the red-hot anger that drives people to hurt and kill the people they claim to love. I don’t condone it but at least I can wrap my head around it. But the coldness that drives grown men to splash burning acid in the eyes and faces of young girls who are the future? The coldness with which men maim young women for political gain and in the name of religion? That I cannot understand. It disturbs me deeply, every time I think of it. Little girls who just want to learn. How is it that grown men who claim to be interpreting the word of God can declare these little girls the enemy. Little girls who just want to learn.

When women took over Rat press in 1970 Robin Morgan sat down to write an editorial that would resonate way beyond that time. In it she took on and dispatched quickly with "female chauvinist pigs" and hypocrtical men who called themselves revolutionaries.

"Goodbye to all that shit that sets women apart from women; shit that covers the face of any Weatherwoman which is the face of any Manson Slave which is the face of Sharon Tate which is the face of Mary Jo Kopechne which is the face of Beulah Saunders, which is the face of me which is the face of Pat Nixon which is the face of Pat Swinton."

“Actually, Buju Banton* used to be a rapist, I believe”

The hippy said to us, pouring the mixture through the strainer.

Good reggae vibrations floated toward me as I pondered,

“What does it mean to have once been a rapist?

Is it something you can shed like a torn coat, or a snake skin, a piece of baggage you can just set down?

An old Nazi uniform you can just take off, “he used to gas Jews but he’s cool now.”

Bathed in the blood of Jesus or the word of Jah,

Saved

Redeemed

Born Anew

Hallelujah!

How convenient for you, to move through these rigid identities.

I too used to be.

I used to be a victim but I finally managed to shrug off that heavy bloodstained dress, though no white man washed me clean.

Now I wear a survivor badge, heavy like iron over my heart.

I used to be

I used to be free

You took that away from me.

Marine runs away to Mexico

Maria condemned, unbelieved, gets a shallow grave.

She was 20, like me.

I open my mouth to ask the guys

What does it mean to “used to be a Rapist”?

And why don’t the raped get that luxury?

of used to be

But they are already talking about something else

Mother, wife, teacher, friend, mom is gone.

It has been several months and still I have no words to describe the gaping black hole in my life that has been created by her absence.

No words but there are questions. So many questions. Who will answer the questions I never got to ask her;
When you were my age, did you feel this lost?
This silenced?
At gatherings did the men talk over your head while a thousand unspoken comebacks raced through it?

The questions I have yet to even think of. Who is going to teach me how to mother my own babies?

What do I do mama now that my foundation has been ripped from beneath me? Where do I find the confidence to build a life?

At a time when every female singer is an actress and every actress is a vapid, vagina flashing, coke snorting, attention whore, people like me can only shake their heads. I really don’t want to talk about the recent spate of celebutante arrests. In fact, every time I see Hilton, Lohan or Richie on a media outlet I put my hands over my ears and shout out things that I care more about than how much these brats weigh and how drunk they were when their luxury SUVs got pulled over:

WORLD HUNGER AND POVERTY!
A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE!
GLOBAL WARMING!
AM I GOING TO RUN OUT OF TOILET PAPER BEFORE MY NEXT TRIP TO THE STORE?!!

It’s funny but considering how much time I’ve spent in rural and farming areas in Africa, this was the first time I had spent any time traversing rural Ohio. Of course it is easier to happen upon real rural locations in Africa, but for all I have heard and said about Ohio being a farming state I had managed to remain removed from it. Rural Ohio spoke to me only of cornfields and ignorant, racist hicks and I had had little reason to go and find out if I was wrong.

As we drove by the thousand and eleventh isolated farmhouse we noticed an older man sitting on a piece of building material. He was catching for a girl, a daughter or sister, a typical clean-cut Ohioan, clad only in a sports bra and athletic shorts.

Immigrant Detention is the Fastest-Growing Form of incarceration in the United States. As it stands now, over 27,000 immigrants are detained on any given day in close to 200 prison-like facilities across the country. Immigrant detention is called “detention” because detainees are not being held for criminal charges. Immigrants are the only group of people in the United States that are routinely held in jail for civil offenses. On the other hand, while immigrant detainees are held for lesser offenses, they can be held indefinitely, and lack the legal protections as people being charged with crimes enjoy, such as the right to free legal counsel.