Wangari Wa Maathai's eyes and the Mothers of Freedom Corner

Wangari Maathai's Birthday celebrated by Kenya, and the world. Her portrait graces Google Kenya! In 2004 she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize

I think about the Mothers of Freedom Corner often. I think of their courage back in 1992 in very hard times that Kenya had under Kanu and Moi's dictatorship. And immediately, I see the cheerful smile of Wangari Wa Maathai. 

Today I thought of the mothers and of Wangari. When I googled her I found that her birthday is on the 1st of April. When I turned to google Kenya, I recognised her image immediately and was happy that she is honoured this way. It is her 73rd birthday. We wish she would sing to our nation more!

http://www.google.co.ke/webhp?hl=no&tab=ww

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai She is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, 2004 and a recipient of many other awards.  I believe that she as an ancestor now and as part of the living- dead, Wangari is concerned about our country Kenya. We have had an election (March 4, 2013) on which she would have had many things to say. I may not know who she would have supported or the details, but I know one thing. She would still be reminding us to plant trees. She would also be telling us to be vigilant for our freedom. 

 It was Wangari, among others, who kept the Mothers of Freedom Corner actively challenging the government of the day for they had their sons imprisoned indefinitely by a cruel regime. In her company their struggle went on for a year. These mothers would not give up. Kenya can never afford to give up either. It matters that women keep their focus sharp for I believe that they will need to tell our nation more truths. 

And they will need to tell not only us but the rulers or our nations more truths. More truths such as how terrible it is to nurture enmity through politics. What is the use of planting trees for shade and oxygen if we cannot have our children and the people sit under the shade of the tree as one? 

I know she would not mince her words for Wangari never did that. She told me once how offended she was about something called the Memorandum of Understanding in Kenya in 2007, the MOU. This was meant to be an agreement on how to broker power between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga. The latter was let down. Wangari spoke about this on a weekend visit to Ruiru. It was in the press.

 I asked her about it when I saw her. She told me that we cannot promise something and then turn around and say we do not need it, we do not need you. She said that to me at the Bomas of Kenya when we were making a new constitution. The spirit of Wangari and the mothers who fought for freedom is strong.

For these mothers for a year sat in the park. The police beat them up often and opened jets of water on them. They did not give up. They hid in the All Saints Cathedral basement for sometime but returned to the adjacent Uhuru Park again. 

Finally, and that is why I wanted to write about them this month, on the 28th of April they had no other alternative left. They did not disclose their strategy but in the morning hours when journalists and those who used to come and sit with them came, they declared a curse. They stripped naked. These mothers were old enough to do that. It is a traditional curse they were invoking. They took power and exercised their power to the last. Moi was cursed. 

Why did they do this? Answering this question Wangari said that stripping was the only weapon they had left. "Women in the traditional African demonstration of anger and frustration by men when they are punished, confronted, threatened by men who are old enough to be their sons, that is extremely humiliating, because whatever you do as a man, you must not touch your mother. You cannot hurt your mother. You cannot beat your mother." +UN Women Evaluation Office 

Indeed this brave act woke Kenya up with a rude shock. It was an imaginative tactic no matter what some may say of it. It was a powerful semiotic symbol that spoke volumes. Some journalists covered their sight thinking they would get cursed too if they looked at the naked mothers. Some managed to take photographs which were used in the press.

What some readers may not know but which they can learn about with regard to Kenya in those days is that torture was heavy in prison. That people died. That others were in Nyayo torture chambers and Nyati House basement. The Mothers of Freedom Corner suffered for a year. They held on and won not only their son's but also the freedom of their daughters. The power of women, the strength of a nation. Kenya must never allow herself again to be dragged back to Kanu days. Never! She must never allow her freedoms to be tampered with! Happy Birthday Wangari Wa Maathai! Thank you Mothers of Freedom Corner! May your corner always be our entire nation. 

Women, power of dress or of deed, Why to the priesthood?

Clotel died outside the White House, a house of power. Religion enforced slavery in her case. How many women die in the hands of church law?





Ulrichkirche in Vienna. Pic by H.A.Niederle

So very often, women are heard to argue that they are divested of power in holy structures. So it is easy to see on a Catholic altar, to give an example which was live this Sunday 3^rd of February 2013 on Austrian nationally televised mass (ORF 2) – a male colony. The priests, the attendants, the singers in the choir were all male as the mass was celebrated in the male Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz. In the congragation there were women of course.

Many western religions cannot tolerate female presence on the altars. Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and still quite some Protestant as well as some Muslim rites forbid female inclusion. But at what level should women really get concerned about religious participation?  

In the village where I was born in Kenya, the same thing happens in the church. The altar is reserved for men. Girls and women only come to the fringes of the altar, or on the steps that lead to it. Even so, I note in that at home in Kenya, women and girls are made to feel much more part of the congregation through their participation in flowery prayers of the faithful which are readily grabbed as the chance of the faithful to speak out – to intervene. But where is the power of these women when it comes to decisions affecting their own wombs, legs and family? Do they not even hear of the condemnation of a slit in their skirts as part of the congregation?

In contrast in Europe, these prayers of the faithful, bidding prayers, are still very guided. I have seen them read out in St. Olav´s church in Norway during the Phillippina Mass. They appear to be still written down for the prayer reader to follow. That was what happened in Kenyan school masses in the seventies. In many ways Europe is lagging behind in making the ritual of the mass their own, in actual fact, there is no comparison with Africa as far as I know it. Faith there is very personalized and brought home including to the beat of the dance.

But Europe leads the bandwagon in written critical analysis of the role of women in the priesthood and arguing for more of them to be ordained priests. I was in Rome in the 1980s when Baby Paivi entered the Vatican, got into a chapel, dressed in the holy robes and appeared on the altar to serve mass and was then arrested by Swiss Guards and other carabinieri and I do not know where she ended up. She was an activist for women on the altar.

Beyond participation on the altar, women who follow the Catholic faith in all parts of the world have other obligations. The Catholic Church has always provided medical help in hospitals in both the developed and the churches in new emerging markets of the south. What is hardly ever discussed is the quality of the medicine and of the personnel that the church provides. Most of the workers at this level are also consecrated members of the church. And even if they were not, what is the conscience of nurse who confesses the Catholic faith in Kenya today like? Medical personnel who profess the Catholic faith are not supposed to attend to patients in hospitals that allow abortion. In other cases, in the event of the rape of a woman, such personnel cannot recommend the morning after pill in the case of conception. And it does not matter if the patient confesses the Catholic faith or not. A nurse or doctor in this case is first and foremost a believer in the Catholic faith. Is there no conflict with the Geneva Declaration beyond the Hippocratic Oath?

 

Can any conscience justify the abandonment of a woman who has been raped or a woman in the middle of the expulsion of a foetus on the basis of being of a particular faith? Pray what would be the reaction of a human being in a world where they had never heard of such teachings upon finding a woman writhing in pain under such conditions? Would abandoning be condoned by a human conscience? Matters of morals are very complex in the Catholic faith and what is more, they are not to be questioned.

 

This church as most people are aware of has a strict code on matters moral. Here everything to do with morality begins in marriage, as before marriage the teaching is to keep off all matters carnal. Marriage is between two, a man and a woman. Marriage is for procreation. Abortion is forbidden. Therefore, whereas separation of couples is viable under strict conditions one of which includes proof of non-consummation of marriage (Marriage in which it can be proven that sex did not occur before the couple parted) there is no divorce. Separated couples do not re-marry. If they should do so, they cannot take part in Communion. Communion is only for those who are clean of soul through confession of sins.

 

But even before we come to the rate of separation we know that many girls and women have sex outside of marriage. We know that sometimes, their own lives are interfered with brutally by men who then force the girls to move on in different ways. Some of them help them procure abortions, others just abandon them and women and girls at this time also need medical help in many cases. Ultimately, it is the girls and the women that bear the brunt of these situations for they carry the pregnancies and are most affected by the decisions that are made around the matter whether they keep the baby or not.

Under such difficult teachings, I want to refer to my village again. The time came in the 80s when family planning was introduced into general hospitals. Catholics like all others were reached. Some of my adult relatives had Catholic friends who opted to plan their families. This church forbade this but they still did. Of course the conditions of family planning were still not perfect. There are many women who died because Depo Provera was administered badly to them. There were many botched up abortions deaths. Now there were two types of Catholics. The ones who opened up to the new ways and planned their families in more than just the accepted natural family planning method. I knew the two teams. One relation of mine who is still a perfect practicing Catholic knows all her friends were taking family planning pills and no more. We know not what went on between the priest and his flock but they practiced to the end. But she argued that she was lucky that the medicines came when she was menopausal and did not need to worry about this. She said she escaped the hard decisions. But her daughter was one of the first ones to do an abortion in her life. She got help from an aunt to do it and went back to her faith with a big struggle. A big one indeed for it included bouts of depression so big that she would act the local bishop, blessing everyone in the psychiatry ward where she was admitted. It needed no expertise to tell you how guilt plagued her while the other relative went on saying she was lucky she skipped having to make such decisions. How could it be fair to leave such a burden on some generations of women who find themselves at the time of a world invention that includes their own moral lives one way or another? Women who are not even often married to Catholic partners and who are subjected to doing what their church teaches against also at home – that is even if they tried to follow the church?

At what point have we been brutal to women and to so many other people? One time a Catholic gynaecologist in Nairobi told me that he could not operate in about all the hospitals available because abortions were carried out in each one of them. He had resorted to small clinics to keep his faith pure. He was separated from his wife but had children for he adored them with a young student he attracted whilst speaking about gynaecological issues in a college. Well, he was considered important for he was fiercely anti-abortion. He spoke on radio and other media about his fierce pro-life stand. But one of the things he also told me was that at the time he could not work also at the biggest Catholic hospitals in the city. The Mater Misericordiae Hospital because at the time, I repeat at the time, Catholic nuns had abortions there.

Now all this was to remain private matter. And yet Aids had come into the picture already. What was wrong in saying the truth? That nuns were having abortions? We heard more things about who was responsible for the abortions. What this story teaches me is that there is a lot to be examined and re-examined in the Catholic fold, not for any other reason but so that the season of greater honesty may come in. A deeper examination.

On a BBC radio program a young woman said she would rather not be a priest. The discussion was held at the time of John Paul IIs demise. Journalists asked her why and she said first she did not like the kind of dresses priests wear since they put on women‘s clothes and keep women off the altar and secondly that there was no need in joining the same power that is so rigid and averse criticism because it would make her a woman so rigid and against criticism. She and bishop Kilaini of Dar es Salaam were on the program. She persuaded the bishop to tell the Vatican to allow the use of condoms for the sake of saving people from HIV deaths. She sounded very revolutionary then. The bishop said no but said he would try.

 

In the year 2010, Benedict the XVI spoke a totally different language concerning condoms and HIV. It had not been heard before in the Catholic Church. He said in an interview with Light of the World:

"She [the Catholic Church] of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality."

Benedict cited the example of the use of condoms by male prostitutes as "a first step towards moralisation", even though condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection". Reaffirming that the Church considered prostitution "gravely immoral", the statement continued:

"However, those involved in prostitution who are HIV positive and who seek to diminish the risk of contagion by the use of a condom may be taking the first step in respecting the life of another even if the evil of prostitution remains in all its gravity.“

But in the above matters and others, Catholics seemed to have abdicated their personal consciences, the primacy of conscience is not practicable. To this day in Austria, a Catholic, a woman who wanted to have artificial intervention to have a child was threatened with being sacked. She was forbidden to even entertain the very idea. The price would be the loss of her job. It does not end there. The report below is filed in Germany:

Catholic Hospitals which are part of the Hospitals Unions – Unionsvereinigung St. Marien GmbH – declared in a press release from January 16th, 2013 that they provide medical help to all people in the Northern part of Cologne who need it. Why this press release? We naturally imagine that medical help is given to all who need it and no press release is necessary for that. What really happened?

In two Catholic hospitals doctors denied medical treatment to a young woman who was a victim of rape. They sent her away. They are bound but cannot be forced to help as much as possible to support and protect, save lives. The physicians did not even want to start with investigation. They uphold the Hippocratic Oath.

In a German city one should go to a hospital where the treatment of raped women is guaranteed. In many – not only German cities – many hospitals are in Catholic hands. In a case of emergency we do not expect a patient to think first if they are Catholic, Protestant or Muslim. The person will be rushed to the nearest facility. It is clear that if one goes to a Catholic one there will be no help – but will the rape or eventual infection with the HIV virus disappear?

Why did the physicians refuse to help? Because they are not allowed to give the contraceptive pill and almost every woman who is raped tries to avoid a pregnancy. Catholic hospitals are nothing else as enterprises which follow the regulations of the Catholic church but they are supported by the taxes of the majorities and governments. Unless these apparatus are completely private, questions have to be raised about their denial of basic services to a woman in need. In Africa, will they give the anti-retroviral tablets which might also have the impact of the morning after pill. What happens to nuns who are raped in conflict zones? In our research we have heard such nuns get the morning after pill.

If women in need have to go another hospital, a situation that is viable in Europe but hardly in parts of the world, then it is not enough to have the Catholic Primary Health units. It is not to be forgotten that it is torture for a woman to have to go to different hospitals to verbalise her rape again and again. She is not at the time ready for that.

            
© Helmuth A. Niederle & Philo Ikonya

 

Rosa Parks' birth Centenary, she sat down for freedom, what do you stand for?

A gracious Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1955

Fighting racial and other discrimination women making nations 

"The First Lady of civil rights" and the mother of "the freedom movement" is Rosa Louise McCauley Parks. This blog celebrates her birth centenary. Through her, we link up different lands and peoples for freedom. 

 Born on February 4, 1913 Rosa knew her history well. She knew how much people had suffered because of their genetic and origin in the order of the development of other economies in her own flesh. And yes, the economies of the masters have very much to do with all forms of oppression from slavery to racial discrimination for the two are not disconnected. Rosa Parks died on 24th October 2005. 

Rosa Parks is a great candle for all of us. A gift. She lit up our world so that Clotel's Sisters must not die in defeat. She inspires many profoundly. She was not the first to refuse to stand up and vacate a seat to make room for a white person. In May 1884, Ida Wells - Barnett refused to give up a train seat in the white section. She was forced out. She won her case in a lower court but this was overturned but the Tennessee Supreme Court. Clotel's Sister reads in Women Who Dare Knowledge Cards that Ida Wells -Barnett fought racial discrimination all her life in  "literally death- defying campaigns against racial lynching". In 1946, Irene Morgan sat on too. Sarah Louise Keys and Clodete Colvin did the same in 1955.  The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People {NAACP} branch had decided that Rosa Parks was the right person around whom to make a legal case and strengthen the movement when she too did her act of civil disobedience -sat- on 1st December, 1955. She was the right one to spark the plug of legal issues again. She did it magnificently. She was arrested. For me, she was not acting. She was holding a hand to all the Clotel's Sisters who like Clotel found the enemies of human dignity and freedom chasing on every side. Enemies at the back and at the front and the option either death by self or worse death by the owners of an economy based on the labour of the black people.

Rosa Parks was an American civil liberties activist like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was born on January 15 1929. The assassination of King Jr. hit the world and no doubt his colleagues and many were shaken and despondent. He died on April 4 1968. Many people who quote him today do not know that Rosa Parks worked closely with him. Some however know little or nothing about Rosa Parks. Like Rosa Parks, there are so many times women have played their role for the liberation of others.  

Long live the spirt of resistance and love for activism. Let those who believe in "Organize. Don't agonise" as was often repeated the late Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, a Pan Africanist take energy from Rosa Parks works. Let us see once again how organising in big issues sometimes is pegged on winning at a very different but significant level. 

This means organising many women and at all levels for freedom and that is not easy. I mention Abdul Raheem on purpose for he was very concerned about sisters of ours in the world who die unnecessarily at child birth before he died on Africa Liberation Day, 25th Of May 2009. Then Tajudeen was working on the Millennium Development Goals which promise so much to the world by the year 2015. Freedom touches us at many levels. It must be won in many spheres and not just one. It would be no good to sit down wherever you choose if when you get home you are flogged in private in the bedroom.  

Very often we do not connect region to region in matters of freedom and in the pursuance of justice. Is this not another form of segregation? Why should we think that for example the struggle against imperial forces, the struggles against racism are not connected? Why would we choose to imagine that some people can be free when others are not? How can men be free if women are oppressed? How is it that your freedom is not part of another's? Can you oppress and be free yourself? Do you have to be one of the oppressed to fight for freedom? Men must be vigorously engaged in gender issues. Here we are not only focusing on women from America. We know many Clotels and Rosa Parks in every continent, in almost every village.

In this anniversary of Rosa Parks, we want to remember girls from Pakistan who are threatened when they go to school because the Taliban would rather have them uneducated. We remember and honour Malala Yousufzai as a burning symbol of so many of these girls. We know that being shot in the head is fatal but she survived. The world was moved by her plight. PEN Austria took action with the project 'Time to Say No!' http://www.penclub.at/zz/it´s-time-to-say-no/

Together as one, one single woman, women in Afrika, America Latina, America, Australia, Europe and Asia, we have to move the world from where it is stuck. Everywhere women have gone ahead and bravely risked all they have to save nations. For remember, there are no nations without women who are still having to make extremely difficult choices. Some of these choices are between life and death. Their death or the death of their children. During this centenary of Rosa Parks, we shall tell some of the stories that we know. We shall also share either words that change one's course in life and where possible show how and {or} an action taken because of the inspiration of a woman somewhere. This can be in her words, her life or just something read about her. This is the story of connecting with positive energy. 

Today Clotel's Sisters read about Lydia Cacho's. Lydia is a journalist from Mexico. She lives under threat for writing about drug barons in her country. She reminds us that holding a pen and writing life and experience is our power. Lydia fights for her nation with her writing. Just like Ida Wells- Barnett who became a journalist and even took her campaign abroad. "She defied mob violence and terror to train a relentless and harsh light on the national disgrace of lynching."

Recently, English PEN magazine, carried her article 'The Pen, my lance' She writes about a dream in which she sees her own decapitation. We are not dealing with light things."In my nightmare the decapitated head was my own, with nothing surrounding it but a desolate landscape. My face was devoid of expression and my yes closed lifelessly. I take deep breaths and hold onto my pen. I need to write for myself, along , in order to exorcise the image. The words of the most recent death threat that I received by e/mail to me: first my hands would be given to my partner, then my head to my father. I phoned my lawyers.... "

Lydia Cacho is a prolific author. Her latest book is Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking. Published Portobello/Granta.

©Philo Ikonya and Helmuth A. Niederle

Trapped by chanted hymns, the bigotry of a religious leader

As the father of the 23 year-old-medical student reaches out to the world with the desire to reveal her name in his words, "So that she may serve as an inspiration" other men are revealing the ugly face of righteousness so often defended as religion that goes against women. 

It shocks nobody that in the fast tracked trial in Delhi that two of the rapists persists to not plead guilty. There is on one side the threat of receiving a long time sentence and on the other side a certain knowledge. They know something. Among prisoners rapists are considered to be special kind of jailbirds and are mistreated and abused by others detainees.

But hark the miraculous words of Asaram Bapu, 73, who runs more than 300 ashrams in the India and abroad. Bapu claims to have more than 20 million followers. In other words, he is a man whose voice is heard. This 'religious' man sees the raped girl who died as the one who is guilty.  To blame the victim is a world-wide tendency. A humanity neglecting practise is also the human rights contradicting when all people of the world would do it. There is nothing to negotiate about.

When this old Bapu says in public that the departed brutalised girl is partly guilty because she has not taken diksha (initiation in his teaching) and did not chant a hymn to save herself, we reach a point of cynicism which is not bearable at all. 

It is now the "wise" old men who spit on their own rich religious tradition which enables – in contrast to monotheistic religions – a huge variety of ways to relief. The idea of Bapu as reported in the international media that the young woman should have spoken to her tormentors and said, "I am a helpless woman and you are my brothers in faith" is so far beyond normality that Bapu should hide himself in one of his ashrams and be silent forever. He has lost all his credibility.

But as it is typical of powerful people (and Bapu has power) not to want to recognise their failure. He is now busy defending himself before the media and disowning his previous stand. His sentence to defend himself against the accusations through media speaks for itself: "I love even snakes. How can I hate media?"

This sentence shows how much he is afraid of the Fourth Estate in a functioning democracy. His authority is questionable. Media must be allowed to ask and to comment and they are not comparable to snakes, flies, jiggers or fleas – they are part of the conscience of a civil society. The media must be allowed to report Bapu as he spoke. He must not only say he did not say that but explain to us and his many followers what he normally teaches or says about rape in the many instances when people must have spoken about it.  He must not only correct his stand without referring to the media as "barking dogs" but also apologise profusely to the family of the dead medical student for such an outrageous stand.

                                      © Philo Ikonya & Helmuth A. Niederle

Women, power and oppression

Detail of a grave in Zafar Mahal c. H. A. Niederle

Clotel, or The President's Daughter is said to be the first novel ever written by an African American. William Wells Brown was an escaped slave from Kentucky. Wells Brown published the book in London in 1853. In the United States of America he was at risk. In the book, Clotel and her sister Althesa are said to have been Currer's daughters with president Thomas Jefferson. It was known that he had children Sally Hemings, the sister of his wife Martha and they were slaves. He released some of them. He never publicly acknowledged these children. They are children of a slave. He dies and they suffer as they are secret daughters and their father's power generates them not into freedom.

Hard stories both about male and female slaves abound. In this blog, Clotel's Sisters we record the abuse of women and the impact of this abuse in our society today and in the future. It is saddening to read the lives of women such as Clotel and her mother and how they were sold on platforms after their bodies were exposed for viewing. No decency ever. Their buyers, mainly males felt that they won.  One remembers Sarah Baartman too. To be displayed to the gawking eyes of those who have power over one is extremely violent. Unfortunately, it seems this does not stop in all societies.

We know that rape is not just been stared at but to have one's soul stolen as the body is used forcefully for sex. It is hideous and cannot be compared to many other crimes even when the woman survives it. I It is a heavy loss for all in society including the male.  It is great that India has raised a strong voice against the gang rape and consequent death of a 23-year old medical student but since then many more women have been raped around the world.  This is the report of another such rape on the night of Friday the January 5, 2013. Clotel's Sisters first read it here in German. http://orf.at/stories/2159852/2159853/ and here in English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20930101

Looking at the many cases of rape around the globe leads Clotel's Sisters to the question: Do really so many men consider themselves to be winners? Every 18 minutes in India a woman is raped. Lets be generous. Every 20 minutes. Makes three in on hour, 72 a day, 2160 in one month, 25920 in one year and more than 250.000 in ten years.

Yet the world spends much time praising 'qualities' that are seen to be of the successful male. The late Austrian playwright Herbert Berger wrote a play entitled Women always Belong to the Winner. When do women belong to themselves? When do we accept them as they are? Or respect their will? Why are they still subjected to so much violence?

The Indian Union has 200.000 soldiers in Kashmir to defend its territory against Pakistan. This is not the time for Clotel's Sisters -- this blog -- to discuss, if Kashmir should be part of the one or the other country. Whoever has been to this fabulous place knows  what it means when thousands of soldiers are on the roads. The number of women raped in India is easily more than the number of soldiers defending their country. More women are raped as soldiers are doing what is called their duty for their home country.
The time has come for us to witness that the world yesterday and today, whether in America, Asia, Australia, Europe or Africa has lost in this. We must stand up for what is right. We are all losers. As in the days of slavery and other forms of oppression, men try to make a show of power but this is futile. Clotel's Sisters must win freedom, true freedom. 

                                             ©  Philo Ikonya & Helmuth A. Niederle