WUNRN

http://www.wunrn.com

 

http://vowinitiative.org/2014/06/04/unknown-we-are-to-the-world-our-voices-lie-in-your-voices/

 

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The three founders of the Voice of Women Initiative, Aya Chebbi, Rose Wachuka and Konda Delphine

The Voice of Women Initiative (VOW Initiative) is a women-led initiative that explores the power of the web in empowering women through education, eradicating poverty and sharing  a global voice  of women and girls from different parts of the world. VOW Initiative is inspired and promoted by a dynamic and passionate team of  young people from different parts of the world who dare to think that they can make a positive change in the world. This Initiative is non-governmental, non-religious and non-partisan.

Objectives

  1. To support the development of girls and women on different issues affecting women’s lives such as poverty, education, and entrepreneurship.
  2. Working on other areas of leadership skills that empower girls to be self-reliant and confident that they can be great agents of change
  3. To train and develop a new breed of citizen and development journalist with keen interest in women and development issues
  4. To create a welcoming space which inspires girls and women to think and make choices in an accessible environment that enables networking.

Women from different parts of the world face some similar challenges despite their differences. Women experience high rate of violence, sexism, inequality and discrimination and their voices are not being heard. This platform encourages women to tell their story (particularly to mainstream media) and to tell it their own way. This platform is open for women from all over the world.  VOW Initiative website has articles, videos, art, and different forms of campaigns and advocacy tools that you can use in your different communities, organizations, schools and clubs. If you will love to be a part of this community of women social entrepreneurs who dare to think out of the box and make a positive change, send us an email to vowinitiative@gmail.com

AFRICA KILLS HER SUN by Ken Saro Wiva

For those who haven't read Ken Saro Wiwa's original letter, which he wrote a day before he was executed in Nigeria for speaking against the ills of a corrupt society (It is written in the form of a condemned man’s last letter to his former girlfriend, “Africa Kills Her Sun” constitutes a dark satire on the effects of all-encompassing corruption and pervasive graft in Nigerian society and Africa in general. In ironic form, it denounces the economic immorality that took hold in Nigeria under a continuous military dictatorship that began in 1983 and did not end until 1999. Democracy came too late to save the author (adopted from Goodreads.)

Our piece responds to Saro Wiwa from the abducted Nigerian girls' perspective. The stage, once again is Nigeria in general and Africa in particular. Aya Chebbi

http://acrazymindseye.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/africa-kills-her-sun.pdf

Our reply to Ken Saro Wiwa’s “Africa Kills Her Sun” 

Dear Bana,

Darkness looms over the Nigerian sky. It always has, since you left us. Since Africa killed her sun. But today, it is more pronounced. It is in our bodies, it is in our hearts, it is in our spirit. Yours was a struggle for a people, humanity and a habitable environment. Ours is similar. It is a struggle for life, for dignity, for education, for security, for recognition, for a government that cares. Bana, we cried when we received your news. But we knew your courage would drive us to demand better of our government. So we went to school. We thought the removal of Sani Abacha would cleanse our land. But we continue to cry. We continue to suffer the prejudices of belief and identity. Do you know they have now focused their energy on killing love? They have killed everything else. Our sense of existence, our security, the entire country. They now reach out to our souls. To reduce us to the non-existent people they imagine we are.

Bana, the world is awash with our absence. We were abducted by masked people who, in their simple and cruel minds, are fighting a philosophy they believe evil of all people associated with it. The world talks of us in placards and words. They are now telling these people, who cannot even understand the language in which they write, to #bringbackourgirls. They are so removed from our reality. From the reality of a group so withdrawn from technology and the new world of twitter and facebook. But they mean well. We feel that they mean well. They have given their all, in a situation most would feel helpless to stand in solidarity and call for humanity. Our concern Bana is that President Goodluck Jonathan, has not engaged his powerful state machinery to try and find us. He has not called upon his brothers and three sisters now Bana, Africa now has three female Presidents to try and find ways to find us.

It is dark where we are. We have risen above fear for our own lives and are more concerned about what this complacence with our absence may mean to the future. You see, Bana, our hope is that our identity not be reduced to an online identity. Our concern is that the world leaders unite to find us and take us back to our mothers, even though in the absence of our breaths. We want to be recognized. We want, for others in our circumstances and environment to have an identity and to be recognized not when disaster strikes but when they are at school trying to get an education. You cannot imagine what the younger ones are going through. We comfort them by telling them that atleast the world has united for a cause. Our cause. But, Bana, why won’t the world unite for governance? Why won’t the world unite for humanity? Why won’t Nigerians demand better for themselves? Why won’t Africans unite to assist each other? Bana, they put you in a “Black Maria”, they have put us in a dark hole, with their ignorance and reactionary approach to calamity.

The United Nations? Bana, we do not know what that is. We have not heard of them. But we know Chimamanda is staying awake wondering what to do for us. She has done enough Bana. We think she should come back home and be with us. In the messy stench of this county’s mismanaged politics. Her spirit of persistence and her literature, in the articulation of the suffering the Biafra war caused is enough to keep our heads occupied with thoughts, of pity, not for ourselves, but for complacent Nigerians, Africans and all of humankind. They post pictures of un-consenting girls in trying to give us a face. Why can they not give our mothers that face instead? Why do they find it hard to rise from their desks to try and find our mothers, show them how the world is calling for our return? Why can’t Beyoncé fly to this country and hug our mothers? That is all we ask. For this community that seems to care, to have contact with our families. Is that too much to ask Bana? We suppose it is. We can feel you nodding.

Bana, Nigeria and the world will never learn that until we all start to exist, each human being starts to matter, to themselves and to others, unspeakable acts of inhumanity will continue to happen. The three founders of the Voice of Women Initiative, Aya Chebbi, Rose Wachuka and Konda Delphine, may one day decide to find our mothers and give them an identity. When they do, we ask the Nigerian government to be kind.