The Gift of Speaking Out

I am the oldest of three children and very outspoken. It could be be/c I'm the oldest or be/c I'm a gemini or another reason....that I'm so outspoken. 


To live in a country that enables free speech and for everyone is an amazing blessing. When we (women) see problems or issues we can speak up and voice our opinion. When we don't agree with what we are told, we can disagree. When we see injustices, we can say so. When we are abused, raped or violated we can go for help and be protected. We can go to the doctor and have our babies in hospitals. We can run for government positions and vote. We can run huge companies and voice our ideas. In America we have the freedom to succeed and the ability to advocate for ourselves. This is not true for the whole world. 


Camfed is an organization that educates and empowers girls and women to succeed and live a good life. Camfed recently filmed a documentary called Where the Water Meets the Sky. 


"Camfed's film Where the Water Meets the Sky, which chronicles the journey of a group of women in a remote region of northern Zambia who learn filmmaking as a way to speak out about the most pressing issues in their lives. Written by Jordan Roberts (March of the Penguins) and narrated by Academy Award®-winner Morgan Freeman, the film has reached audiences in 82 countries around the globe, from South Korea to Croatiato Venezuela." 


Here's  the link to see when and what channel this film will be on. 

Here's a link to see a preview of the documentary. 

P-E-A-C-E

I wanted to post a video here but I'm not having any luck so here's the link and the blog I read it from and the CNN article that started the blog post.

The article talks about Obama sending 100 troops to Africa to hunt down the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. The man is horrible and vile and scary. He kidnaps C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N and makes them commit atrocities. Kony uses these children as his soldiers and when they die he just kidnaps more of them. He has displaced more than 380,000 people in the areas of Uganda, Sudan, Central African Republic and Dem. Rep of Congo.

In the video a woman says since peace was signed, they have never experienced peace. This statement got me. Peace is truly a gift that I think everyone wants but not a lot have. I believe here in the U.S. we have peace. When I read about other countries and what they face everyday, we can't compare. I'm not stupid or naive to think that we don't have trouble here. I know we have rapes, murder, suicide, gangs, violence, and so on. But we don't have war in our own country. We don't have American's causing war within our own country. We don't have American's committing atrocities like those that are happening in Africa. We aren't being displaced by soldiers looting or burning down our homes or stealing our food or kidnapping our children. Compared to Africa we have peace.

I'm not knowledgeable in politics and policy and war and I won't claim to have all the answers. However right now with the information I do have, I believe a country as powerful and wealthy as we are should help those countries who are struggling big time. We are blessed beyond belief when you compare what we have with the rest of the world and I believe we do have a responsibility to help those suffering. In my opinion the U.S. was built with faith in God and as long as we are doing what is right, God will help us and bless us. I know our country is in need of help but I believe that the same rule that apply to us individually apply to us as a country and that would be.....
James 2:15-17 (New International Version)
Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.


Since I am a Christian I know my opinions will probably differ than those who are not. All I ask is that before you start saying we should look out for "number 1" or "me" read up on Africa, India, and Latin American countries. Life in these countries is a daily struggle to feed their families, find clean H2O, send their children to school, make enough money to survive and much more.

Some Hope At Last

"Women might just have something to contribute to civilization other than their vaginas." Christopher Buckley, Florence of Arabia

In my last post I stopped when Meena decided to flee the brothel to save her life. She abandoned her chlidren and traveled by train for several hours to Forbesgunge. Unfortunately, someone told Ainul's son, Manooj of her whereabouts and he came to beat her up. He however didn't want her causing trouble in his brothel so he told her she could live on her own but she had to prostitute herself and give him the money. Meena agreed, because she didn't know how she'd survive otherwise.

Meena never gave him as much money as he'd like when he came to collect from her and so he beat her. One day when he was beating her furiously with a belt a respectable business man intervened. "You're already pimping her, you're already taking her lifeblood. Why beat her to death as well?"

This was a big deal for Meena. She was a woman scorned by society and he was a pharmacist (named Kuduz). It was startling to have anyone speak up for her. For a minute think about this happening here in the U.S. You're walking down the street and you see a man push a woman down on the street and he starts beating her with his belt. How many people would just walk by like it was okay? Who wouldn't say anything or at least call the police? We don't let things like this happen in our society. It's not okay but in India for women of lower class no one blinks an eye. Here it wouldn't matter who the woman was, black, white, asian, rich, poor, we'd say something. AND our police wouldn't look the other way. We have equal rights here. (Well at least more than undeveloped countries).

Manooj backs off and Kuduz helps Meena up. They end up building a great relationship and he offers to marry her. She is thrilled. Manooj however is not thrilled. He offers Kuduz 100,000 rupees ($2500) to give Meena up--a sum that perhaps reflected his concern that she might use her new respectability as a married woman to cause trouble for the brothel. Kuduz wasn't interested.

Meena and Kuduz marry and have two daughters and then Meena goes back to her native village to find her parents. Neighbors tell her that her mom cried constantly after she disappeared, then had gone mad and died--but her dad was stunned and thrilled to see his daughter resurrected.

Life was much better for Meena but she of course misses her first two children. She starts traveling back to her old brothel to stand outside and plead for Naina and Vivek. It didn't work. Ainul and Manooj didn't let Meena in the brothel; they whipped her and drove her away. The police were no help. They wouldn't even listen to her. The brothel owners not only threatened to kill her, they also threatened to kidnap her two daughters with Kuduz and sell them to the brothel. Once a couple gangsters showed up at Meena's house in Forbesgunge to steal the two little girls, but Kuduz grabbed a knife and warned: "If you even try to steal them, I'll cut you into pieces."

Meena was terrified for her girls but she couldn't forget her daughter Naina. She was approaching puberty  and would be on the market soon. What could she do?

To Be Continued........

Kidnapped and Trafficked

I've recently come to the conclusion that one reason why people may not care as deeply as I do about the less fortunate of this world is be/c they aren't aware of the daily struggles and trials these people face. So I am going to try my hardest to blog very often (I'd love to do everyday but if not every other day) and educate anyone reading.

A couple months ago I read the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. I couldn't put this book down. As saddening as it was, I found it very interesting.

Meena was eight or nine years old when she was kidnapped and trafficked. She is from a poor family on the Nepal border and was sold to a Nutt clan. The Nutt clan are a low-caste tribe that controls the local sex trade in impoverished northern India. The Nutt have traditionally engaged in prostitution and petty crime, and theirs is the world of intergenerational prostitution, in which mothers sell sex and raise their daughters to do the same.

After Meena was kidnapped she was taken to a rural house where the brothel owner kept prepubescent girls until they were mature enough to attract customers. She remembers she was twelve when she was taken to the brothel, five months before her first period. Meena's first client paid lots of money to have sex with her but she fought him and started crying out so he wouldn't succeed. She resisted so much the brothel had to return his money to him. Due to this, the brothel owners beat her mercilessly, with a belt, sticks, and iron rods. "The beating was tremendous" Meena says. However she still resisted. They showed her swords and said they would kill her if she didn't agree. The brothel owners tried four or five more times and Meena still resisted until they resorted to drugging her and then raping her. When she woke she was hungover and hurting and she realized what had happened. "Now I am wasted," she thought, and so she gave in and stopped fighting customers.

The brothel Meena was in, the tyrant was the family matriarch, Ainul Bibi. Sometimes Ainul would beat the girls herself, and sometimes she would delegate the task to her daughter-in-law or to her sons, who were brutal in inflicting punishment. Meena remembers she wasn't even allowed to cry. "If even one tear fell, they would beat me. I used to think that it was better to die than live like this. Once I jumped from the balcony, but nothing happened. I didn't even break a leg."

For Meena her life consisted of ten or more customers a day, seven days a week and never getting paid. She was never allowed to leave the brothel and if she complained of a stomachache she would be beaten. If a girl showed any kind of resistance, all the girls would be summoned to watch as the recalcitrant one was tied up and savagely beaten. "They turned the stereo up loud to cover the screams," Meena said dryly.

No one uses condoms in Meena's brothel and so far she is healthly, however she has never been tested for HIV/AIDS. HIV prevalence is low in India but for prostitutes this is still dangerous, since they have so many customers. Meena did however get pregnant twice and had her children taken away from her so she wouldn't flee. Brothel owners don't mind their prostitutes having children be/c they can breed a new generation of victims. The boys will become servants, doing laundry and cooking.

Ainul was even a prostitute when she was young and has no sympathy for the younger girls. "If my own daughters can be prostituted, then you can be, too," Ainul would tell the girls. Yes, even her own daughters were prostituted by their own mom! "They had to be beaten up to agree to it," Meena explained. "No one wants to go into this."

Meena estimates that in the dozen years she was in the brothel, she was beaten on average five days a week. Most girls were quickly broken and cowed, but Meena never quite gave in.

For us the police are someone we can turn to for help but not in India. Meena was so desperate for help, she slipped out and went to the police station to demand help. Instead of helping her, they mocked her and sent her back to the brothel after they extracted a promise from the brothel owner not to beat her. They didn't immediately punish her but a neighbor told her the owners had decided to murder her. This doesn't happen often but if a prostitute has become nettlesome enough , the owners will kill her as a warning to the girls.

Meena feared for her life and abandoned her children and fled the brothel.

To Be Continued.......

All the Work

I don't know why I'm passionate about the circumstances that the African people face...? I don't know why it breaks my heart the way that it does? I do feel I have a responsibility to help the African people meet their most basic needs like access to clean H2O, food, education and clothes. We take all these things for granted here in the U.S.

I won't lie it makes me angry when I talk to people about this and they say "We should help America first, before we help anyone else." Yes, I totally agree America needs help. Yes, we have starving people here and homeless people. And yes, we should help BUT why does it have to be one or the other? And why can't my passion be for Africa and yours be for America but yet we help each other? We support each other's cause and mission. I don't understand why the American people trump another group of people? I don't want to sound mean but America has help. We have food banks, homeless shelters, churches, and different organizations to help those who are hurting but the people of Africa don't have these kind of resources.

I don't know if the people who make the comment "We should help America first" are just blind to the injustices of those in undeveloped countries? Or the fact that millions of people don't even have their most basic needs met? Because if they did know the extreme hardships people in the undeveloped world face, I don't know how they could be so insensitive or uncompassionate?

I got into a debate the other day with a friend who made a comment on Facebook. He said he couldn't believe that an organization wanted you to donate real money to help animals when there was starving Americans. For whatever reason this comment triggered me. Mainly b/c this friend complains a lot on FB and it's never productive. Plus in my opinion he had no right to compare the two when he doesn't help the "starving Americans." It's one thing to make this comment when you're busting your butt trying to help the less fortunate in America, it's another when you're doing NOTHING and just complaining. That is a pet peeve of mine; when someone in this world is trying to make a difference and another person disagrees with what the person is trying to do, yet the person complaining is doing NOTHING to make this world better at all. If you aren't part of the solution, keep your mouth shut.

At the beginning of this post I said I didn't know why I was passionate about the African people and their hardships and for the most part this is true BUT I know that God gave me this passion. He gave me a heart for them. I have compassion for anyone who doesn't have their most basic needs met (like people in India and Latin America) and will help whoever I can but my main focus is Africa. I have really been slacking on blogging but I am trying to get better. I don't feel that our society is uncaring of the less fortunate, I just think they aren't aware. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would do more if they knew but due to their busy lives they don't have time to research and learn, so one of my goals going forward is to educate anyone reading this on the hardships the undeveloped world face. How different their lives are to ours. I will try to do all the work so all you, the reader has to do is figure out what touches your heart and then help in some way.