Sunday with the Power Women of Moshi

Sunday was a day to relax and catch up on computer stuff. I finally got on the Internet and realized that I am actually not quite as indispensable as I thought! I expected tons of e-mails from students in distress and other student affair issues to deal with. Much to my relief and surprise, there really were only a few. I spent an hour and a half trying to find my old blog and then setting up this new one when I realized that it was futile…Then lunch, packing up, and Karen and I were off to Moshi for another week of Caravanning. It was really quite difficult to leave the kids, but I know that they'll have a much better time in Kilema than they would back here in Moshi.

Sunday afternoon and evening were really quite lovely. Karen and I arrived in town in the late afternoon, did some grocery shopping had a couple glasses of wine and then got ready for dinner out with the power women of Moshi. We hadn't seen Mama Minde since the fiasco on Friday, and therefore a debriefing with her was quite welcome. In all there were five of us: Mama Minde, Agnes, Lillian (a KWIECO member and head of the women's cooperative), Karen and myself. I will not be able to do justice to the conversation we had, but I will highlight a few of the salient features mainly just to remind myself. Of course there was a significant amount of talk about the Friday fiasco. For those of you who do not know, Mama Minde is a very powerful lawyer in Moshi, and THE person responsible for women making headway towards getting financially fair divorces and child support. You can only just imagine how angry she was at the way immigration treated we Canadian CACHA volunteers. She told us that on Monday she was “just going to greet them”… which meant that she was going to, as politely as was humanly possible, go to immigration and ask them to show her documentation which supported any or all of the actions that they had taken against us on Friday. She said that she would warn them that should they not be willing to produce such documentation that she was going to go to the press. She repeatedly stressed her anger at the harassment that we had to endure especially since we given of our own money and time to come and help the women of Moshi. She also confirmed Chris Fraser's suspicion that should she not be satisfied with the outcome at immigration, she would be on the street with thousands of women protesting. Other topics of conversation at dinner were numerous but I will just mention a few. Mama Minde told Karen and I something that we had never known about the slave trade. She said that, in her opinion, the Middle East was the biggest offender with respect to the selling of slaves. She also told us that when male slaves arrived in those countries, that they were castrated so that they could never reproduce. She said that this is why you see so few black people in the Middle East and that those who are there, have come in the recent past. She also told us about young female rape victims that she's dealt with who were subjected to physical examinations by “court doctors” who were bribed to say that there had been no rape. From the point of view of an emergency physician, my take on hearing this is slightly different than hers. She was frustrated that the delay in having to see the bribed court-appointed doctors meant that by the time they saw another doctor there was no evidence. I, on the other hand was frustrated on a different level because I don't feel that there is any way for any doctor, (even if they see the patient within a day of being raped), to state that there had been no rape… a normal physical exam in no way proves that.
Another wonderful topic of conversation at dinner was the fact that Lillian had had confirmation that she was awarded a $3 million grant to facilitate financial and pendants in women for which the stated physical infrastructure is the women's Center. It is still not clear how much of it we will actually see, however I feel optimistic that, by stimulating and encouraging micro-commerce in women, it can only help the same clientele that we serve. It does however seem probable that we will benefit greatly from the grant by getting a full-time social worker and possibly by having businesses such as fruit drying, situated in the center. There was lots of other great conversation, but I guess the one other main thing that I want to remember was when I used a perfect “chicamoo” to Elizabeth (Mama Minde). “Chicamoo” literally means “I am at your feet” and it is a great sign of respect to people who are older than you. Somehow the topic of age came up and Elizabeth said that she was almost 70 and as we expressed our surprise, I said “chicamoo” to which Elizabeth went out at delighted roar of laughter. Come to think of it, I think that's how we started talking about the slave trade because the expression has its origins there.

It was a lovely dinner and then went to bed thoroughly satisfied and feeling confident about the plight of women in Moshi.