I had to process this day before blogging about it. We celebrated our International Women's Day on March 23rd. It was fairly packed, hot and filled with very vocal Sierra-Leonean women who spoke to the issues that plague our society from the perspective of mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and care-takers. Mariama spoke on behalf of young mothers and women. Her story had some in tears, it touched the President as she burst into tears. Her story was heavy and she didn't want her experience of violence to be the stories of other women. She wanted men who abused young girls to get persecuted- she wanted this issue to be made visible and better yet something to be done. As i listened to her semi-scream into the micro-phone, i thought of my 16 year old niece who was pulled out of school because she was been sexually abused by her 60 something year old male teacher. When my aunt spoke out, she was condemned by the community. As Mariama spoke and told her story, i felt de-sensitized, this story has been told too many times in too many ways and i really don't like re-hearing it because i have very little faith that anything other than utterance of reassurances will come out of it. However, we must remain optimistic, the President reassures us that their is a new law to be passed that will hold the proprietors of these crimes responsible. I then think of men who tell me that they too were sexually abused at a very young age, with no-where to process such an experience, it is internalized and their hyper-sexuality is often relegated to their gender, "boys will be boys". I sigh and continue to take photographs. Mariama is brave. For now, that is enough.
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enjoy the photographs!
fambul dem this is how we do....
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