Part 5 - Kailahun, Sierra Leone In the Global Crescendo project, women often talk about the problems their daughters face and the great importance of keeping them in school.  We thought it was about time we found out what girls themselves think about their lives. So in Sierra Leone, we’re working for the first time with girls.Here in Kailahun District, GBV supports Gender Clubs in a number of primary and secondary schools.   Despite the raging HIV/AIDS epidemic, public schools in Sierra Leone dropped the courses they used to offer in Family Life Education, giving students basic information about sexuality and gender roles.  Most students now get few facts.  They learn about sexuality and “love” from pop songs, a situation that leaves young girls particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation.  IRC-sponsored Gender Clubs arm both girls and boys with information.To recruit girl photographers, we visited the Roman Catholic Girls’ Primary School in the village of Pendembu, and with the support of headmistress Mary Vandi, we explained our project to the all-girls Gender Club and called for volunteer photographers.  Twelve girls jumped at the chance.  The youngest is 10, the oldest 14. I’m not a parent myself, so that first day I didn’t know quite what to expect.  But neither, I think, did my two co-directors on the project, both mothers—Christiana Massaquoi and Christiana Gbondo.   (I call them Auntie Chris and Chris G.)  One thing we all seriously underestimated was just how quick and smart these girls are.  They’ve been way ahead of us the whole time.

The girls on this team—(left to right) Lilian Brima, age 14, Ruth Moijueh, age 12, and Jenifer Manso,age 10—are very pleased with their first photos.  A friend peaks over their shoulders. Photo: Ann Jones

That first day I asked them to group themselves in teams of three—each team to share a camera.  They did it by age, but their teacher and Gender Club adviser Mr. Shariff quickly shuffled them to put one older girl on every team.   Camera instruction usually takes time and patient repetition with adult women nervous about merely holding a real camera.  The girls got it right away, and their small, dexterous fingers easily manipulated tiny controls that sometimes confound adult women.Nevertheless, I made them practice sitting down together to extract one girl’s memory card from the camera and replace it with the next. I warned them not to run with a camera, for fear of stumbling.  I mentioned over and over the danger of falling with a camera or dropping it.  Auntie Chris and Chris G. went over the warnings again in Mende and Krio.  The girls wiggled and fidgeted and yawned and stretched and put their heads in their hands, overcome with boredom.Soon we set off walking through the village to take their first photographs.  I intended to have an adult accompany each team, but my colleagues had wandered off ahead, leading the way, deep in conversation.  The girls seized the moment to scatter in all directions.  I watched them run screaming over the rough ground, the fragile cameras dangling from waving arms.  What could I do?  I spotted the slowest runners and ran after them.When I finally caught up, they were strolling along the road, casually swapping memory cards as they walked along.  Chris G. belatedly appeared and chastised them loudly in Mende for not following instructions.  The scene drew a crowd of curious villagers.  I nudged Chris G.  “Please don’t yell at them.  Just explain.”  She did, while the girls squirmed and fidgeted, looking bored again.  One of the older girls, Lilian, took the lead, saying in English, “We are sorry, Auntie.  We will do good.”  The others nodded somberly, but they were itching to get going.

All the girls took many photos of their friends and classmates in the place they like best—their school.  Twelve-year-old Ruth Moijueh took this one. Photo: Ruth Moijueh

So we set off again, this time at a brisk walk.  I accompanied Lilian and her younger partners Ruth and Jennifer.  We walked miles and miles, through every neighborhood of the sprawling village, crossing vacant lots and fields, climbing through ruins.  The girls snapped away.  They sat down together in a shady porch to change memory cards, humoring me.  I knew they felt a little sorry for me—a poor old woman who doesn’t even know it’s easy to change a memory card, one-handed, standing up.  Three hours later they’d worn out the batteries meant to last a week.I climbed into the vehicle for the trip home—an hour over rough roads. Auntie Chris and Chris G. fell asleep in the back seat.  We were all worn out.  “What next?” I wondered.  Could we cope?  I’ll tell you next time.

“The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago and its violent aftermath have produced one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time, yet the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been mostly unwilling to own up to it and provide adequate aid for the innocent bystanders.”

- A new International Rescue Committee Commission report calling the U.S. and world response to the Iraqi refugee crisis ‘grossly inadequate.’ More than four million Iraqi civilians are estimated to be uprooted by violence and in dire need of help in a crisis that is largely hidden from the public and ignored by the international community.

“I’m here to see my children happy and laughing, I want them to drink orange juice in the morning. In Baghdad they smelled and drank smoke and rockets.”

- Nazar Joodi, an Iraqi refugee resettled by the IRC with his family in the Washington D.C. area, speaking with The Washington Examiner.

“I don’t think I have ever worked so closely with the private sector.”

- Pam Flowers, IRC country director in Azerbaijan, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor for an article about community projects in Azerbaijan created by the oil company, BP.

“If we don’t make our best-faith efforts, with the best methods available, we’ll get back to the bad old days when someone makes up a number … and [the number] is going to get perpetuated.”

- Richard Brennan, IRC senior health director, speaking with The National Journal for an article about accurately counting refugee flows or deaths caused by war and famine. A new IRC survey has found that 5,400,000 people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998 – the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II.

Habibatu Kamara tie-dyes bedsheets, a profit-making skill she learned through IRC training as a member of the Pendembu Women’s Action Group.  Photo: Fatmata Mansaray

In Kailahun District, the region hardest hit by the war, GBV helped four communities build Women’s Centres, organize Women’s Action Groups, train women in income generating skills, and raise community awareness about GBV. That women have a place to meet and talk and work together makes all the difference in the world.  Each of these communities is served by a social worker and a community mobilizer, supporting survivors of violence and working to organize the community for progressive action.Now GBV works to make sure these programs will be sustained.  The Rainbo Centres will be integrated into the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.  The Women’s Centres and the land they stand upon already belong to the women of their respective communities.  Here in Kailahun District, the GBV team works in partnership with others to strengthen local and governmental bodies as they work to prevent and respond to violence against women.   Two weeks ago, assisted by an IRC doctor, they held a workshop for health care workers and law enforcement officials on the recommended treatment of sexual assault survivors.  And last week the GBV Manager was in court again, reminding the magistrate of new legal procedures in rape cases.  Her work produced that success story I told you about. (See Posting #3).

All over the country, the GBV team has been holding informative discussions about three important gender laws passed in June 2007—laws on domestic violence, registration of customary marriages and divorces, and the devolution of property—all aimed at improving the legal status of women.  GBV produces a lot of radio programs too for broadcast on local stations.  Just this afternoon I stopped at a tiny shop up the street to buy some peanuts and found a little group of men bent over a portable radio, listening to a program about wife beating.Then there’s our Global Crescendo project that encourages women to look at their own lives—with digital cameras—and advocate for themselves.  I’ll tell you how it’s going next time.

The Kailahun-based GBV team quietly kept up pressure on the reluctant magistrate. Photo: Ann Jones

This time, Natsnet Zerizghi, GBV Startup Program Manager in Kailahun, went to visit the magistrate in his chambers to let him know that IRC GBV was concerned about the case.  At the same time, rumors came to IRC that the perpetrator’s mother was spreading money around.  She was said to be “well connected” to the magistrate.  Natsnet and other GBV staffers made another courtesy call.So the dance went on—and off—for months.  Any mother, trying to bring a case before the court, would have been forced to quit long before by the sheer unaffordable cost of hiring a ride on a motorbike to get from Koindu to the court in Kailahun. The round trip costs more dollars than this mother sees in weeks.  But in this case, IRC kept coming up with the fare.  And Natsnet and others from the Kailahun GBV team kept going to visit the magistrate who seemed to suggest, more and more strongly, that there was little evidence against the confessed perpetrator.Then, just the other day the case was called again.  The mother came from Koindu, again  at IRC’s expense, and this time she brought her 7-year-old daughter, the rape victim.This time the GBV team asked many other women from the local Women’s Action Group to come to court.  Men sympathetic to the issue came to court too. They sat there—ordinary women and men—filling the benches of the courtroom, and among them sat a 7-year-old girl.  Mary Sheku, the GBV social worker, observed that the magistrate seemed terrified.  All these women were watching.

Natsnet Zerizghi from Eritrea, Startup Program Manager in Kailahun, snapped this photo of thewomen and men who packed the benches of the magistrate’s court to show support for the raped child. Photo: Natsnet Zerizghi

Within minutes the magistrate found ample cause to refer the case to the High Court in Kenema for judgment—as he should have done months before.  The judge of the High Court in Kenema is a woman who doesn’t mess around.  It’s now likely that the confessed perpetrator will serve some real jail time, and that everyone in Koindu and the surrounding area will hear about it.  This case will serve as a precedent—and a warning.  It has already made big news in Koindu.This result was brought about by mainly by one brave, persistent mother and the terrifying presence of women, watching, in the courtroom.  Women who, by the way, duly noted the effect of their solidarity on the judge.  They’ll use that power again. So there’s the success story.  Small.  But still reverberating—and making women in Kailahun District “plenty, plenty gladdy.”More from Ann 

“He [George Clooney] presented himself and his father as journalists. He explained to the people who he met that he was there to hear their story, that he was concerned about their plight and that he wanted to retell their story back in the United States and around the world.”

- Melissa Winkler, IRC emergency communications director, on The Fabulous Picture Show on Al Jazeera, referring to actor and director George Clooney’s IRC-sponsored trip to Sudan and Chad with father, Nick, in 2006.

“I’m here to see my children happy and laughing, I want them to drink orange juice in the morning. In Baghdad they smelled and drank smoke and rockets.”

- Nazar Joodi, an Iraqi refugee resettled by the IRC with his family in the Washington D.C. area, speaking with The Washington Examiner.

“No post-conflict country can truly ‘recover’ or ‘develop’ while its women and children still suffer. After all, if women and children really counted, they’d have to count as the overwhelming majority of human beings on the planet. Most of the world’s children are in the care of women. As women fare, so fare children. As children fare, so fares the country in the future. That’s why GBV is so important. It’s not a ‘women’s issue’—not some incidental add-on to the ‘real’ business of relief and recovery. It’s the best possible investment in a better world.”

- Ann Jones blogging from Sierra Leone on an IRC gender-based violence (GBV) program that puts cameras in the hands of women in conflict zones and helps them make their voices heard.

“If we don’t make our best-faith efforts, with the best methods available, we’ll get back to the bad old days when someone makes up a number … and [the number] is going to get perpetuated.”

- Richard Brennan, IRC senior health director, speaking with The National Journal for an article about accurately counting refugee flows or deaths caused by war and famine. A new IRC survey has found that 5,400,000 people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998 – the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II.

“I don’t think I have ever worked so closely with the private sector.”

–Pam Flowers, IRC country director in Azerbaijan, interviewed by The Christian Science Monitor for an article about community projects in Azerbaijan created by the oil company, BP.