African women take a stand for their futures!!

Here is the response to an email I just received from a friend of mine, and I've also included the article I was given and responding to:
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Whooaa, dude that is awesome! Maybe the women of Africa will turn that place around!! :0) )

Imagine HIV epidemics slowed to a halt, monogamy restored, and cruel marriages averted! The way these women work, it almost seems like a social-currency type of capitalism!

Good find!

Dave+

Originally Posted by washingtonpost.com

A Place Where Women Rule
All-Female Village in Kenya Is a Sign Of Burgeoning Feminism Across Africa

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 9, 2005; A01

UMOJA, Kenya -- Seated cross-legged on tan sisal mats in the shade,
Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of a village for women only, took the
hand of a frightened 13-year-old girl. The child was expected to wed
a man nearly three times her age, and Lolosoli told her she didn't
have to.

The man was Lolosoli's brother, but that didn't matter. This is a
patch of Africa where women rule.

"You are a small girl. He is an old man," said Lolosoli, who gives
haven to young girls running from forced marriages. "Women don't have
to put up with this nonsense anymore."

Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja,
which means unity in Swahili, on an unwanted field of dry grasslands.
The women said they had been raped and, as a result, abandoned by
their husbands, who claimed they had shamed their community.

Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic and self-assured
woman with a crown of puffy dark hair, decided no men would be
allowed to live in their circular village of mud-and-dung huts.

In an act of spite, the men of her tribe started their own village
across the way, often monitoring activities in Umoja and spying on
their female counterparts.

What started as a group of homeless women looking for a place of
their own became a successful and happy village. About three dozen
women live here and run a cultural center and camping site for
tourists visiting the adjacent Samburu National Reserve. Umoja has
flourished, eventually attracting so many women seeking help that
they even hired men to haul firewood, traditionally women's work.

The men in the rival village also attempted to build a tourist and
cultural center, but were not very successful.

But the women felt empowered with the revenue from the camping site
and their cultural center, where they sell crafts. They were able to
send their children to school for the first time, eat well and reject
male demands for their daughters' circumcision and marriage.

They became so respected that troubled women, some beaten, some
trying to get divorced, started showing up in this little village in
northern Kenya. Lolosoli was even invited by the United Nations to
attend a recent world conference on gender empowerment in New York.

"That's when the very ugly jealous behaviors started," Lolosoli said,
adding that her life was threatened by local men right before her
trip to New York. "They just said, frankly, that they wanted to kill
me," Lolosoli said, laughing because she thought the idea sounded
overly dramatic.

Sebastian Lesinik, the chief of the male village, also laughed,
describing the clear division he saw between men and women. "The man
is the head," he said. "The lady is the neck. A man cannot take,
let's call it advice, from his neck."

"She's questioning our very culture," Lesinik said in an interview at
a bar on a sweltering afternoon. "This seems to be the thing in these
modern times. Troublemaking ladies like Rebecca."

In a mix of African women's gumption and the trickling in of
influences from the outside world, a version of feminism has grown
progressively alongside extreme levels of sexual violence, the battle
against HIV-AIDS, and the aftermath of African wars, all of which
have changed the role of women in surprising ways.

A package of new laws has been presented to Kenya's parliament to
give women unprecedented rights to refuse marriage proposals, fight
sexual harassment in the workplace, reject genital mutilation and to
prosecute rape, an act so frequent that Kenyan leaders call it the
nation's biggest human rights issue. The most severe penalty, known
as the "chemical castration bill," would castrate repeatedly
convicted rapists and send them to prison for life.

In neighboring Uganda, thousands of women are rallying this month for
the Domestic Relations Bill, which would give them specific legal
rights if their husbands take a second wife, in part because of fear
of HIV infection.

Eleven years after the genocide in Rwanda, in which an estimated
800,000 people were killed, women in the country hold 49 percent of
the seats in the lower house of parliament. Many of them are war
widows who have said they felt compelled to rise up in protest after
male leaders presided over the 1994 slaughter of Tutsi tribal members
by the Hutu majority.

Across the continent in West Africa, Nigerian women are lobbying
strongly for the nomination of more women politicians, including a
president in 2007, saying that men have failed to run the country
properly.

Focusing on the meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Scotland this
week, female activists said they hoped international aid intended for
Africa would include funding for women who are seeking rights in
their court systems and more representation in their statehouses.

"We are at the start of something important for African women," said
Margaret Auma Odhiambo, a leader of western Kenya's largest group for
widows. The members are women whose husbands have died of AIDS
complications.

Lolosoli's effort to speak out for change in her patch of the
continent shows the difficulties of changing the rhythm and power
structure of village life. Before Lolosoli even went to the U.N.
conference, she was going house to house in the nearby town of
Archer's Post, telling women they had rights, such as to refuse to
have sex with their husbands if they were being beaten or ill-treated.

"A woman is nothing in our community," she said, referring to the
members of her tribe, including the men in the village across the
road.

"You aren't able to answer men or speak in front of them whether you
are right or wrong," she said. "That has to change. Women have to
demand rights, and then respect will come. But if you remain silent,
no one thinks you have anything to say. Then again, I was not popular
for what I was saying."

At the U.N. conference in New York, Lolosoli said, she and other
women from around the world bonded as they watched an episode of
"Oprah" that focused on women, verbal abuse and cheating husbands.

"You just cry and cry," sighed Lolosoli, who said many men in her
tribe still take several wives. "Then again, I was really inspired to
know that a lot of women face challenges of this nature and make it."

When she came back to Kenya, armed with ideas and empowerment
training workbooks, she stood her ground even when some of the men
filed a court case against her, seeking to shut down the village.

"I would just ignore the men when they threw stones at me and ask,
'Are you okay? Are your children okay? Are your cows okay?' " she
said. Her tactic and calm reaction was disarming, she recalled.
"After everything, they weren't going to stop us."

Lolosoli is still battling her brother over his attempt to marry the
13-year-old.

But lately, the residents of the men's village have been admitting
defeat. They are no longer trying to attract tourists. Some have
moved elsewhere. Others have had trouble getting married because some
women in the area are taking Lolosoli's example to heart.

"She has been successful, it's true." sighed Lesinik, who said maybe
he is a little bit jealous. He then shrugged and said, "Maybe we can
learn from our necks. Maybe just a little bit."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

So, what do you think?? This is quite revolutionary, I'd say.

u should really watch eddie merfpy raw.

Originally Posted by afis fire

u should really watch eddie merfpy raw.

You're a sad, strange little man...and you have my pity :0P'

If you know you can't contribute anything meaningful, then please do not make the attempt...and that's said in all honesty and condescension ;0)

funny if u have watched the movie you would find that he refers to that place on sevreal ocasions not in a posative light i admit but its still there.

Well why didn't you say so in the first place? o_O
O_o

Would have made a lot more sense, and actually would have helped the discussion, perhaps. Anyway, has anyone taken the time to read the article and have any comments? I think this is very good for Africa.

This is a very intresting article and Im suprsed to see women doing this. I mean, I understamd the whole situation in Africa and it's cultures, but segregating youself from the opposite gender is taking it a bit too far. However, if its for the womens good, let them as thats what they want to do.

The effort sounds great. The idea of an all woman village sounds inspirational to me(eh). Woman's liberation is always a good sign of things-- they could apply more of it to the Middle East where such restrictions are implaced.

Hm, interesting. It is surprising to see this happening, although I agree with Nox, that separating yourself from the opposite gender is taking it too far. It's good that they are able to do something like that, and I congratulate them.

-TFS

Originally Posted by Big Bro Davidia

Well why didn't you say so in the first place? o_O
O_o

Would have made a lot more sense, and actually would have helped the discussion, perhaps. Anyway, has anyone taken the time to read the article and have any comments? I think this is very good for Africa.

Geez, leave him alone.

Anyway, glad to hear that. I don't want females to rule my country, but I'm glad those poor females managed to find a place where they're not being treated like that. Not that I have anything against women, I just happen to disagree with their ways of thinking a lot.

There is nothing that puts a smile on my face quicker than a story like this. Women sticking up for themselves. I'm glad the genders were separated, and it really hurt me to hear about the circumcision going on just to decrease womens' sex drives. Sad, very sad.

What are THEY talking about? Without the neck, the head has no support and is useless to the rest of the body. :p

Even though I am a woman, it's hard for me to understand what those women in Africa went though cause I live in a modern Western society and grew up with older brothers who taught me to be loud, extroverted and to fight back. I don't know what it's like to be aboandoned by a husband, mistreated or raped. So to read that these women have gone through that and that they are now living in a place where they can grow as indivduals without the restraints of a masculine dominated culture is... inspiring. I realise now my own fortune to live where I do, to have the life that I have. My biggest issue with being a female is that there are guys I know who can't accept that I'm a gamer- nothing compared to those women... actually, that's a horrible joke compared to what those women have endured because of their sex and place in society. That article moved me.

I found her bravery in the face of death threats to be astounding. She isn't letting them slow her down one bit. The complete separation from guys was perhaps a step too far...but, then again, you have to consider it in the context of how things are there. It certainly got them attention, to say the least, so word of their cause would spread faster. Plus, most of the guys there don't seem to be taking to their cause too well...
They're trying to get a woman president elected in 2007. An African country may have a woman president before the US does, or at least might get farther along in trying to get one elected than the US ever has. Doesn't this bug anyone else?

It doesn't really bug me, it just makes me laugh ironically, who would have thought? Eh, probably plenty of people.

That article was inspiring but kind of saddening to me. In order to even be acknowledged, women had to separate themselves from men and build themselves a kind of sanctuary. But things like that call for extreme measures. Lolosoli is right, if you remain silent, no one thinks you have anything to say. It's right for women to stand up for their rights, but it would be wrong to separate ourselves from men. We are all human, and without eachother, we wouldn't exist. We are different, but equal. It's funny, even if God gave us nothing to look at or hear, humans would still find something to argue about and take over. Lolosoli is a very strong person, and it only takes one strong person to make a difference, the best things are earned though sweat and toil.

Okay, I'm done spouting sentimental stuff, that article has breached the boundaries of my icy heart, way to kill a perfectly good bad mood Big Bro Davidia.

Originally Posted by Alonely

What are THEY talking about? Without the neck, the head has no support and is useless to the rest of the body. :p

Well... they both need each other, but I don't think that was what they were getting at. I'm not actually sure. They may be referring to the men being head of the household, but that would mean that they should treat women fairly, not justify rape.

I think it's great news, as long as the feminists don't turn into feminazis.

*acknowledges all previous posts and comments* :0P'

It wasn't necessarily that the women at first CHOSE to segregate--they were put OUT of their villages. It was incumbent upon them to make a choice to survive, and, as the saying goes "strength in numbers" proved true once again.

And it's not just a sign that "women's situations are improving." It's a step towards the betterment of all aspects of African society. And, when I say African, I of course mean the less civilized portions.