Coffee With Africa a-Gogo
July 15, 2010
BC Local News, by Mario Bartel
Janine Reid says she’s always had a social conscience. She’s stood up for causes, marched for peace.
But she never imagined she’d be marching through the streets of Manzini, Swaziland, surrounded by more than 1,000 other women, most of them mothers and grandmothers like herself. They raised aloft placards that said things like “Stop violence against grandmothers.” They chanted, “Phezu kom khono!” or “Raise your arms women!” They danced. They sang.
It was, says Reid, a remarkable outpouring of joy from women who had known so much heartache and hardship.
“I can hardly explain that energy. It just seems to be in my head and won’t leave. I haven’t heard anything like it.”
Reid was in Swaziland as part of a delegation of 42 grandmothers from Canada sent to Africa by the Stephen Lewis Foundation for the second Grandmothers Gathering, communing with women from 13 sub-Saharan countries to find ways to beat back the ravages of HIV and AIDS. The disease has wiped out a whole generation of young adults, leaving behind 14.1 million orphaned children. Many of them fall into the care of their grandmothers, almost half of them survive on their own.
For Reid, a retired schoolteacher who was about to become a grandmother herself for the first time when she left for Africa, it was an emotional journey.
As the founder of the Royal City Gogos, one of 18 Grandmother groups in the Lower Mainland that support the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s work to assist and advocate for African grandmothers raising children orphaned by the continent’s AIDS pandemic, Reid says she was well aware of the issues. She felt a connection to them.
But to finally meet some of the African grandmothers face to face, to talk to them, was overwhelming, says Reid.
“Before, with the problems they were facing they might have felt ashamed and isolated. But when they get to meet with other grandmothers, they recognize these are common problems.”
That’s an important step to empowering them, says Reid, to help them to recognize their political power and to demand rights.
In its work with African grandmothers, the Stephen Lewis Foundation tries to exist in solidarity with them, rather than as a charity for them, explains Reid. “We are side by side with these women, [we] take great pains to ensure that the direction for the money we raise comes from the people who know best what they need.”
That can range from child care services to counseling for grandmothers coping with again raising very young children to micro-credit loans so women can develop the means to support themselves.
In a society where men hold the power and women are often treated as possessions, the task of turning the ship around is tremendous, says Reid.
“It makes me angry. I don’t understand why people don’t get the scope of this problem. It’s a world problem.”
But like the grandmothers’ march in Manzini that turned the heads of the men watching from the sidewalks, agog at the boldness and forthrightness of this mob of impassioned women, if enough voices cry out together and loudly, the world may finally pay heed.
Reid will be pitching in her voice when she tells the story of her Swaziland experience at St. Mary’s Anglican Church on Sunday, Sept. 19 at 10 a.m., and at the New Westminster Public Library on Wednesday, Sept. 29, 7-8:30 p.m. And she’s keen to tell her tale to any other group that will listen.
The Royal City Gogos can be contacted by e-mail at royalcitygogos@gmail.com. A Gogos group has also recently formed in Burnaby. They can be reached at burnabygogos@gmail.com.
Both groups welcome new members.