Botswana gave me many gifts and life lessons, but after hearing that the Botswana Gender Based Violence Prevention and Support Centre has been selected as our ‘One More CUSOBot Project’, I want to write about the gift of resilience. I was deeply impressed by the strength and resilience of woman I met in Botswana. I feel that a little of it rubbed off and has benefitted me all my life. I am excited to donate in honour of the basadi who inspired me. Projects like this can move us closer to a time when the need for resilience becomes secondary to the systemic protection of human rights, the ultimate tool to address gender-based violence. The phrase “When you strike a woman, you strike a rock” comes from the 1956 women’s march against pass laws in South Africa. My reflection is that many women I knew in Botswana were strong and resilient because, like rocks, they were strengthened by exposure to extreme pressure. Their humour and grace under pressure could make you forget the price they paid through gender-based violence and the denial of their human rights. Experiencing just a small dose of that pressure, even with the shields of white skin, education, and money, gave me resilience when I needed to navigate some difficult situations in Africa and back in Canada. If I could channel the spirits of the basadi, I could borrow a little bit of their strength, remind myself to maintain my sense of humour, and persevere towards goals. When I heard about the reunion, I dug out some old notebooks and journals about my time in Botswana and my solo travels in neighbouring countries. I hadn’t looked at these for many years. I was actually shocked by the number of incidents of gender-based violence in these short journals. I didn’t call them GBV then, they were just things that happened. I remember my days in Botswana as happy and exciting, which they were, but I had obviously buried some memories deep. I did not plan to share them. Fun and happy memories are more appropriate for the spirit of the reunion, and better reflect how I remember those days. I want to share these memories now because they motivate me to support the GBV project by donating at the reunion, and I hope others will feel the same. I know many of you will have similar memories. Here are a few that came back to me:
There was an element of dry humour in my journal reflections about my personal experiences. I noted several times how fed up I was with sexual harassment in public places, including physical harassment. In one of the last entries, I wryly remarked how great it was that it bothered me so much less than it had 3 years prior! It was like a rite of passage for me to walk through the bar at the Lusaka Hotel to reach my room and not give a damn about what anybody said, or did, or thought. This attitude came in handy when I was developing housing co-ops in Toronto in the ’80s and ’90s. Being a project manager on a construction site was no job for a lady. I had mastered the ability to block out all of the unwelcome comments, porn on the walls of the site trailers, and innuendos based on gender about my competency. I could overlook all that so we could get things done. That is what the basadi would do, while facing much, much worse. A Motswana friend told me that she avoided unwanted sexual advances from random strangers by wearing a crucifix around her neck and claiming to be very pious. She would tell a man, very convincingly, that God would strike him down if he touched her. I adopted a variation of her strategy when I travelled solo through Africa. I didn’t wear the crucifix, but I tried to dress conservatively (always a mid-length dress and long sleeves, no jeans, no matter how impractical it was). If I found myself feeling uncomfortable in a situation with no easy escape, for example while hitchhiking, I would start to tell my life story as a religious teacher in Botswana, soon planning to return to Canada to work with nuns and make my big decision about whether or not to take vows. I am actually an atheist, and it was hilarious to me that I had finally found a way to put 11 years of Catholic education to good use! I had enough knowledge to spin a convincing tale, and it was effective in a number of situations. Most forms of gender-based violence can’t be prevented by impersonating a noviciate. Fear of the wrath of a ‘higher power’ is more uniformly and consistently effective against gender-based violence when that power is expressed in legislation, court rulings and law enforcement. In the past decade, the High Court of Botswana has made a number of key rulings supporting the principle that everyone has equal rights under the law. Woman gained the right to inherit property, transgendered people gained the right to legal recognition of their genders, and most recently homosexual acts between consenting adults were decriminalized. There is relative equality in educational opportunities for all genders, but men are advantaged in employment opportunities and pay. Many of the examples of gender-based violence I have seen while in Botswana and back in Canada were rooted in poverty and unequal access to education and income. Legal changes have brought about improvement, but here in Canada we know that laws alone do not change gender norms. Despite laws prohibiting discrimination in employment and pay in Canada, the gender gap in income remains, with women earning 75% of the income of male counterparts. Attitudes are harder to change than laws, but donations to an organization working to change gender norms, such as the project being promoted at the CUSOBOT reunion, are more likely to make change in Botswana because of the legal changes already underway. This is a good investment, which addresses root causes of the problem in addition to supporting those impacted, in an environment where change is possible. A great CUSOBOT project! Remembering my time in Botswana made me reflect on how my privilege has protected me from serious effects of gender-based violence. Sometimes I was also protected by dumb luck. A sleeping bag saved me from sexual assault while travelling on Rhodesian Railways from my home in Mahalapye to attend the Gaborone Agricultural Fair in August 1977. I awoke to find a man pinning me to the bunk and nearly suffocating me with his hand over my mouth and nose. He was trying to take off what he must have thought was a blanket covering me, but no matter which direction he pulled, I was well encased by the sleeping bag. He took his hand from my mouth for a moment to pull at the sleeping bag with both hands. It was long enough for me to get out a scream. It must have been loud, because it seemed like every compartment on the car erupted in chaos, my assailant was beaten by other passengers, rescued from more beatings by friends and dumped off at the next siding by the conductor. I knew who my assailant was because he had harassed and followed me once in Mahalapye until other men in the village came to my defence and warned him to leave me alone. The white Rhodesian conductor was a bit annoyed with me because, according to him, I did not belong in second class. If I had been in first class, where I belonged, this disruption would not have happened. I told the female friend I was meeting in Gaborone what had happened on the train, but I never reported it to anyone official. Three and a half years later, I was leaving on the northbound train (still in second class) for my final departure from Botswana. I wrote in my journal that I saw the man who had attacked me in 1977 getting on the train, and entering a compartment not far from mine. I had only caught sight of him a couple of times since the assault, so this was quite a coincidence right at the end of my contract. I wrote “It couldn’t shake me,” and then casually went on to describe the dinner and conversation I shared with some brigades folks whom I happened to run into in the dining car. I was a rock, or at least aspiring to be a rock. Thank you, basadi. Thirty-nine years later, looking back on the foolish bravado I sometimes (or often?) exhibited in my early 20s, I feel lucky to have lived to old age with no physical wounds, and very few emotional ones, to show for it. I understand that all of the privileges I have enjoyed in my life – white skin, Canadian nationality, education, and income security – went a long way towards keeping me safe. It also saddens me that we still seem so far from the day when systemic and social changes afford protection from gender-based violence to everyone, and secure everyone’s rights to control over their own body, including sexual and reproductive choices. So, I am thankful for the gift of resilience and all of the other gifts I owe to Botswana, grateful for the luck and privilege that has kept me personally safe, and delighted that the Botswana Gender Based Violence Prevention and Support Centre will be supported at the reunion.
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April 2021
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