Empowerment

When I first arrived in Malawi all of the volunteers wrote definitions of the word empowerment. Here are some of the definitions shared:

• Empowerment is having the ability to make your own choices and having the chance to pick and choose for yourself.

• Having the self-confidence and courage, along with the channels to express yourself and follow the path you want to take in life.

• When someone is able to recognize their personal strengths and abilities.

• Choice, the ability to have choice and exercise those decisions in your life based on correct information

• The ability to do what you believe is healthy and right for your body without feeling pressured to do something, by inside or outside forces, that you do not wish to do, to yourself or others.

At each school we have volunteered with we have dedicated the second afternoon to a session of empowerment. These sessions have been one of the most impacting and difficult times for me. It is a time when the boys and girls are divided by age and gender and we talk in groups about the very personal issues of sex, their bodies and their futures.

In the girls’ sessions we start by asking the girls about their goals and about the rolls of women in their communities. Every time we have gone around the circle, I have seen girls state proudly that they want to be doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers and even the president. The girls talk about how they see their mothers care for their siblings, cook nsima, wash clothes, search for and carry firewood, draw water, clean and the list goes on and on. Like so many other places in the world, the women of Malawi take on the task of keeping their families and communities healthy, strong and growing.

The girls understand the importance of females, but in the same breath they express the limitations they face—parents who don’t want to pay their school fees for secondary school, early marriage, pregnancy and forced sex.

All of these topics, especially the discussion of forced sex and sometimes rape are hard to stomach, but they are the realities of some of these girls’ lives. Over the past month I have met some girls who are completely unaware of the process of menstruation (beyond the idea that they bleed once a month), but have already been asked for sex in exchange for a bar of soap or worry that if they don’t have sex after they have started menstruating that they will lose a limb.

The girls ask some of these questions openly, but we also give them the opportunity to ask these questions anonymously at the end of the session. At times I have been overwhelmed or left me speechless and near tears. It is hard to know just how to answer the question, “What should I do if my dad is trying to have sex with me?”

But, as many times as I have felt my heart drop at the difficulties these girls face, it has risen and even turned my tears into a smile at the strength, determination and optimism they posses. The discussions we’ve had are always filled with giggles and laughter when we explain the process of menstruation and we all share about ‘the changes our bodies go through as we grow. In the end, it is the girls themselves that come up with the solutions to these difficulties and realize they hold the power to determine their futures.