Oct 2018
It has taken me the most of a year to post this, and in many ways, I might only now be processing it 11 months on. Here is part 1 from my scribbled musings. I’m hoping to return to our friends in India early next year. If you’re the praying kind of reader please pray for my precious friends there. Life is hard and a life of faith is becoming more dangerous.
Nov 2017
Standing on a worn path in the middle of fields; garlic planted in neat square sections in front and behind. The small village to my right. The air is hot, my clothes are sticking to me, the smells are a mix of dry dust, buffalo and open drains. To my left is a small wooded area where the buffalo have been moved from the village, there is a wedding this weekend. Walking towards the buffalo’s new pad I remembered my visit last year to this village and I begin wondering if this was the same wooded area pointed out to me as the toileting area for the village, used by the villagers until the new toilets that Regener8 supplied had been installed. Even as that question rises in my mind I am dodging buffalo pats on the ground. In fact, one of the regener8 buffalo must have sensed we were admiring him and decided to prove the health of his bowels by emptying them as we carefully walked past. 2 of the buffalo have been supplied by regener8 micro-financing. The owner of one of them our guide and he is very proud.
My companion and I begin a conversation about the inequality between east and west the rich and poor and what we can do to help bridge those gaps. The overwhelming needs are so evident. We talk about some of the complexities of development. And as we dander back across the path through the garlic field we move on to women and girls. My heart begins to burn hot with passion, injustice, anger, and frustration. I quickly find we are on the same page. He is the first man that I have talked to who is as much a feminist as I am, and a self-proclaimed one at that. He turns to me and says “Here’s to strong women. May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them.”. I ramble as the words that I want to say get lost in the bubble of emotion in my heart. Inequality for women anywhere is unacceptable. He reminds me of the salary statistics back home where women earn on average 18% less than men. I talk about patriarchy in the church. I tell my friend about how God broke my heart for women first in India and the horrific inequality that they face, but then he continued to break my heart everywhere I see it and to the place where I can no longer accept it anywhere.
I can still see the sky, full of dusty smog, the air in that area that weekend the worst in the whole country. I can taste the dust at the back of my throat making my voice hoarse. I hear the helplessness rise in voice. How can we turn this tide of misogyny so ingrained in this country’s culture, where it is a dangerous thing to be a girl or women. Misogyny is treated with such normalcy here and with contempt back home. If I start to talk either I am often shushed by humour, the subject is swiftly changed, or I am faced with downright disbelief that this exists in the West. My dear sisters in places like India used as an argument to prove misogyny in the west could not exist because our lives are not like theirs. The subtle face of misogyny flatly denied.
Michelle Scott 