Happy Women's Day

Tuesday, March 8th was International Women's Day. It was my first Women's Day celebration and apparently outside of the U.S., it's a pretty big event. I wore a dress made from this year's Women's Day fabric and the color choices were pink or green. I marched with the ladies of the University of Bamenda on Commercial Avenue, in front of the grand stands where the governor was sitting along with other VIPs. They get to sit in chairs nicely in the shade(!) while the sun was beating down on all the women waiting to march. I got to hold the sign board and I was lucky enough to have marched with my group early, so I could grab lunch at a local bar (grilled fish with manioc sticks, fresh carrots & onion with pepe sauce) and head out of town before all the restaurants and streets would be filled with beaming women ready to celebrate. And celebration in Cameroon is DEFINED by food and drink, so you can imagine....

It was hot, chaotic, and the MTN phone network was so backed up that calls/texts wouldn't go through. Apparently there was a promotion of 500 francs and unlimited calls for the whole day. Anyways, we were only a small group of women from UniBa. Earlier that day I asked a female student at school if she was going to celebrate, and she emphasized that "only WOMEN only celebrate, I am still a girl." Aren't we women? I asked her but she said that it was for women with husbands, children and families. hmm... In the future, I can envision an event that unites women (especially women in academia and in education) and will be a bigger platform for discussion (of not only this year's theme of 'gender equality for girls in science and technology) but for many other topics, issues, round tables, conferences etc. In general, it was a day for dialogue and pride and oh, it has so much potential for later years to come. There was a women from the SWAA (Society for Women and AIDS in Africa) organization who was giving out female condoms and doing demonstrations. I looked up their org, here it is: http://www.iwhc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=70 That was pretty neat because it represented women's empowerment, freedom, education and choice- which is what this day is all about. So... happy belated Women's Day! (It should happen more often, yea?)