Dignity...Period!

It's very rare I read an article in a magazine, especially in the Daily Mail's Sunday magazine, that makes me cry and feel very very humble. There's a story in the Sunday magazine today about Thabitha Khumalo.
Thabitha Khumalo is a Zimbabwean woman who just won the 2006 woman of the year award for setting up Dignity.Period!, a campaign to try to get the Zimbabwe government to stop repressing women and destroying their dignity by making sanitary products available to all. This amazing woman was married young, as is expected from all Zimbabwe women, and has a daughter. Her husband was a control freak who enjoyed trapping her arms in doors and beating her up before they had sex. Eventually she left him, her mother would not take her in because she hadn't given her marriage a chance. She took her daughter and got a flat and a job, she even took in her cousins illegitimate son and raised him as her own. Her job as a cashier led her to realise just how unjust things were, she became a trade union activist. Her work as an activist eventually led to 28 veteran soldiers accusing her of selling Zimbabwe to the white man. They gang raped her and tortured her, they even inserted an AK47 into her vagina leading to her needing 47 stitches. Many many people would have given up by now, I know I would have given up at the mere hint of a threat but Thabitha kept going. One day she saw a woman walking awkwardly, the woman told her she was going home from work because she was having her period and couldn't afford sanitary protection. Companies who made sanitary towels and tampons had left the county and the cost of inflation had risen so much the average cost of a box of 20 tampons cost the equivalent of £6, more than half the monthly wage of the average worker.

Reading the story made me very angry that this basic product that I take for granted is not available to all but reading about Thabitha and how she has continued to fight even after appalling torture made me feel so small and humble. This woman was not able to attend the meal laid on by the organisers of the woman of the year award. She is so unused to so much food she couldn't bring herself to eat it, she also couldn't bring herself to see it going to waste so she left her seat and waited outside.

Thabitha Khumalo - an amazing human being

Knitting

Today I was looking at the calendars and my eye was caught by this. I immediatly though that Dominocat would love this. I nearly bought it for her but decided against it due to the weight, it would cost almost as much to send as it would to just buy it and I just can't afford it. Sorry Mrs D

Paranoia

I never realised what a paranoid man I live with. we were chatting about this finger print checker thing that a couple of police forces in England are using to check your finger print against the national database to see if you're a known offender and such like. I think it's a good idea since I'm pretty sure my finger print would turn up no hits (I wouldn't have a job with the police if I couldn't make sure of that :)) It ended up being a convesation about Big Brother and invasion of privacy. Him not being able to explain to me how Big brother and Invasion of privacy are two different things he took a little bit of a strop so I changed the subject to talking about the dog (he either has fleas or a skin condition). He then put the telly on to watch the news and we ended up talking about the prescribing of heroin to heroin addicts which somehow lead back to the finger print thing. I happened to say I don't care if they keep my finger print I've done nothing wrong so it doesn't matter, Mr man says

"Ah but if all your information is stored on computer then they can find something you've done wrong."

"So" says I "how can they find something wrong if I haven't done anything wrong?"

"They can fabricate it"

I think I might have made the mistake of asking who "they" might be, he mentioned a few people including the government, I wanted to know why the government would want to change any of my details and I got told that it was a pointless question. At this point I could see it was going to turn into an argument but I wanted an answer so I told him it wasn't a pointless question, I would like to know the reason why they would change any of my details

"If you can't think of a reason why the government would change your information then it is a pointless question, you're an intelligent person and that's a stupid question"

Now I know he said the question was stupid but I still take it as him calling me stupid so I pounced

"It's not a stupid question, I don't know why the governemt would want to change my details, I wouldn't have asked otherwise so tell me" (I really don't know why the government would want to change my information)

"I don't have an answer"

At this point I was gathering my stuff to go upstairs and get changed and decided I had won

"Because you don't have an answer to justify your statement then my question is obviously stupid. Don't call me stupid for not being able to think of a reason when you can't even think of one yourself"

And with that I flounced upstairs.

Jane Eyre

I watched the most recent television version of Jane Eyre the other month and much to my surprise I enjoyed it. I usually steer clear of period dramas mainly because they fail to hold my attention but I was flicking through the channels when the first episode of the series was on, I saw the end where Mr Rochesters bed is on fire. For some reason this did get my attention :) so the next sunday I watched the first episode when it was repeated during the afternoon and really found myself loving it and looking forward to the next episodes. So, the week after it had finished, I was browsing through a book shop (I should not be allowed to enter book shops unsupervised, I usually spend too much) when I saw Terry Pratchetts new book which became my dad's Christmas pressie and a table full of books 3 for the price of 2. Jane Eyre was one of the books and I decided that since I enjoyed the TV dramatisation I would give the book a try so I picked it up along with a book by Ivor Baddiel about the Highway Code and QI's book.

Now, I have been burned before with buying books after enjoying the film, as is the case of Dracula, that book was the most painful thing I have ever had to wade through! To my surprise though I am really loving this. I was worried that I would have to keep looking up old fashioned words to get a vague idea of what was going on but it's not like I thought it would be, sure there's words I don't know the meaning of but I've realised I don't need to know what everything means. I love this book and I'm only half way through it.

I might try Jane Austin next

Depression

Girl, 4, 'suffering depression'

Now, I have never suffered from depression myself so I really don't understand how it works
I do have close family members who have or are still suffering from depression so I know how debilitating it can be and it doesn't mean you're sitting around looking glum constantly but I don't know the ins and outs of what you are actually feeling.

I find it very hard though to think that a 4 year old can actually be depressed. When my dad was in the army we had to leave and move onto different schools leaving friends behind, sure it was sad but depression? Not really.

I can't help wondering what that little girls parents have said to her to get her so distraught and upset about not being able to go to a school with her friends from infant school. Usually 4 year olds are pretty resiliant and, with infant schools, the kids live in a pretty close area so they can hang around with each other after school. If she's become depressed after this set back at such a young age I think she's going to have a very very rough life.

My heart goes out to her but I'm not sure depression is what she has, then again, who am I to argue with a doctors decision and the fact that I'm only going by what I've read, heard and seem on the news, I've not met the little girl in person

Um...

I'm not sure which story made me laugh more

this one

or

this one

Angriness

This story has made me so angry.
The poor baby had such a short life full of fear and pain and his mother allowed it. The BBC website is not the first place I read this, I read it in the Daily Mail (yes, yes I know), there was a quote from her in the story in the Mail which made my blood boil

"I did not think that he would seriously harm Aaron, just harm him a bit"

It just beggars belief that she thought even a little bit of abuse was alright.
It also says that she was afraid she would be killed if she left him, I would risk being killed if it meant my baby was away from a monster who thought it would be alright to pick a baby up by his ears and fling him across the room or swing him around by the ankles or even to constantly be flicking and inflicting pain on him.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.