GREEN EDITION

SPECIAL REPORT18

BORN A PREMATURE BABY AT 6 MONTHS, LAINA HAD TO FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL FROM THE BEGIN-NING. IT IS THIS SAME FIGHT-ING SPIRIT THAT WOULD SEE HER OVERCOME THE DARKEST ORDEAL OF HER LIFE AND WALK AWAY MORE THAN A SURVIVOR, BUT A CHAMPION.

Fighting for oxygen to stay alive, Laina had turned blue in the incubator that kept her alive. She views the symbolism

of having turned blue as indicative of a fundamental shift that took place both physically and emotionally. She sees her life as having radically changed at this time from the sweet girl to one who would never like things expected of lit-tle girls in pink dresses.

Could this have been the sign that she would become lesbian; the blue recolouring her sexual orientation? Always feeling different and acting out of the norm for “girls”, she had no idea what a tomboy was, but this is what she was referred to as. By age 12 she had her first girlfriend; in secret of course. It was wrong, it was detested loving a girl, being a girl herself. See-ing a few other girls kissing made her realise that she was not alone, and that what she felt was not alien. Still, society had no room for her kind of love.

Girls didn’t think she belonged, boys would beat her up to toughen her since she wanted to be like them, and elders at the church would counsel her on how to act ladylike. In the later years her mother would reassure her that she will get a man who will make her into the woman she is meant to be. Wearing dresses made her feel uneasy, switch-ing to pants made her much comfort-able.

Excelling in soccer was her ticket out of feeling alien among her peers. She was introduced to the Women’s Football Club at Otjiwarongo. There she found women like herself, a place where no one would tease her, beat her or make her feel different. She was

finally free to be who she felt most comfortable to be.

She had finally accepted herself and no longer felt the need to explain and defend who she was. At the age of 25, however, things would change for the worse. After an outing with friends, her brother’s friend and her former athletics teammate, dragged her into the bushes and raped her.

She felt like it was a forceful remind-er of the “be a woman” slant she heard her whole life. Now she was reminded that her vagina was created for a penis. She went home and took a bath and lived as if nothing had happened. But something had happened, her whole life would change, she would start drinking excessively. And two months down the line, she found herself pregnant.

Inside of her was a growing re-minder of the darkest night of her life.

Bathing three times or more on some days could not wash away the dirtiness she felt. Her escape from her living nightmare was suicide, she thought. She had planned various ways of end-ing her life. But then she paused one day and thought that perhaps God had a reason for her life, so she finally got the courage to tell her mother what had happened. Receiving little sympa-thy, people in the community instead questioned how a ‘man’ like her can be raped, and on top of that, be pregnant.

Angry, self-loathing, feeling like an outcast and having a little life growing inside of her, she needed to find a way to cope. She knew this experience was not unique to her. Writing became her outlet. What she couldn’t say she could write, in the form of poetry, short stories and into scripts. Through this form of

The Blue BABY

by Elsarien A Katiti

www.sisternamibia.org SISTER NAMIBIA

19

therapy she could begin to admit to herself that she was in extreme pain. She could acknowledge the hatred she felt towards her perpetrator, she also began to face her uncertainties and fear of becoming a mother. Seeking the comfort of spirituality through church and choir further helped her deal with the trauma.

She finally came to the place where she recognised she had her own lit-tle human to build a life for. She had someone for whom she had every reason to get up for and to fight for, but most importantly, to live for. And here was someone she could love and be loved by without questions. When she first looked upon her baby, she was not reminded that she was a rape baby. She looked just like her mommy and she was loved abundantly. She gave her baby an Arabic name, Khasmala. It means crown or necklace of flowers as

she is indeed a garland to her mother. Laina had never known love nor loved the way she loves her daughter.

“I forgave the man who raped me and never made a case. And yet he later went to jail for 18 years for a simi-lar crime,” she says.

Laina admits that surviving rape is not easy to live with, especially when one doesn’t speak out about it. She shares the sad fact that many butch lesbians have been raped and silently live with this pain. For Laina, speaking out and against this kind of victimisa-tion brought her solace. And while you feel alone and lonely in your darkness, she discovered that there are people who do care and can help one heal as did her mother, uncles and friends through their support.

Having overcome her ordeal she says,“Here I am, I stood up, and I’m speaking out; I am a champion.”

• On Kenya’s east coast the Imani

Women Group run a thriving bakery by using a solar oven. On a good day they make dozens of large cakes and over 100 cupcakes.

• The UN Framework Convention

on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, launched the Women for Results Pillar Award, in November 2012, which will recognise women who come up with projects addressing climate change in the developing world.

• At the First World Conference on

Women in 1975 in Mexico City, the “women and environment” issue was brought into public consciousness by Indian physicist Vandana Shiva.

• Since 2011, UN Women has sponsored

the Gender Equality Award granted by the SEED initiative, a global partnership for action on sustainable development and green economy. It recognises the leadership of women and women’s organisations. The 2016 Gender Equality Award Winner in Kenya was Dagoretti Market Biogas Latrine. It is a female-run, community-based initiative that uses renewable energy options (biogas and solar) to address multiple community needs in sanitation and energy under one roof.

• The Rural Women Economic

Empowerment programme which was launched in 2012 at global level and in 2014 in Ethiopia, aims to secure rural women’s livelihoods and rights in the context of sustainable development and the post MDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals.

• Women make up approximately two-

thirds of the adults in the world who cannot read. Without the equal access to education and information that reading allows, women are disproportionally denied access to opportunities and information that are available to those who can read, according to the UN Population Fund.

FAST FACTSon Women and the Environment