VOF Week 2: (THE MICROPHONE)

Pulsewire is the cord that supplies the full voltage for our amplifiers, it gives voice to the rest of us, we murmur and grieve in the darkest hours and all these are expressed openly through this pulse, in it the blood that sustains our lives flow.

The journey of my life shapes my perception about humanity, it gave me insight into the creature called woman. Raised by an uneducated widow in a society where every widow is held responsible for the death of her husband and on the other way round the widower is a man who needs a beautiful lady beside him to avoid mourning or weeping like a mere woman over the death of his wife.

The anatomy of woman power can be deciphered only by an insider; mother is a woman with heart as strong as steel as she will assure us of three square meals when all she could afford to provide conveniently was the water from the village stream. Her strong heart always melt by the tears of hunger, and I wonder where women inherit the gene that made them flow between passion, love, patience with which they persist in the face of adversity and adversary, mother gave me the real inspiration to fight in life.

Specializing on sexual violence is not unconnected with my instances of rape, sexual and relationship abuse I have seen, once I went for a Christian night vigil, because I was on my feet throughout the night, I slept off in the bus, actually I cannot remember for how long I slept but suddenly I woke up to discover that my left breast was in the hand of a stranger sitting beside me, he had removed the breast from my brassiere and was fondling it, I thought it was a dream, later everyone blamed me for sleeping the sleep of death in a commercial bus.

Our law, people and government are ignorantly assisting perpetrators an example is that of Nigeria under the penal code, when a woman/girl is raped, she has to present three witnesses in court if not she will be given one hundred strokes of the cane for telling a lie. Victims are silenced, secretly, sadly separated from the real world.

In my quest for wisdom, I joined international organizations like www.talktostop.com as an online presenter; I write poems exclusively on sexual violence against women and societal issues became a volunteer of lamplighter.org and also enjoyed free online training by www.evaw.com.

This vision is about a world where response to sexual violence is critical to development, where women and children are perceived as human being irrespective of color or geographical location this can only be achieved where views are respected, I can be the sacrificial voice of all these set, I witnessed, shared and stand for them, Pulsewire is our platform, to speak for women and children and repair lives as we move on.