Welcome to the Hall of Femme

In the inaugural episode, our Chief Steward, Penelope Sanyu sets the stage for a bold journey with an excerpt from Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi's book, “Where is Your Wrapper?”

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Hall of Femme, my name is Penelope Sanyu and I am your tentative host for this podcast. I am excited! To say that I'm enthused is an understatement. I just want to  give a brief background on what this is about 
so...I'll start by telling a story. 

A feminist  that I love and adore published a book called "Where's your wrapper?" Her name is Bisi Fayemi and in this book, there's a story around her time in Uganda where a story was reported where  a woman got into labor/unexpected labor and she was in the market. 

Now anyone out there who has witnessed/watched/been part of a birthing process, you know that it's a private, delicate, intimate, painful, exciting process and here is a woman in the market, she's giving birth/she's gone into labor and she doesn't have all these facilities that are required to enable you to give birth. Now the women in the market immediately saw this woman and decided to just surround her with their lesus which we call wrappers and some created a hedge of protection, others created a shawl to  receive the baby, others laid their lesus on the floor and helped this woman push, others were encouraging and cheering her on to push the baby out, some others were sending the men off to  not see what was going on, others were you know calling and saying okay if the baby comes we need  to have a doctor come on board so immediately when she's done something has to be figured out and in all that process this story goes to say that women have always protected. 

Women have always shielded,  women have always come together to cover each 
other, to wrap each other in love, in solidarity,  in kindness, in favor, in championing causes, in loving one another, in extending and things have changed a little bit today because today if you decided or if you happened to be in  labor or if you happened to get an unfortunate incident where you're stripped naked or something  is happening to you, the first thing people will do is pull out their smartphones and record and  your business will be all over social media before  people think about the idea of protecting you and  covering you with their lesus or wrappers. 

Why am I sharing this story? I'm sharing this story because Femme Forte Uganda is a feminist movement building organization that seeks to create a brave and safe space for young women across the country and this brave space looks like so many  different things to different women but the main purpose of this institution is to create pathways  for young women and older women to correlate and have conversations around their feminist journeys, their experiences, their shortcomings and to learn from one another. The other thing that this institution seeks to do is to create avenues where young women can  voice around issues to do with their body issues, to do with their economy issues, to do with their leadership and every other issue that is bothering them and in creating safe and brave spaces, Femme Forte Uganda has created this offering which we have termed  the Hall of Femme. 

Now I know that some of you are very excited to feature on the Hall of Femme or in the Hall of Femme, I don't know what the correct English is but the idea is to have each and every one of you out there feature in this Hall of Femme because we want to celebrate stories of women,  we want to celebrate stories and experiences of women out there that are doing amazing things, we want to challenge taboo topics and conversations that you know sometimes cause our heads to hurt and cause our hair to stand, we want to talk about things that are untalkaboutable if that's an English word, we want to discuss the undiscussables around feminism, around our bodies and their integrity, around our leadership and how we lead and guide ourselves, we want to have conversations around masculinities and what that looks like; what does positive masculinity look like, how is it, how is it practiced, how does it feel, what does it feel  like to engage with men in society and coexist, we want to have a wide range of conversations around policies and bills that are repressive and that are encouraging and that are progressive and a  wide range of conversations and so in this episode I want to make a call to you and to invite you to  be part of this podcast. 

I want you to be welcome to partake of the Hall of Femme and to engage with different scholars, different experts, different personalities, different feminists on the topics that you so dearly love and it is my desire that as you engage with the conversations on this podcast, that you will love and fall in love with feminism but that you will also be  challenged to practice and live your feminism differently and that you will be encouraged to  stay in touch with us to love on us with your  comments and likes and shares and to be a part of the family that's growing - this brave and safe feminist space that we have called the Hall  of Femme. 

So if you don't know about Femme Forte you can check out our website on www.femmeforteug.org or you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @FemmeForteUg or you can check out our YouTube channel and subscribe at Femme Forte Uganda. You can follow and subscribe and  like and engage and comment and all those things but as I conclude this segment, I want to just  challenge you this week to think about where your wrapper is as a young feminist out there, as an older feminist, as a woman, as a man, as a person that's trying to leave an authentic and  supportive life to others. 

Where's your wrapper? Where's your wrapper when your daughter comes and tells you she's being abused at home? Where's your wrapper when that girl that you talk to every day at the University comes and tells you her lecturer is abusing her? Where's your wrapper when someone falls on the street and their skirt or trousers 
rip are you the first to pull out your phone or are you pulling out your wrapper? Where is your wrapper when someone needs a shoulder to lean on? Where's your wrapper when someone just needs a listening ear or to just cry and laugh about things? Where's your wrapper when you need to be the safe and brave space for somebody out there? As we continue with the Hall of Femme, we invite you to pull out your wrappers and journey with us as we create memories and beautiful insights on our feminist journeys. Thank you very much.