My Africa

Women Across Borders

The Amazing Contrast Between Oppression of Women In The Eastern and Western cultures.

 How do we draw the line.

Find the balance.

France tried banning the Burkha in protest of the Islamic Religion's Supposed Oppression of women.

However, i think it should be understood that mainstream Islam does not require it's female followers to wear the burkha. just like mainstream Christianity does not require its female followers to only wear skirts... it does not stop fundamentalists of both religions from taking it to the extreme.

 In India a dowry is payed during marriage. the question often posed is, whether or not the dowry does not make the man feel he purchased a woman and therefore he owns her?

My father told me he payed a Dowry for my mother as is done in the African culture.

He also told me that the boy wanting to marry me would also pay.

He explained that the Dowry in Africa lost its meaning when it became money rather than cows.

He says the dowry was invented for a man to prove what he was willing to do to marry a woman.

For example my Grandfather asked my father to pay a certain breed, color and sex of cows for my mother.

My father had to find the cows specified. Which was not Easy.

Does Culture lose its Value when Modernized?

The Most Important 431 Words You Will Read Today

In this excerpt from her latest book "I Am An Emotional Creature; The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World", Eve Ensler celebrates the power of women.


Dear Emotional Creature,
  I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your uniqueness, your intensity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple, or hike up your short skirt or blare up your music while you lip-sync every single memorized lyric. I love your restlessness and your hunger. You posses the energy that if unleashed, could transform, inspire and heal the world. 
  Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be, your mother, father, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends. In reporting my new book, I learned a very disturbing statistic; 74% of young women say they are under pressure to please everyone.
  I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please; to be the wish or will of somebody other than yourself. To please the fashion setters, we starve ourselves. To please men, we push ourselves when we aren't ready. To please our parents, we become insane over achievers. If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? The act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop uttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We forget everything that we know. We make everything OK rather than REAL.
  I've had the good fortune to travel the world. Everywhere i meet teenage girls and women giggling, laughing as they walk country roads or hang out on city streets. Electric Girls. I see how their lives get hijacked, how their opinions and desires get denied and undone. So many of the women i have met are still struggling late into their lives to know their desires, to find their way.
  Instead of trying to please, this is a challenge to PROVOKE, to DARE, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite. To take responsibility for who you are, to engage. Listen to the voice inside you that might want something different. It's a call to your original self, to move at your own speed, to walk with your own step, to wear your own color.
  When I was your age, I didn't know how to live as an emotional creature. I felt like an alien. I still do a lot of the time. I am older now. I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting,. It has taken me so many years to be OK with being different, with being this alive, this intense.
I just don't want you to wait that long.

Love,
Eve Ensler

Everyone should read this whether male, female or old... It speaks volumes.

There Are No Rules To Being Me

I recently made a very drastic decision, one that seems to be puzzling the world around me. For the past week I have been constantly attacked, questioned and cornered about it. So what is this new decision? I Tshepo Jamillah Moyo have relaxed my hair. Firstly it is necessary that I explain that this blog entry is not due to me feeling a need to explain.

 I do not owe anyone an explanation. It is my hair and mine alone. I was eight when I first started keeping my natural hair. It was not a voluntary choice. My mother did not make it an option. I am not saying it was forced but even if I had said no it would have been (thus is the African culture). I wanted long thick hair like my mommy’s. I wanted glossy silky hair like my granny’s. I wanted to swim without a swimming cap like my friend Danielle. I had never seen my natural hair. But I had beautiful hair. I had long, dark black rich thick hair. And then it suddenly started breaking. Falling off when I combed it. The relaxer burnt my scalp. My mother figured I was allergic to it.

She cut it off. She told me no one would ever know I had natural hair and for years she was right. I braided my hair in singles. No one ever saw it. I was not ashamed off it. I was not bothered by it. I was fascinated with the way the blow dryer could transform it. I did not like that I could not flip my hair like my friends. I was the only girl I knew who kept long natural hair. I was not embarrassed by it. I was not proud either. It was just there. It really was just my hair. Then one day I felt brave. I went to school with my natural kinky beautiful hair. This was long ago. Before afro’s wear the in thing, when all the girls could flick their hair. They laughed. They commented. They touched it. They asked questions. I did not have answers. I was confused. I was twelve years old when I first came to defend my hair, when they first had to be a reason why it was natural. I have been defending my hair ever since.

My first defence was that it was healthier that way. I don’t know when the defence became because I was not fake. Then it was because I was African and I believed in my roots. I was proud of my natural hair. I have never been ashamed of it. Just like I am proud to be African and I have never been ashamed of it. But why did the two have to define me? What do I mean by that? I am ashamed to say this, but truth is I moulded myself into my hair. I moulded my personality into defending my hair. I dressed to suit my personality. My personality suited my hair. Yes, I believed in my principles. I believed what I preached. Yes I have never tried to be some one I am not. Yes I absolutely hate weaves with a passion. Yes I can’t stand make up that looks like it was plastered on your face. You know what I am talking about, those girls which you have no idea what they really look like. Yes, I believe in the black conscious movement. I believe in the principles off the Rastafarians. Yes i dance to home talk-mango groove every morning.

But I no longer want kinky hair. I no longer need to advertise my beliefs to the world. I no longer need my hair to define me. I do not want to be a book that is easy to read. I believe that my personality is so strong that even without my hair; you will “get” me. I, Tshepo Jamillah Moyo have come to realise that when it comes to being me, there are no rules.

And I am happy to say “i relaxed my hair. I did it for me”.

My hair is finally JUST MY HAIR again. And I love it.

African Women Take More Power

Firstly i apologize for having taken leave in the past month. I have resumed my studies at the University of Botswana, which leaves me with little free time to do the things I love (another reason I hate my current education status). However i will update that blog i promised. in the meantime bare with me. Visit, this post i just found. It made me smile... hope it brings happiness to your feminist ways. :)

"One Love? "Alfarita Marley

Alfarita “Rita” Marley was or rather is the wife of late reggae legend Robert Nesta Marley aka, Bob Marley. She is also the mother to his children. Not only the ones has she given birth to, but even the ones that Bob had out of wedlock. That he gave other women, and told her she couldn’t possibly have all the children he wanted and therefore he was saving her the pain. Sure maybe I pulled it out of context. Maybe I am just a wee bit bias. Ok I lie I am very bias. In fact reading Rita Marley’s book “My Life with Bob Marley; No woman, No cry”http://www.reggae-reviews.com/nowomannocry.html has completely changed my opinion of the man. Not that I had a very great one to begin with. I have never really idolised the man, only recently did I start to enjoy his music. (By recently I mean around 14years old).

 In case you have not read the book, the Marleys were married for about 15years. For those 15years Rita Marley shared her husband with a large number of concubines. (Not really concubines but sleeping with a married man makes you one. #JUST SAYING) She probably would have continued to do so had he not passed on. #GOD RESTS HIS SOUL. I know better than to attack a man that a woman loves. And loving Bob Marley is what Rita did best. So why does a feminist like me put a woman like Rita Marley who according to traditional feminists (I consider myself a modern feminist. Promise to explain difference in the next blog.) Is a weakling for not divorcing Bob after his countless PUBLIC affairs, on my list of inspirational women?

It isn’t because she is “Bob Marley’s” wife (that however does automatically make her noteworthy). It is not even because she is a great singer. It isn’t even because of her charity work in Africa or her choice to take Ghana as her home. It isn’t even because she had really sexy kids with him (yes I know they are old now but the pictures of young Ziggy are more attractive than Justin Beiber #FACT).     But because and I now will quote Rita;                                                                                                      “when I found out about this new situation (bob’s now public cheating) my first thought was that I need to stand on my own two feet.  Even though I still loved Bob, and I was glad to see him and for the time being wanted to remain his wife, I realised I could not completely trust this man anymore with my life and my children. I really had to try and forget him for a while _ even if it was hard to do_ and focus on the four children.” Rita Marley makes the list of women who inspire me because of her unbeatable strength to love a man who needed her love. She put away her own feelings for Bob and supported him because he needed her and that right there requires:

a)      A prominent ability to be selfless.

b)      A sense of strength to be able to still put her children first.

 I don’t know really. It’s hard for me to describe. Because I in my beautiful opinion, really believe that women these days lie to themselves. Its one thing to say “I will leave him if he cheats on me” and it’s another when it actually happens. What I adore about Rita is that she never let Bobs affairs stop her from being the woman she wanted to be. She never let it stop her from doing the things she wanted to do for herself and for her children. I come from a country where women’s rights are constantly being violated by men. But what is painful for me is when a woman who is able-bodied and whose husband no longer cares sits, and wallows, and does nothing for her children. She waits for her husband to feed, them to clothe them, while he lives his life. Rita was faced with a situation. She did not know whether Bob will care for her children so she took charge. I am compassionate to the women in Botswana, the women in the world that are abused by men. Do not misunderstand me. It is just that some women are in situations that allow them opportunity to care for their children yet they choose not to.

Rita Marley put her love for her children first. Not because she loved Bob any less but because they needed her more. It is just Rita Marley’s story touched me. It really touched me.  For some people Bob’s behaviour is repulsive, but when you read that story, their story, in Rita’s eyes you realise that Bob really loved Rita. And maybe not the way women expect to be loved but the way Rita was okay with being loved.  Official Bob Marley Page Rita Marley"s Foundation site

Allah Moyo... Strength of a Woman

Alla Tshetsanyana Kgakole was born in Francistown, on the 13^th of January 1967. She was born to a family of six. In 1994, Miss Kgakole, renounced her title for that of Mrs. Moyo when she married, a young man, Salim Moyo. Once upon a time she was a dental practitioner. Currently, Mrs. Moyo no longer practices dentistry. She still works in the health industry though. However, Mrs. Moyo’s academic or career accomplishments are not the reason she is the first woman to grace my list of inspirational woman.

My name is tshepo Jamillah Moyo, I am the first born of Allah Tshetsanyana Moyo’s two daughters. The first woman to grace my list of women who inspire me might go on to shock those who know me. The first woman on my list of powerful, strong women who play a constant role in creating me, only one third of the women they are can naturally only be my mother. Yes, I am talking sat in her belly 9months dictating what she can and cannot eat, then spent every waking moment either

a)      in my father’s arms

b)      crying to be in my father’s arms

c)       Telling her about something me and my father did.

d)      Bullying her while hanging out with my dad. (i am a real daddy’s girl)

So you could say we don’t have a girly mother daughter AWESOME relationship. In fact I can see her face while reading. (Just in case I do send the link to this). My mother isn’t the first person I think of when I am in pain. My mother is not the person I call when I want to go home from school. She is not the one I crack jokes with or the one that has the best music collection, or movie collection. MY MOTHER IS NOT A “COOL”MOM. My mom is the BEST mom. She is a hardworking, passionate, ambitious woman. And sure once upon a time I felt that I was second rate to her work. That if she hadn’t been working all the time that our relationship would be completely different. Anyway I am going totally of track.... this is not about our relationship but rather her achievements.

I didn’t really want to interview my mom. She doesn’t deal well with “subtle” questions and is often on to me before I can even begin to phantom a lie. This article is some what a surprise for both me and her. Therefore I apologise for the lack of anything but emotional reason to her being number 1.

My mother is a feminist. I am talking will beat a man down, step over his neck; whip him with a sham bock before she is belittle by him feminist. She is involved with a number of organisations that take care of women in horrible situations. Her current occupation is somewhat a cross between lecturing men on HIV/AIDS & violence against women, to teaching these men how to respect a woman. Naturally as her daughter I am taught the same. (Except the sex talks, we’d both rather skip those).  My earliest memory of preparing for preschool is my mother teaching me how to punch in the face.  She always said to throw so hard, that I drew blood. I am not a violent person. I have never had to use that advice.

Perhaps my father played a role in her next strategy.  She told me I could do anything a man can. Somehow I have always believed her. I can identify 95% of the tools in my dad’s tool box. I am a great fisher, an average shooter, I ride a Yamaha 450cc Benchy, I am a bush tracker, and I can skin an animal by myself. I have a little trouble tying knots, but on camping trips I don’t sit around the fire cooking with the women. I can even pitch my own tent. Unlike most women, my mother didn’t yell when my dad turned me into his son. She didn’t try to dress me in pink, frills, and heels. She let me pick my way.  I am not saying my mother made a man out of me. All she did was make me realise that despite what people say being a woman should never stop me from doing the things I want to do.

Yet, my mother is a married woman. She has been for the past 17years. Unlike most feminist my mother never forgot to teach me the root of tradition. Her relationship with my father is beautiful, although I often refer to it as GAY. They have this circle of respect for each other, which stems from my mother’s ability to realise her role, a wife. My father is the head of the family. There is no doubt about it. Yet my mother seems unshaken by it. From their relationship, I have learnt interdependency. I have seen my mother become what a woman should be. A simple rule, although I can do it myself there is nothing wrong with him doing it for me. Once in a while it feels nice to be reminded that I am not a man. So on this note i suggest a toast to Alla Moyo, the first step in the creation of 1third of a woman!!!

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to 1third_of_a_woman, a blog about the strong powerful women that inspire me and play a role in creating me, Tshepo Jamillah Moyo a hopeful young girl who is hoping to one day change the lives of many young females such as myself. however contrary to popular belief this blog is not aimed at a feminism. I simply created this blog to thank, appreciate, and let these special women that somewhere out there is a seventeen year girl who thinks they are awesome. the women on my list range from women whose books have inspired me, to characters in stories, movies or plays, to singers, to everyday women i see.