YEAH, YEAH, I KNOW............

…..it’s been 3 weeks since I blogged. In my last post, I said the next time you’d hear from me would be from Kampala. I was headed there to catch a flight to Nairobi, where I’d spend a week with Internews staffers from Africa, Asia, and America. Because of my cyber-silence, you may be worried that I’ve been carried off to some malaria-infested swamp by a particularly aggressive behemoth mosquito.

Cut me some slack, okay? I mean, if the United States Congress can take most of the summer off, and one of its members can spend part of that time tapping other men’s shoes in airport bathrooms, can’t I at least take a few weeks off to finish the process of resigning myself to my feckless fate in Gulu?

Anyway, I’m back in the Internews groove, smack dab in the middle of our second workshop. But before I tell you about it, I have to say Nairobi has the most totally “off the hook” shopping on the entire continent. In the Masai Market, or the Ya Ya Market, you could furnish your entire house with the money you spend on one piece of African art in the U.S. The crafts are absolutely beautiful…..the beaded jewelry, cloth, carvings, baskets, artwork, sandals….you could lose your damn mind. I know I did.

Now, I am not only back in Northern Uganda, I am in WAAAAAY Northern Uganda, 5 hours north of Gulu in a small town called Arua. Arua is about a stone’s throw from the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC as it’s commonly called. (I like to think that acronym stands for “Death Rules Constantly”; Congolese rebels make the LRA look like your local Boy Scout troop.) A recent UN report described Gender-Based Violence in the DRC as “beyond extreme.” I won’t reveal the gruesome details, but they are truly horrific.

Which makes it appropriate that I’m here in Arua for a workshop on Gender-Based Violence. Actually, I’m getting to take it pretty easy this week, because Internews brought in an expert GBV trainer from London named Karen. Girlfriend knows her stuff backwards and forwards; I’ve learned more about GBV in the past three days than I had in the past decade. It’s journalistically fascinating, but humanistically depressing.

In Africa, GBV isn’t a sociological phenomena---it’s called everyday life. When a man can “buy” you for the price of 5 cows and 5 goats, you best believe he’s not going to wind up putting you on a pedestal. When a man can have a couple of other wives, and a myriad “girlfriends” on the side, you’re exposed to the “violent” threat of HIV every day. And when beatings are the culturally-sanctioned way to “control” your wife, it makes being female in Africa a literal disability.

As an African-American woman, I hear these facts, but my mind simply refuses to fully grasp the reality. Put simply, I come from a long-line of mentally unstable women on my mother’s side who wielded baseball bats like other women carry purses. My grandmother, Stella Jane Blocker, used to regularly stalk Grandpa Ben at the various juke joints he liked to hang out in. When he finished his debauchery, he would head home….or at least to SOMEBODY’S home, usually the skank he had picked up at the bar. But by the time Stella got through raining blows on both of their heads with the bat, tree limb, or whatever else she could get her hands on, it was “Game Over” for the adulterous duo.

Now, I’m not condoning Violence Against Men as the solution to the GBV pandemic. Violence breeds violence, and it continues generation after generation after generation. It’s sadistic, and it’s inhuman. But the man who raises a fist to hit me had better be prepared to kill me, ‘cause if I'm still breathing when he’s through, my life’s mission would focus on devising the most painful way to take him out. Homey would wind up begging me to just dump some hot grits on him and get it over with by the time I finished with him.

And puh-LEEZE let a Negro step to me talking about taking another wife. I would calmly respond that while he’s browsing, he better look for another LIFE, because I would shank his ass the minute they stepped over my threshold. Bottom line? I DO NOT PLAY THAT SHIT.

That’s probably also part of the reason I’m still single. But while I’m mostly joking, the fact that I can even conceive of that kind of behavior is a uniquely American thing. Or maybe a developed countries thing. Because some African women, even educated ones who’ve traveled and advocate women’s empowerment, still accept cultural norms that allow men to rule over women. One woman I’ve met, an extremely successful entrepreneur who owns several radio stations, didn’t blink an eye while telling me she had 70 siblings from her father’s six wives. (Of course, girlfriend was married to a British dude, so I guess she had decided to “stop the madness” from her end.)

I hope I’m around when African women….in fact women all over the damned world….realize they don’t have to accept abuse and domination. If the collective female consciousness suddenly rejected oppression and went straight up “Norma Rae” on brutal patriarchal cultures, this world would be dramatically different.

Personally, I think if Hillary Clinton is elected President, that process will begin. This is NOT a paid political announcement, but I think the symbolism of a woman running the most powerful nation in the world would ignite a tremendous catalyst for change.

Sure, there are those of you who might be thinking, “Wait a minute…Hillary put up with Bill’s indiscriminate bonking for decades. How does that make her a strong, no-nonsense female role model?” My response is, “Get over it, people.” Ask Larry Craig’s wife how she put up with her husband tapping other men’s feet in airport bathrooms for so many decades, while he fronted as this macho Idaho Senator. Sure, Hillary took a lot of crap, but she had a bigger goal in mind.

I totally hope she reaches it.