Dreading being a woman

My childhood was one that I spent with the company of my loving grandparents. I helped them with planting the maize meal in their fields every September. Many hours were spent weeding the young maize plants just before the grass and other weeds would engross them. I enjoyed this as a pastime, toiling along with the other women who had also come to help, and in this way, bring home some money for just more vegetables to put on their children s' plates that evening. I laughed along with their tales of womanhood till my arms had used up their last grain of energy and I would head back home to engross myself further in my books.

I was young at the time; say ten or so, and I remember all too well that I always used to wonder what my future held in its grasp for me. I wondered if I would also be like the women with whom I had just spent some time with in the fields. They all spoke of waiting for the husband to come home with the money for food, they spoke of a life limited to miniscule boundaries because they did not have the resources to buy their daughters that skirt they wanted . They spoke of a life that scared me, it left me dreading being a woman in Zimbabwe. Now I am not saying that  all women in Zimbabwe are like as described above. If there are women who know how to make a life out of their situations, then I am sure that I came across a few in Zimbabwe. I mean to say that I wondered how different their lives could be  if they had had a chance to empower themselves, if they had the power to decide about what goes in and out of their wallet. I knew that that's the type of woman I wanted to be. And to this day, its the type of woman I want to be.

I'm just an eighteen year old girl typing this behind my computer, I can't bring about that much of a revolution. I do believe, however, that I am not the only one who shares this dream. If you believe this too, why not make this a goal to achieve (if it isn't one already, which I sincerely doubt), so that it becomes something natural to all girls in the world to strive to the ultimate happiness and freedom of possessing their own wallet. And somewhere in the world a girl will be sowing seeds in her grandparents field; listening to very different tales.

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