In my work as Communications and Documentations fellow, it is my job to tell ACODEV’s story and the stories of the people we serve and empower. I observe, take notes and pictures, quite often asking questions and expecting answers.
Recently, however, after distributing scholastic materials to children orphaned by AIDS in three remote villages in western Uganda, I was taken aback by the silence of the girls I had chosen to interview.
My journalistic instincts had told me that they had interesting stories to tell. When I sat down with them, I immediately began asking them questions. Tell me about your lives, schools, grandparents, brother, sisters and yourselves? Who or what do you want to be or do in future?
As I prepared to write down their answers, I was taken aback by their utter silence. I thought they hadn’t understood my questions in English so I asked them again in the local language. They remained silent.
After failed attempts to get them to talk, I shut my notebook, put away my pen and sat with them in silence thinking about the story that never was. After a few awkward moments of silence, one of them asked if she could ask me a few questions. I said yes, slightly taken aback by having the tables turned.
She asked me the same questions I had asked them. Tell me about your life, school, grandparents, brothers, sister, and yourself. She also asked why I was working for ACODEV.
Five years in journalism taught me that I was never the subject, always the observer. But here I was.
I began by telling them about my family and my elder sister who passed on in 2002 aged 20 due to tuberculosis an AIDS-related illness. I told them about my mother and how much of who I am and what I do today is largely inspired by her story.
She dropped out of school because her father’s friends managed to convince him that educating a girl was useless. She married young and was widowed young.
I told them about my “unprivileged” childhood and how my mother challenged and exposed us to a life outside the hopelessness and poverty we knew by enrolling us in good schools so we could interact with students from privileged backgrounds and work hardest to live better lives in future.
I told them about my parents’ undying determination to make life worthwhile for us by promoting social justice.
I told them about GHC and why am passionate about participating and contributing to societies that recognise, value, respect, treat equally and celebrate the humanity that we all are.
After sharing my story with them, one of the girls asked if I could be her auntie. I smiled and said yes; knowing well that by auntie she meant mentor, big sister, inspiration and someone she could always turn to for counsel, affirmation and support.
The other girls said they want to be like me when they finished school. I felt honoured.
This encounter made me realise how sharing a bit of ourselves with others can go a long way in furthering the global health movement through breaking boundaries and engaging others.
By allowing ourselves be the subject, we are giving the other party an insight into who we are, what we do, and why we do the work we do.
And when they understand this about us, they not only respect us and our work, but also join in working towards the realisation of global health equity. Together we certainly can.
