International Women's Day

International Women's Day

From Angi Williams' (Wycliff - Congo) March 11th blog entry :

Saturday was International Women's Day, or as they say here in Congo: La Journee des Mamas. We showed up at the stadium with one of our Congolese friends to join in the festivities, although we didn't really know what they were. We were supposed to meet at 10am, but I had lots of problems with my zipper (zippers they put in clothes here are really poorly made) so we didn't make there until 11am. We showed up in our Congolese finest, and planned to join the parade.

So then we're told that you have to have a uniform, and you have to have a banner. There were all these different women's groups who had bought the same fabric and made matching dresses. We didn't have a uniform, but they invited us to walk with the Protestant women. It was kind of a mismatched group, so our clothes didn't make us stick out so much.

There wasn't much to the parade. It was just bunches of women walking in front of the authorities and the crowd. It reminded me of when I was in New York in 2001 and we went to this St. Patrick's Day parade that we thought was going to be really cool. They said it's the second biggest St. Patrick's Day in the world, but it was only a band, and then a group of Irish people walking down the street, and then another band, and then another group of Irish people, over and over. Our parade didn't even have bands in the parade, although there was a band that played music for the women to walk to.

It was kind of fun to do though. We didn't stay for the whole thing, that would've been really boring. We left 20 minutes after we were done. Then everyone has a party afterwards. Supposedly the men are supposed to cook, but I don't know any that actually did. One of our friends invited us for dinner, which was nice, but I'm pretty sure he didn't actually do the cooking. They say the women are supposed to give the men money first to buy the food, but if they don't then the men don't have to cook.

As I was waiting for my friends to show up, I got a lot of comments like, "Hey, you're also a mama?!" I didn't really know how to answer that, but at least for one day I admitted to being a "mama."