Mesh and Lace***

As soon as I break any assumed routine that I may develop everything goes to pot....usually starting with my sleeping patterns. So as soon as I decided to go home for a while I knew not to expect to become too familiar with my bed!

last week while in Birmingham I found myself watching women, weddings, wars and me around 2am. The program was about a girl called Nel who's family had left Afghanistan when she was five. She was now in her late teens/early twenties and was going back to see what the situation was like for women there now that the reign of oppression under the Taliban was 'over'.

As time went on I was intent on staying awake for another hour or two to see another program that was starting half an hour after the other finished called The Worlds most dangerous place for women where Judith from south London wen't back to DRC.  A war has run rife in the heart of Africa for over a decade and both sides have used women as a weapon.  Upon arrival in the Congo Jude had the opportunity to spend some time with her parents whom she hadn't seen since she was three, after a couple of days in the West of DRC she moved over to the East for a further five weeks. I have studied the shocking perversions of justice throughout the history of the Congo but all from behind the veil of education. I watched as an anthropologist assessing the opinions of directors, the aims of pieces and looking for cultural significances, the horrors of the situation although VERY apparent had no hold on me. Instead I focused on how it was all documented, dark fractured limbs shot against clean white sheets for high contrast, you have to detach yourself from it all as I already come out of my Friday lectures moved, if I became emotionally vested I'd be a mess week on week. I had no choice this time.  Village after village story after story; from the outset you knew it wasn't going to be the most pleasant of programs to watch but what I took from it was the immense strength of the women who accepted all they had been through and we're fighting for change against opposition from all around.

It got me to thinking about all that my grandparents had done in choosing to come to England all those years ago so that their children and the rest of their posterity could have better opportunities than they would have had back in the Caribbean even if it meant leaving family and high status' within their community to start again in a foreign land...all for me to decide that I want to move away and experience new things, but they understand why and support me in it fully. I've been to Jamaica once but I was too young to really remember it for what it was, I'd like to go back and see where my family is actually from. I'm also saving up for a trip to Curacao and St Vincent where my dad was born as I've never been and I still have family out there that I've never met. Crazy!