Beginning Lent with thoughts on International Women’s Day #IWD2025

The horror of watching the video wouldn’t stop me! I was stupefied but I still couldn’t stop myself from going back to it in utter disbelief. I watched it 4 or 5 times before deleting it so that even if I succumbed to the temptation to watch it again in the hope that I could prove and convince myself that it was AI generated, I would not find it. On each of the occasions I steeled myself not to give in the temptation, I would lose to a desire stronger than I could muster to watch again and get dumbfounded at the absurdity of it all.

When 3 decades ago I had been told about a girl whose hands had been severed as punishment for being born by parents who were teachers I cried wondering what evil such a child would have committed and how she was going to navigate life minus her hands. How much pain would the sight of scars and stubs left of her former healthy hands cause her? In Africa you need 6 pairs of limbs to get by as a woman, they had severed the single pair God had gifted her with. What did they gain?

In that instance the insurgents in the west African nation, where the atrocities were being committed, were punishing those who had jobs and their children because they felt they were part of the problem that was holding them in perpetual poverty. It was part of the story of blood diamonds that was reaching us via CNN and our local dailies. Internet had not proliferated then! The few email systems that existed were store and forward type and a privileged few were yet to flout expensive mobiles that were as huge as some of the more sophisticated handsets on our desks. I was spared the grotesque images, but my imagination did it all for me. I prayed I would never hear of such atrocious acts again.

Alas, how mistaken I was! I think the one who sent me the raw unedited video knew me well! He knew I would doubt its veracity, so he forwarded to me the unedited version as well as a BBC version of the same recording where the woman’s nakedness was blurred away. I discovered this clip when I went back to the unedited message the sixth time only to find that I had, thankfully, consigned it to nonexistence via the delete button of my phone. “Not AI generated; not a figment of my imagination dear friend, it is stark reality, it happened four years ago,” my friend seemed to say and it is happening even now.

Anytime you hear of war, be afraid, be very afraid of the atrocities that will only come to light days after rumours of war have been heard. Barbaric are the depths that humans can descend to, both in war and in peace times. That’s why we need seasons that remind us we can be better.

I remembered this video as I entered into the Lenten season this year. I found the mood more sombre than I have ever experienced as we sung our Ash Wednesday songs during Mass yesterday. Perhaps it is my age but maybe it is the memory of that Mozambican woman stripped naked, clobbered senseless with sticks by a pack of men armed to the teeth, with guns that looked like a lot of money had been poured to acquire them, and then pumped with so many bullets, 36 in total, BBC told us! Oh, the horror! 3 for each of the 12 tribes of Israel. Not even a dog deserves such a death.

I asked myself how much each of those guns might have cost, and how about each of those bullets that ripped her body. I stopped myself short from using Goggle Lens to try figure out what guns those were that those men wielded against the helpless woman. Was it irreverent that I should have entertained such a thought? I do not know. It came from my reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and other books written on Belgian Congo; each bullet used had to be accounted for. That is why severed hands would be brought in baskets as proof that the bullets had been dispensed for their intended purpose, not wasted!

“Hello Afrika tell me how you are doing, Hello Motherland tell me how you are doing”
Mruna mao kwalale wonike (my mum’s sister what happened to you last night?)
Eee mwanapo nelala na msuko (oh child I slept with a fever)

Human life is supposed to be sacred, priceless, especially in Africa. Instead, guns bought with money that should have been used to build hospitals and schools and roads and factories and research centres are used senselessly on unarmed life!

Our priest, at the Ash Wednesday Mass, reminded us of the meaning of lent. The word stands for the past tense of lend, life and all we have is lent to us. As we pray, fast and give alms let us remember that, he told us. However far we go from God because we sin against one another, God draws us close to Himself, lovingly and always. The reason we fast from food is to remind us that without food we die, that we are mortals and only God through Jesus Christ grants us immortality.

Lest I forget how deep the rending of sin can be, I will keep the video of that Mozambican woman in mind as part of my Lenten fast and prayer. The diamonds, coltan, and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) a reminder of the avarice we practise and the vainglory we seek, in small and big ways. These are the realities we are called to bring to sharp focus in this season and to shun or minimise every day of our lives.

The work that needs to be done, the sacrifices that need to be made are greater than we are able to comprehend or desire to comprehend, much more than the 15k paid for dinners we shall devour as part of celebrating the International Women’s Day (IWD) that this time falls within the Lenten season. Dinners that are meant to celebrate how far we have come and hopefully remind us how precarious the achievements are.

Let us keep the flame of hope burning though, lest we get discouraged and despair. That is what it means to be pilgrims of hope.

I found a little seed of hope in my misery when I recalled how my former colleagues who, when I worked with them as a graduate engineer, would let me climb the oil tanks in industrial area last and let me descend first as we carried out routine maintenance on the level switches and tank gauges. I hadn’t yet discovered trousers back then and overalls belonged the technician cadre; sounds absurd now, doesn’t it?

Their kind gesture, small though it may seem, spoke of respect and consideration for a younger me. All of them were men much older than I. They had tucked plenty of work experience under their belts too. Some of them had worked for decades, with multiple employers while I was on my first serious job after university. A big up to you all wherever you are on God’s planet earth.

I celebrate too to all those schools; formal and informal, modern and traditional that taught us respect, consideration and manners as the building blocks of peaceful coexistence. I celebrate all those who established (and continue to establish) and run those schools, who pass on values held dear to their charges, both women and men. We cannot properly celebrate women without celebrating the men who nurture and support them all through life.

Even though our societies are imperfect still we must elevate and amplify the good in our midst, however small, that is the only way we will find hope and strength to keep up the good fight. A fight for a good place for us all to live in, women and men, all children of a loving God. All pilgrims of hope walking together to the eternal promise.

Wishing each one of us a blessed and fruitful Lenten Season.