I have been dying to blog for days, but I have been too busy.
In the garden, there is at least one little blue egg in the tailor bird nest. It is well camouflaged so that predators can't get at it. I can hardly wait for the baby or babies to hatch. They will be very small, so I don't know if I will see them.
Yesterday, I went up to Hatton which is the beginning of tea country. As soon as we hit the tea plants, I couldn't take the smile off my face. I think I am going to seriously consider going back to my original plan and finding a small plantation to lease and work. Nothing is as beautiful as seeing the tea reach up to the top of the hills. The valleys are full of huge queen of the forest and flame trees and often mist. It really is magical.
My friend Kalai says that there a lot of people who have either purchased plantations as investments or have family estates that they cannot work. She thinks that I could easily make a deal with one of these people to live on the estate for nothing and work the crop/s and share the profits. That was my dream before I left Canada, so I need to go with my gut.
I went up to Hatton as the special guest of the National Union of Workers which represents 25,000 plantation workers and growing. One of the women who participated in almost all of my training programmes from 25 years ago is now with the NUW and has been elected as the only woman member on the governing side of the Central Provincial Council. She organized an event to celebrate International Women's Day.
What an organizer! There were about 2,000 people there from all over the Central Province. She had buses and lunch laid on for them. There was a programme of speeches which are always too long, singing and dancing. There were award presentations to honour women who had contributed to the union over a long period of time. There was even a debate presided over by a woman judge with plantation women taking up both sides of the issue. It all went off without a hitch. Goes to show what can be accomplished by a competent woman, even in Sri Lanka.
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| Here is the main stage at the event. The young guy in the poster is the president of the union and a member of parliament. He seems like a nice guy. He volunteered to help out with my visa. Let's hope it is more than hot air. |
I have never seen so many police. The town was crawling with them and when I got to the venue, there were even more. As I was waiting I got to talking to a woman police officer of some rank above sergeant. She said that there were a lot of security concerns because of the size of the crowd and because of the presence of the president of the union.
Once I met the president, I asked him why there were so many police, even to the point where the stage was flanked on both sides by 3 policemen on each side armed with rifles. He said that the President of the country had assigned him a 15 man security detail because during the last election he had a lot of trouble with Thondaman, the President of the Ceylon Workers' Congress, a rival union of plantation works and the bunch I worked closely with when I lived here before. I was not surprised to hear this as this new Thondaman, who is the grandson of the one I knew is nothing but a thug.
Anyway, I asked him if he was in any danger. Thankfully, he said no as I was thinking that if anyone when for him, I was sitting right beside him and would be in the line of fire. Nothing happened, of course. I felt sorry for the policemen as the event was long and it got hot in the hall. They had to stand at attention with rifles at the ready for almost 5 hours.
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| Here is dais with one of the policemen gripping his rifle. |
They kicked off with a rally which clogged up the town of Hatton so that no traffic could get through the town. While that was going on, I went and had lunch at a place called the Tea Cup which is located on Strathdon Estate. The setting was beautiful with a gentle breeze cooling the restaurant which is just a big open veranda.
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| Here is the view from the Tea Cup. You can't see it too well, because my camera sucks, but the white dot is a Buddha statue. I am starting to view these Buddha statues that they erect all over the place as nothing more than a symbol of Sinhalese hegemony. |
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| As I was waiting to get the call to go to the meeting, I watched an egret hunting. Fascinating! They literally tip toe through the grass and move their neck and head almost like a cobra dancing. Then, they strike like lightening. The insect never knows what hit it. |
For those of you who have any interest in these things any more, here is the text of the speech I gave. Although I delivered the speech in English, Saraswathi had had it translated for the Tamil papers and there was a simultaneous translator on hand as well.
Ladies
and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to be with you today to celebrate
International Women's Day. Today, we celebrate 39 years since the
United Nations recognized this day, set aside to advance the cause of
women. This year's theme is inspiring change. It is in the spirit
of this theme that I address you today.
Although
I am heartened by the presence of so many men at this event, I am
going to speak directly to my sisters.
Despite
our extraordinary powers, especially our ability to hold the very
perpetuation of our species in our hands, women have been oppressed
for millenia. The origins of this oppression are clouded. Maybe it
is because men are physically stronger. However, that assumption is
false when you look around the world and see that women do the vast
bulk of the work needed to sustain families and in fact whole
economies. That fact is no better displayed than here in the heart
of Sri Lanka's tea industry where the entire industry would collapse
if women did not use their dexterity to pluck those 3 little leaves
every day of their lives.
Maybe
our oppression stems from the physical demands of pregnancy and the
need to stay close to young ones until they are weaned. But even
that is a lie. Women everywhere work right up to the moment of
delivery and are then back at work almost immediately after giving
birth with their babies strapped to their bodies.
No,
I believe that the source of our oppression is man's fear of woman.
Sisters, we have the power to give life. That is a power shared only
with gods. From that power stem so many other things that we have
not yet embraced. We have allowed ourselves to be dominated by our
fathers, brothers, husbands, religious and political leaders for far
too long. All over the world, women are awakening to the
possibilities of their own power.
In
the 40 years since I became involved in the feminist movement, we
have made great strides. Women in some parts of the world have
achieved wage equality, have broken through the glass ceiling and are
now doing many jobs that were traditionally reserved for men. They
are Presidents, Prime Ministers, cabinet ministers, CEOs of
companies, priests and bishops, trades people, police officers, fire
fighters, even soldiers. But most importantly, women are Mothers.
This is something that cannot be shared with men. Therefore, we are
not the equals of men, we are their superiors.
Yet,
in many places, women are still sold into veritable slavery through
arranged marriage and the dowry system. They are shunned and
imprisoned when they have their menses or during their pregnancies.
They suffer female genital mutilation. They have no right to control
their own bodies nor do they have the right to choose whether or not
to terminate a pregnancy. They are forced to cover themselves
thereby making them invisible. They are denied education. In some
parts of the world, they are even denied life; female fetuses being
aborted when they are detected.
Those
of us here today are the lucky ones. We realize our power and are
seizing it where and when we can. Let us take our good fortune and
share it with our sisters who are not so lucky. Let us be beacons
for change. One of those beacons is with us today.
In
1987, I came to Sri Lanka for the first time as a representative of
Canada's trade union movement. I worked with both women and men
workers all over Asia and the Pacific, but my favourite and most
rewarding work was done here in Sri Lanka. I worked with the Ceylon
Workers' Congress and most particularly with the Congress Labour
Foundation running a variety of training programmes and other
projects. Most of this work was focused on women.
It
was at one of these training programmes that I met my sister
Saraswathi Sivaguru. At that time, she was a co-ordinator in the
community development department of the CWC. She was struggling, as
were all women working inside the trade union movement at that time,
to improve herself so that she could in turn improve the lot of her
trade union sisters. She attended almost every training programme we
offered. She was very bright, but more than that, she was a hard
worker and she was driven by a strong desire to help others. As a
result of her hard work and dedication, she is here now, 27 years
later as the only woman elected on the governing side of the Central
Provincial Council.
Let
us follow Saraswathi's example and make our own futures. We have the
power within ourselves. We can talk to our daughters, cousins,
friends, co-workers whenever and wherever we meet them about the need
to free themselves and how to do it. We can act as role models just
like Saraswathi, living every day of our lives as examples of what
women can achieve with courage and determination.
There
is no need to hate men or to turn against them to achieve this. We
only need to move them aside a little to make room for ourselves and
our daughters at the head tables and front rows of our civilization.
With
that in mind, I salute you all, both women and men for being here
today. Let us all take up this struggle with women who have awakened
to their power leading the way. If we do so, we will make a better
world for women and for men.
