Guy’s gone now. He taught me HTML and I helped him create the website by supplying the content. Now that he is gone, I will finish it. But you can check it out now: http://www.indecos.com/
Always good to talk to a fellow Canadian. Had so many epiphanies while he was here. We were talking to Kamani from INDECOS about the divorce question and she said she always hears her neighbours fighting and I asked “in a case like this do you think that divorce is ok?” and she gave the usual diversion “this is our culture.”
I realized right there that the INDECOS powerpoint that I had seen earlier for the “Stop Violence against Women” program had meant what I was afraid it meant. It had advised the women to “face challenges” which at the time I had hoped meant to leave the man despite family pressures but now I have discovered meant to stay with the man, even if he is beating you. “We tell them to be nicer to their husbands,” Pearl told me when I asked her about it today, “we think it is better for a child to have a bad father than no father.”
The lawyer who spoke to them was not telling them that they can get a divorce if they need to but just telling them about their human rights so that they would try to change the situation, not leave it.
Guy had spent 6 years in Africa and thinks that the women’s situation is generally much worse here, even though he said that the men in Guinea would tell each other that they must beat their wives once a week to keep them in check. As we learned in the orientation, the violence here is not necessarily physical, but more mental, and I can see this in the way that women’s over-dependency.
Nilu told me last week that she has to ask Pathi before she does anything. She will text him at the bank to ask if she can go and buy eggs or visit a friend. Sometimes he texts back saying “no.”
“Why?” I asked and she told me “because there are many problems like love affairs in Sri Lanka.” And when she states love affairs as her explanation for this obsessive male dominance she does not even mean cheating. When they say affair they simply mean a relationship in which the parents have not picked and/or approved of the spouse.
What we call a fiancé is what they call boyfriend/ girlfriend and what we call a girlfriend or boyfriend is what they call an affair. So, she is basically saying that because girls want to date, and the fact that she was set up with a traditional proposal where she did not know Pathi, he will never trust her and so must exhibit is control around the clock to make himself feel powerful.
And as I sit in shock, taking this all in, Nilhu says with her usual giggle, “what to do, no?” and I realize that she is a 38 year old little girl.
Always good to talk to a fellow Canadian. Had so many epiphanies while he was here. We were talking to Kamani from INDECOS about the divorce question and she said she always hears her neighbours fighting and I asked “in a case like this do you think that divorce is ok?” and she gave the usual diversion “this is our culture.”
I realized right there that the INDECOS powerpoint that I had seen earlier for the “Stop Violence against Women” program had meant what I was afraid it meant. It had advised the women to “face challenges” which at the time I had hoped meant to leave the man despite family pressures but now I have discovered meant to stay with the man, even if he is beating you. “We tell them to be nicer to their husbands,” Pearl told me when I asked her about it today, “we think it is better for a child to have a bad father than no father.”
The lawyer who spoke to them was not telling them that they can get a divorce if they need to but just telling them about their human rights so that they would try to change the situation, not leave it.
Guy had spent 6 years in Africa and thinks that the women’s situation is generally much worse here, even though he said that the men in Guinea would tell each other that they must beat their wives once a week to keep them in check. As we learned in the orientation, the violence here is not necessarily physical, but more mental, and I can see this in the way that women’s over-dependency.
Nilu told me last week that she has to ask Pathi before she does anything. She will text him at the bank to ask if she can go and buy eggs or visit a friend. Sometimes he texts back saying “no.”
“Why?” I asked and she told me “because there are many problems like love affairs in Sri Lanka.” And when she states love affairs as her explanation for this obsessive male dominance she does not even mean cheating. When they say affair they simply mean a relationship in which the parents have not picked and/or approved of the spouse.
What we call a fiancé is what they call boyfriend/ girlfriend and what we call a girlfriend or boyfriend is what they call an affair. So, she is basically saying that because girls want to date, and the fact that she was set up with a traditional proposal where she did not know Pathi, he will never trust her and so must exhibit is control around the clock to make himself feel powerful.
And as I sit in shock, taking this all in, Nilhu says with her usual giggle, “what to do, no?” and I realize that she is a 38 year old little girl.
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