Secret Keepers & Path Makers

Brown and gold layers of cloth enveloping a distinctive figure rich with the righteous scars of creating and bearing witness to life. Her skin weathered but her hands strong, she inhabited a space physically demanding and emotionally taxing, all while maintaining a knowing calm. Whereas I struggled to restore a semblance of ‘zen’ amongst the chaos of the market – imagine store fronts masked by a wave of makeshift stalls occupying every nook and cranny of streets and alleys, which pulsed with hundreds of simultaneous negotiations all set to the soundtrack of local Ghanaian music interrupted by competing horns in a sauna-like heat – this woman effortlessly reconnected with vendors who had clearly become old friends after decades of patronage. Arguably the informal Queen of Madina, this woman reminded me of the powerful and often overlooked role women play in our communities. Her movement built upon an understanding of things from the vantage point of an observer whose survival requires managing the intricacies of a system that often favors the needs of others above her own.

Women navigate chaotic systems tangibly unwelcome to their presence. They organize disparate pieces into a grand puzzle to manufacture a path for themselves and their families, often against all odds. Women are the unspoken leaders of our packs, the keepers of our secrets, and the rocks to which we anchor our lives. Prescribed a passivity that remains entirely counter to lived experience, women in actuality are actively building, organizing, directing, and creating, just as the Queen of Madina did in the Ghanaian market I visited last week.

It is with this understanding that I embark to Beirut in one month’s time. June 16th (flights are officially booked!) marks the launch of Women In Conflict, Stage I: Lebanon. While in Beirut and the surrounding area, I will listen, gather, and catalogue the stories of Syrian, Kurdish, and Lebanese women from within conflict past and present. These personal narratives will serve as the roadmap to (1) our collective reimagining of ‘woman’ as more than passive victim of conflict and (2) project expansion in 2016. The Women In Conflict project employs women’s own voices to free womanhood from presumed passivity, allowing us to understand women as active agents of change, even if that change might be violent or discursive in nature. Our ability to understand women as active in conflict serves to enrich our understanding of women as active in peacebuilding. From here, we change the world.

Thank you for your continued support of this work. The Women In Conflict project is enriched by your encouraging words and emails of introduction. Your financial support continues to lay the foundation from which the project grows (learn more about Stage II and III here).

Until the next time. I promise to return with more stories (and photos!) of secret keepers, path makers, and even madina queens.