The African Woman

#8March INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

The lyrics of the song “Inventas” by Vanesa Martín used to say: “Of all the women that live in me, there are some that I don’t know…”.

African women show us every day that their perseverance sustains this bleeding continent. In a patriarchal world, they hardly have any political power or decision-making capacity, sometimes they do not even have the right to choose a husband, clothes or even the meaning of their lives. Most of them are born and die predestined to be mothers, wives, unpaid rural workers, sometimes even sex slaves. Yet they survive. And Africa with them. Madagascar is no exception.

Sometimes I travel those dusty tracks of the most remote #Madagascar and observe life in the villages. The women work the fields indolently, take care of the domestic animals, the many household chores, the rudimentary cooking, the countless babies that populate the village, the elderly, the sick, their husbands….

They are the ones who suffer the consequences of wars that they almost never caused, of famines of which they are mere silent witnesses, of natural catastrophes… But they still get up every morning to fetch water from a distant well, or firewood from a lost forest, or to sow or collect some rice to feed their numerous families.

This is not the place to value the work of their men, although my African experience and the perception I have of this island after living there for many years, pushes me to assure that without them, everything would be different: Africa would be less magical without its “African Mamas”. To all of them (on this day so celebrated in a somewhat hypocritical way around the world) a memory, respect and all our affection.

I believe that for once, it should be a man who publicly paid this heartfelt tribute on behalf of our entire team.

“Of all the women that inhabit me… there are many still that I have never met…”

𝘿𝙚 @𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙜𝙞𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣 𝙮 @𝙟𝙖𝙪𝙢𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙭𝙖𝙨 of the #IndigoBe_team 𝙖 𝙩𝙤𝙙𝙖𝙨 𝙡𝙖𝙨 𝙢𝙪𝙟𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙨 👏