Liberia, Ghana, and Australia - 11 Months of PhD Research Journey

Where do I begin? It's been over a year since I wrote the last blog. It must take undying commitment and interest to religiously return in hopes that you might just catch a fresh read. I deeply apologise. Life's journeys has taken intricate turns - filled with excitements, uncertainties, new beginnings and achievements. Here I am, 4am in the middle of India's most literate State, thinking about my unacceptable negligence. It's time to step up to the plate as 2015 closes in on us. Without further a due...

Updates: I am 21 months into my PhD program. It's been intensive with self-imposed deadlines. Life is worth more than studying and racking up degrees. Don't get me wrong, my life-spine is completely intertwined with education, as many as I can possibly obtain without the limits of an average lifespan. Yet, at the same time, I feel this strong urge to move on to greater things. Complete the PhD, get a job  with decent pay and be creative about how to contribute toward making a social justice difference. 

So, after 9 months, I was done with the first year milestones (proposal and ethics approval) in anticipation to embark on an 11 month data collection. Saving the minute details for the actual PhD dissertation, I begun data collection in Australia. Sitting at the feet of experienced Aboriginal women advocates was the beginning of incomparable learning peaks. By December, I was packed and ready for Liberia via Accra, Ghana. I left Liberia 1992, just after the "first war" subsided. I returned 18 years after for the first time in 2010. Since then I've stayed for a maximum of 6 weeks. This time, I'm going for 7.5 months. Am I ready for this considering how "colonised and imperialised" my thoughts, appearance, countenance, speech etc., have become. Please note, as a matter of survivor, I'm morally obliged to "decolonise" my mind on a regular basis as an active form of resistance to Western hegemony and resilience for sustaining critical thinking skills.

How many times did I cry? How many times did I ask myself, "what am I doing here?". How many times did I question my resolve to focus my PhD research on "violence against Indigenous women and girls?" Many times too often. You see, my passion for social justice, gender equality and ending violence against women and children is so strong that I will stop at nothing to fight the cause. But having such deep-seated passion doesn't mean that I am not vulnerable. My spirit is broken too often than I can bare to contain. The overt sight of violence against women and children in Australia and Liberia keeps me awake at night. Experiencing my own retraumatisation especially when still vulnerable to abuse after years of acquiring confidence through education; makes for a long breathless thought of hopelessness. In essence, it has been a intense 11 months of trying and testing.

Without dismay, be ye optimistic! Because in spite of, I am. In barely 20 months, I have officially completed my second year which ended with a successful mid-term review showcasing the wealth of data collected during my fieldwork. Semi-structure interviews, surveys, secondary statistics, court cases, informal conversations, specific targeted reports, unique case studies and more. Over 1400  literature have been reviewed and are currently being assessed. With this much heap of data, its perfect time to migrate and cocoon into the next stage...transcribing, analysis and writing. Care to know? Well, this next phase happens in a new space...watch this space.

POWER TO WOMEN'S EQUALITY: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY!

WE ARE ONE WOMAN

Hello World:

I'm writing you with tear drop in one eye and a speck of promising hope in the other. My sadness springs from the untimely passing of President Hugo Chavez. I can't believe he's gone. Venezuela and the world over will forever feel this gap. We have all lost a great leader who stood up from global justice, not just in his country but for all of us in the so-called developing world who are smart enough to see the careful orchestration of Western dominance, capitalism, imperialism and neoliberal usurpation upon the globe. My deepest sympathy goes out to Chavez's family and the people of Venezuela. Power to freedom, equality and justice for the underprivileged.

Speaking of power to the underprivileged, today is 8 March! It is International Women's Day. My utmost appreciation goes out to my mother, who raised me in a gender-neutral home where my brothers and I shared cooking, cleaning and laundry chores. In my mother's house, there was no differential preference for boys and girls. In her world, girls were not cooks and cleaners. Neither were boys  breadwinners or machos. In her view, both sexes are very capable of conducting all human activities and what it boiled down to in those days on raising us, was - raising morally upright children who will treat everyone with respect and love. If anything at all, she supported my incessant drive for education way more than she did for my brothers. She ensured that I had everything I needed, despite our poor beginnings, in order to have the highest quality of education. Today, I can safely say, my mother made me who I am. Whatever I am today, is purely due to her constant support and the examples she led raising 8 children on her own. THANK YOU MAMA.

To all mothers, sisters, women, grandmas, aunties, and girls who bear the brunt of making the world a safer place for females, I say HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY! To all the men who have relentlessly stood by women to ensure that gender equality is achieved - I say HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY to you too!

Paix.