This is not my battle!
Ouch…was that the Glass Ceiling I just hit?
I’m sitting in a meeting, its just begun. I’ve just had an argument with Moses over the fact that I am getting a lot less pay for this particular contract then the two gentlemen I am working with, one of whom is doing less work and doing it a whole lot less fast then me. I had felt pressured into signing the damn contract, because if I didn’t it would hold up “everyone”, although the terms and salary had never been discussed with me. When I tried to protest about the pay there were a hundred “reasonable” explanations as to why I was getting less. But adds up to one thing – I’m being screwed. Now I want to tear it up, that bloody contract and Moses is arguing that there is work to be done and it’s pretty much too late anyway and I just have to live with it. He is getting impatient. I know this isn’t the place to try and deal with it but I can’t seem to stop myself. Inside the rage is building. Around me the meeting has moved on but my head it caught up inside itself and I can’t focus. They are discussing the division of work and George makes a suggestion that I should work with Anne and Louise, and ensure they are shown how to do the work. The conversation goes something like this:
George “I think Aoife should work with Anne and Louise on X”
Moses “Aoife, what do you think?”
Me “Does it matter?”
I’m acting like a sullen teenager and I know it, but the words and the hurt have escaped before I could stop it. George doesn’t say anything but I know he is despairing of what to do with me. I ‘m not sure he understands. My head is not right, it’s Monday and I haven’t eaten a meal since Friday night. Things are going wrong. All around me I feel like my choices are being cut off and I feel completely powerless. I feel like fleeing, getting out of the meeting, out of the city, out of the country but who I am kidding? Most days, I can’t even get out of bed. A hundred tiny things from the past two years are bubbling to the surface and I feel I cant take it anymore.
Then through the fog of my own frustration and confusion, something happens to pull me out of myself. There are sheets of paper being passed around, but there aren’t enough photocopies. Without missing a beat, Moses sends Anne to make some more copies. Besides me, Anne is the only other woman in the room. She is not a secretary, she has a technical degree from an Indian university. She got married last year and is reasonably pregnant. She rises to leave the room and make the copies and I can’t figure out who I am most frustrated with: Moses condescending request or Anne’s unthinking acceptance of it. I’m not sure either is aware of the inherent sexism of what has just transpired, nor, I fear does anyone else in the room. It’s depressing.
Looking at it again, I wonder if part of my anger was directed at myself. Anne’s action was a mirror of a hundred tiny things I’ve done, just to keep the peace, just so I’m not being thought of as difficult, just for an easy life – even though I am fully and painfully aware of the unfairness of the request. Like in torture, tiny drops dripping on your head which barely seem to be felt at first becoming huge crushing hammer blows to your self-esteem in the end. Drip, drip, drip….and my head hurts so much I want to scream.
And then I force myself to remember, this is not my battle! What objections can I raise if Anne willingly accepts to do the photocopying? What is there to be done? What do I change if I object to the hundred little barbs in how I am treated? What do I achieve, accept to be thought of as difficult? And after all that reasoning comes the most important question…can I cope with the way things are? Can I work with it and within it or am I disintegrating?
Integration or disintegration? It makes me think of another scenario, an episode from over a year ago. It’s about two in the morning when I run into Riccardo in the dingy nightclub. Riccardo is Italian and a young photographer hoping to make a name for himself taking photo’s in Eastern Congo. He has been based in Kigali for a little longer than me. Never predictable at the best of times, tonight he’s drunk and in a bad state. Although I’ve seen him around and about, it’s the first time I’ve had a conversation of any length with him. He’s ranting about the government here and how they are doing nothing and how they are contributing to the deaths in Congo.
Riccardo “2,000 people dead every fucking day, and the fucking bastards here aren’t doing fucking nothing”
The BBC recently called the situation in Eastern Congo “Africa’s Forgotten War”. They did some special interest pieces and then promptly got back to forgetting about it, like everyone else. The problem is that there is no out-and-out war per se, just a lot of rebel factions wreaking havoc on the local populations. And Kinshasa, despite having its own problems, is so far away (geographically and politically) it may as well be a different country. Kigali is one of the few places that does have an interest in Eastern Congo, if only for their own pilfering and “peace enforcing” interests.
Ten or fifteen minutes into the conversation and Riccardo, treading the path of so many of the seriously drunk, has swung from violent anger to tear-filled introspection. He says he doesn’t know if he can cope any more, seeing all that suffering, all those deaths – its eating away at him. It’s clearly not just words or drunken hyperbole, he doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies. I am also not totally sober, although not as far gone as my Roman companion, and am overtaken by desire to bring him back to reality…a whim, which on reflection and under the circumstances, may be viewed as cruel. I ask him if he thinks his photos will change anything anyway. I ask him to imagine the best case scenario: that he makes it back to Europe and his photos are successful and widely viewed, will anyone really care? Did not people have photos of Rwanda in 94 or Darfur and Iraq and Afghanistan now? And won’t the only outcome have been to make a career for himself out of other people’s misery?
He seemed to believe that it would make a difference so I didn’t press it any further. But when he again started to talk about how he couldn’t cope, I went off on him. At this stage, he was quiet distressed and depressed and had all the impression that he would willing walk into a minefield with the hope of getting hit if only he had the opportunity. To this day, I don’t know what was more surprising, what I said to him or his reaction to it. I asked him in rather stern terms, whether he thought anyone in Congo have a flying fuck that he was sitting in Kigali beating himself up and driving himself to drink and depression on their behalf? He might be all messed up about having to see their suffering, how much more did they suffer having to live through it? And all the craw-thumping in the world was not going to change that. Furthermore if he really wanted to help, rather than just depressing himself to an early grave on their behalf, he had better pull himself together and get on with what he came here to do. Either that, or he could leave before he did himself an injury.
I don’t know what I expected to happen, nor from where this stream of invective had materialised – although I suspect there was some residual frustrations with craw-thumping white people in Africa – but in a most amazing turn of events, Riccardo seemed to be in agreement with the point and started to pull himself together and cheer up. He even took me back to his place to see his photographs. And they were good pictures.
Now I am left face to face with the stark reality, am I strong enough to take my own advice? Riccardo was faced with a deeply personal trauma of what he had seen in Congo, but he was necessarily detached from it. I am faced with not only my own ‘trauma’ at seeing the treatment of women in the workplace but have the curse of, necessarily, not being detached from it. The question is the same though – what do I achieve by imploding and disintegrating because of it? And can I cope (do I even want to) or should I leave?
I’m sitting in a meeting, its just begun. I’ve just had an argument with Moses over the fact that I am getting a lot less pay for this particular contract then the two gentlemen I am working with, one of whom is doing less work and doing it a whole lot less fast then me. I had felt pressured into signing the damn contract, because if I didn’t it would hold up “everyone”, although the terms and salary had never been discussed with me. When I tried to protest about the pay there were a hundred “reasonable” explanations as to why I was getting less. But adds up to one thing – I’m being screwed. Now I want to tear it up, that bloody contract and Moses is arguing that there is work to be done and it’s pretty much too late anyway and I just have to live with it. He is getting impatient. I know this isn’t the place to try and deal with it but I can’t seem to stop myself. Inside the rage is building. Around me the meeting has moved on but my head it caught up inside itself and I can’t focus. They are discussing the division of work and George makes a suggestion that I should work with Anne and Louise, and ensure they are shown how to do the work. The conversation goes something like this:
George “I think Aoife should work with Anne and Louise on X”
Moses “Aoife, what do you think?”
Me “Does it matter?”
I’m acting like a sullen teenager and I know it, but the words and the hurt have escaped before I could stop it. George doesn’t say anything but I know he is despairing of what to do with me. I ‘m not sure he understands. My head is not right, it’s Monday and I haven’t eaten a meal since Friday night. Things are going wrong. All around me I feel like my choices are being cut off and I feel completely powerless. I feel like fleeing, getting out of the meeting, out of the city, out of the country but who I am kidding? Most days, I can’t even get out of bed. A hundred tiny things from the past two years are bubbling to the surface and I feel I cant take it anymore.
Then through the fog of my own frustration and confusion, something happens to pull me out of myself. There are sheets of paper being passed around, but there aren’t enough photocopies. Without missing a beat, Moses sends Anne to make some more copies. Besides me, Anne is the only other woman in the room. She is not a secretary, she has a technical degree from an Indian university. She got married last year and is reasonably pregnant. She rises to leave the room and make the copies and I can’t figure out who I am most frustrated with: Moses condescending request or Anne’s unthinking acceptance of it. I’m not sure either is aware of the inherent sexism of what has just transpired, nor, I fear does anyone else in the room. It’s depressing.
Looking at it again, I wonder if part of my anger was directed at myself. Anne’s action was a mirror of a hundred tiny things I’ve done, just to keep the peace, just so I’m not being thought of as difficult, just for an easy life – even though I am fully and painfully aware of the unfairness of the request. Like in torture, tiny drops dripping on your head which barely seem to be felt at first becoming huge crushing hammer blows to your self-esteem in the end. Drip, drip, drip….and my head hurts so much I want to scream.
And then I force myself to remember, this is not my battle! What objections can I raise if Anne willingly accepts to do the photocopying? What is there to be done? What do I change if I object to the hundred little barbs in how I am treated? What do I achieve, accept to be thought of as difficult? And after all that reasoning comes the most important question…can I cope with the way things are? Can I work with it and within it or am I disintegrating?
Integration or disintegration? It makes me think of another scenario, an episode from over a year ago. It’s about two in the morning when I run into Riccardo in the dingy nightclub. Riccardo is Italian and a young photographer hoping to make a name for himself taking photo’s in Eastern Congo. He has been based in Kigali for a little longer than me. Never predictable at the best of times, tonight he’s drunk and in a bad state. Although I’ve seen him around and about, it’s the first time I’ve had a conversation of any length with him. He’s ranting about the government here and how they are doing nothing and how they are contributing to the deaths in Congo.
Riccardo “2,000 people dead every fucking day, and the fucking bastards here aren’t doing fucking nothing”
The BBC recently called the situation in Eastern Congo “Africa’s Forgotten War”. They did some special interest pieces and then promptly got back to forgetting about it, like everyone else. The problem is that there is no out-and-out war per se, just a lot of rebel factions wreaking havoc on the local populations. And Kinshasa, despite having its own problems, is so far away (geographically and politically) it may as well be a different country. Kigali is one of the few places that does have an interest in Eastern Congo, if only for their own pilfering and “peace enforcing” interests.
Ten or fifteen minutes into the conversation and Riccardo, treading the path of so many of the seriously drunk, has swung from violent anger to tear-filled introspection. He says he doesn’t know if he can cope any more, seeing all that suffering, all those deaths – its eating away at him. It’s clearly not just words or drunken hyperbole, he doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies. I am also not totally sober, although not as far gone as my Roman companion, and am overtaken by desire to bring him back to reality…a whim, which on reflection and under the circumstances, may be viewed as cruel. I ask him if he thinks his photos will change anything anyway. I ask him to imagine the best case scenario: that he makes it back to Europe and his photos are successful and widely viewed, will anyone really care? Did not people have photos of Rwanda in 94 or Darfur and Iraq and Afghanistan now? And won’t the only outcome have been to make a career for himself out of other people’s misery?
He seemed to believe that it would make a difference so I didn’t press it any further. But when he again started to talk about how he couldn’t cope, I went off on him. At this stage, he was quiet distressed and depressed and had all the impression that he would willing walk into a minefield with the hope of getting hit if only he had the opportunity. To this day, I don’t know what was more surprising, what I said to him or his reaction to it. I asked him in rather stern terms, whether he thought anyone in Congo have a flying fuck that he was sitting in Kigali beating himself up and driving himself to drink and depression on their behalf? He might be all messed up about having to see their suffering, how much more did they suffer having to live through it? And all the craw-thumping in the world was not going to change that. Furthermore if he really wanted to help, rather than just depressing himself to an early grave on their behalf, he had better pull himself together and get on with what he came here to do. Either that, or he could leave before he did himself an injury.
I don’t know what I expected to happen, nor from where this stream of invective had materialised – although I suspect there was some residual frustrations with craw-thumping white people in Africa – but in a most amazing turn of events, Riccardo seemed to be in agreement with the point and started to pull himself together and cheer up. He even took me back to his place to see his photographs. And they were good pictures.
Now I am left face to face with the stark reality, am I strong enough to take my own advice? Riccardo was faced with a deeply personal trauma of what he had seen in Congo, but he was necessarily detached from it. I am faced with not only my own ‘trauma’ at seeing the treatment of women in the workplace but have the curse of, necessarily, not being detached from it. The question is the same though – what do I achieve by imploding and disintegrating because of it? And can I cope (do I even want to) or should I leave?
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