By Amer Mayen Dhieu, Queensland, Australia.
You are stronger, wiser, intelligent and worthy woman, you have responsibilities in your shoulder: responsibility to inspires, responsibility to influences, responsibility to motivates and responsibility to empowers; There is no surrounding worth being transform than the surrounding of young women beside you.
Dear my intellectual sisters,
There was a time we were under the impression of not being worthy enough. There was another time we revolted from our parents with conviction that we can make it by our own without their input. Those days were burdensome not only to us but to those who care so much about our future and our welfare. Apparently, there is saying in Dinka: “waan ci cit wen” (direct English translation: yesterday is not like today). I love this saying and I use it occasionally in my everyday conversation.
Unlike yesterday for us young ladies, Beverly Sills said: “there is a growing strength in women but it is in the forehead not forearms”. Today we have handful battalion of women, an army of intellectual women full of ability to inspire, influence, motivate and empower the majority of customary women left behind.
My deepest fear and most frightening scene is that these informed women are not giving room to other women, be it in form of influence, motivation or inspiration. Instead, they are showing up with stickers of “I want to be the only rising star” known for my educational background, good writing skills, good literature and comprehensive skills and so forth on their foreheads.
My sincere entreaty is: remove the damn “I want to be the only champion” stickers on your foreheads” and instead “place them where they will truly do you the most good.” You should plant them on vulnerable women.
Sincerely speaking, it doesn’t really matter that much whether or not you are the best in writing, public speaking or group participation. The ability of a woman to triumph start with a heartfelt desire to create, nurture and transform her surrounding. There is no surrounding worth being transform than the surrounding of young women beside you.
Many people including myself have playfully, and sometimes intentionally, called me a feminist. Though I sometimes agree with some fundamental feminists’ tenets, there are certain forms of feminism—radical and neo-liberal feminists—I strongly disagree with. For this reason and the fact that feminism campaign is mostly limited to women (at least within our community), I slightly disagree with people who brand or refer to me as a feminist. I have a deep passion for the belief that every individual who has not yet reach his or her potentials should be encourage to realise their full potential irrespective of their gender differences.
Nonetheless, my desire to influence other women has limitations. For instance, I can sometimes be criticised and urged to stop writing with the contention that my writings is doing so little, is not clear and full of grammatical errors, or simply that I am not capable of being Mrs.-know-it-all.
This caricaturing of my personalities and abilities, however, has never been a setback to my expectable dream. I continue to speak my mind freely and generously with the hope that some day, the intellectual women will finish the line with better notions and ideas way superior and desirable than mine. At the end, we shall have one common goal and that is helping other women realise their full potentials.
Can the intellectual women please call for “less swagger and more sway” among the young generation of our women
It might sound like a joke but there are millions of women who are desperately in need of inspiration, motivation, influence and empowerment from their fellow women. I am one of them. Some are back home and some are abroad.
Although some of young South Sudanese women in the West and outside South Sudan took the challenge and have managed to complete their higher education, there are still other groups of young women who need to be empowered and recruited to form a generation that will later speak up for equal opportunities and better treatments for women in the country.
These are young girls who are likely still under “honeymoon” stage in life and whose goal is to make and manifest the essence of “YOLO” slogan. The “YOLO” slogan has been famously used by celebrities in Hollywood such as 50 Cent, Queen Latifah, Usher and Rihanna as an expression on how life should be approached which obviously stand for “you only live ones”.
This slogan inculcates a false belief in young girls’ minds in which some have already decided to deal with life as social phenomena that need only engrossment in wild and fun social activities. This is not inferior in any way however, as Maya Angelou stated, “you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; instead you need to be able to throw something back.” I personally see the side taken by this generation of young women serving so little and sadly directed on one way. They are not throwing any hands back to their fellow women left with no opportunities without being urge to cease the bad practice either.
Unlike women, elders siding under the shed of their reserved houses in villages do urge young men abroad to go to school and return home to help in national development. So how come none of you intellectual women is informing these little girls about the heavy load of work left behind, basically helping other women in the country to realise their potentials? I believe there are young women at home who need just a voice to waking them up. For them to do this they need your dear experiences.
How “you” intellectual women are playing negative role in helping out our young women.
An anonymous author once wrote: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, champagne in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out.”
I am seeing a lot of abilities in you all. I mean you the intellectual women. You write perfectly with good English; you have been to good schools; you have good opportunities and you are very much educated and duly patriotic.
While you’re seeing all of these things in you just like I see them, have you ever thought of passing them to other women who have none of your qualities, skills and experiences? If I were to answer that, I would say that all you are showing them is negative pride like the one I heard on SBS Dinka interview last week with one of South Sudanese intellectual woman.
When you all know you are the only intellectual women who know better than everyone else, why is it competitive attitudes that we are seeing in you? My question is, did you spend 12 years of your high and primary school and four years of your higher education only to show our ordinary women how well-educated you are and how correctly you write and spell English words; how superb you read, analyze and present information in intellectual manner?
Didn’t you go to school with the goal of changing yourself and be who you want to be in a productive way that will influence other women so that we all be like you? Or don’t you yet realise your power and ability to influence, motivate, inspire and empower me and other ordinary women? Do you intellectual women really know that you are setting nothing but a bad example to this young generation of women coming after you?
I might be wrong anyway. I might be forcing you to do something you are not passionate about. However, empowering young women is a “must be done” duty of every intellectual woman that thinks what she has achieved is good enough. If “you don’t like being a door-mate, then get off” the path and give a chance to other women and men who are passionate about empowering young women.
The ability and intellect you preach to the world and the one we are seeing in you is “a bricks and dreams” women need to realise. Your skills and experiences are the greatest powers that are needed to bring ordinary women out of their tedious life. How you are using these skills and experiences establish the inspiration they are longing to see in you. If you act aggressively and engage in destructive competition to women who are almost at the same level with you, how will you act toward the poor innocent women in the villages who have never attended any school?
How You Should Use Your Intellectuality?
Edith Wharton says, “there are two ways to spread light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects”. On the other hand Marianne Williamson asserts, “we are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we are not extending it to the present.”
1- Competitive behaviours imbue nothing but hatred, self-assertion and selfishness. If you care less about sharing your ideas with other ordinary women because they are not at your level, be humble and act intellectually so the downstairs women will be envious of you and work harder to be just like you.
2- If you think you are intellectually perfect, then stop using abusive language as a tool to debate your high intellectual views. Debate in a mature way that will set example to other women who are yet to learn how what empowerment is.
3- For less educated women, if you wish to share your knowledge with other women who have not yet reach your level but fear that you will be criticized by the well educated women, speak using your mouth. Start at your very own backyard. The one sister you will inspire will inspire another young girl in her own way and that number will never be counted back to the number of those women who are yet to learn how to read and write.
4- You are more totally away from reality if you think there is a certain group of women you must associate and debate your ideas with. If you only want to be in group with people you’re in the same level, then be aware there is no one you are teaching. Those who need you most are the ones you refuse to debate with.
Thing You Should Not Do
1- Stop pulling curtains on women who are trying to hike mountain by challenging them with how inexperienced they are in hiking. If you simply don’t want to share your experience with them, leave them to try out by their own without your negative interference.
2- Stop negative pride and ego like the one I heard last week from SBS Dinka interview. Your credibility will be recognised by the very mere people you will inspire and that will speak volume by itself.
3- Remember always, the best moment to be proud of is when you see what you are doing is helping other people the way you have intended (or could have never imagined).
4- Stop giving yourself credit, let the people you serve do it.
5- Overall, always remember: “you are unique just like everyone else.” Therefore, “identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in, where you want to go” and be humble to share it.
In short, be a woman that inspires others in your own small ways.
PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd - South Sudan 
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SPLA
Posted: September 19, 2014 by PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd. in CommentaryLeaving other factors constant for the National army to be more ethical because many things needs time to function systematically, I would only write on the “speed” you drive your cars on the streets of Juba.
BY KON Joseph LEEK
Our dear SPLA gallant forces, we appreciate your roles right from when you started emerging to present. You used to be too protective and defensive as well as being offensive to your enemies if their aim is to destroy us/you.
In the on-going crises we very much appreciate your roles for protecting civilians though there are complains raised by some institutions that you slips a little (those are the organizations who fail to understand what you are going through-they do not see the way we do), we do understand that you are doing your best for a new Nation faced by too many man-made calamities cannot just emerge suddenly like a GOST and become an “Heaven on Earth”.
Besides all these, there is one thing we civilians do not understand from you, the way you drive your cars on the streets of Juba, speed and the overtaking. Your cars’ speed is always too high and overtakes where it is not necessary to overtake and even driving on a wrong lane.
I believe your drivers are professionals, the way they control those speedy cars explains it but what confuse me is why there is a gross disrespect of traffic laws by our brothers, you, the SPLA. That always leaves our mostly women-fearful-and-less-committed-to-laws-traffic police stand aghast with huge failure to give solutions to what the military does on the streets.
Leaving them (traffic) with thousands creative ways of solving civilians and foreigners’ problems. To some extent, we applause their (traffic) roles while admiring and pity their innocence when they are dealing with the SPLA.
Another besides the above is, if it is your(the military) car knocking the civilian’s car, it is you (military) to hasten jump out of your car and begin to threaten us unless you give-in and calm your eyes that had been rubbed and fumed by resentment.
It is not of secret, we know our own SPLA, you are everywhere with us, if it is your car that has knocked ours (civilians) or our car knocking yours (because to you, it means the same), then we just know that Lord God, our/your father has forsaken you at the times you needed him most (that moment).
Since they are “hard nuts to crack”, their persuasion would not help at all though you kneel you would just be flinging yourself down in an unexciting submissive posture of a mere supplicant that would not help because it means nothing to them.
What can only help is to “show a clean pair of heels” because once we are at hand we just know that we have got “a sword of Damocles hanging on our (victim) heads” because few minutes after they are done with you and you got some magical powers to plant your eyes on someone else’ head and you have a view of yourself, believe me you would fail to recognize your own wrecked self.
It is worse when you are a little old or weak that you would be unable to speed away, from there you would be faced with two dangerous situations, each of which is to be dreaded as much as the other; that is between risking running on the road in the cars with your feet or getting yourself arrested by them (the army).
So our dear military brothers, you are making our lives very tough on the streets that if we see your car coming on that break-neck and intimidating speed, we hasten run out of the streets fearing our lives so that one do not end up trapped between the wheels of a military car.
In the past, those times when we were still in the bush (when SPLA was still a rebel), I can vividly remember that when your car comes, civilians would eventually know that they are saved because your cars used to be less speedy and were (earlier SPLA) respecting civilians a lot, something which has a little bit changed now (if that, am I not saddened by your driving).
I don’t know if it was because there were no tarmac roads then, that you want to recover the speed you might have lost in the past or that the military were more discipline in the past than now?
If yours is to scare us, then you do not need to scare us with life-threatening-tools/machines because we know that you are no alien to them (those things that kills) for you know how to carry them but it is important to know that civilians are not akin to that life-style.
You also know well that the military comes out of the civilians and upon retiring from the military; you join the civilians, in that it is better to observe your future relationship with the civilians. Who knows after having retired from the military you would want the civilians to elect you as their president or governor
Also, most of the military mistreating us do not live in the military quarters, they are staying in civilian homes with civilians, it is quiet creepy if you think that the civilian you live at home with is better than the one you meet on the street.
If you have a problem with civilians that drives on the roads then start with the one you are at home with, that is if they have one (car).
We are soon going to join the community of East Africa who are “millets of days” since they gained their independences, those ones who have learned from their mistakes, the coupés, economic depression, rebellion, tribalism among others and now fully stands with all their four legs. They are far much different from us if we are to compare our legs’ steadfastness with them.
Unfortunately, our legs’ steadfastness have been greatly reduced by the already-existing problems that we do not need someone to tell us (because we know them all), these banes that make our legs loss-balance, these horribles that have weaken our National legs due to lack of experience that results to these made-made calamities.
We can be qualified to guide our Nation, stabilize our economy but experience is another thing (for experience is not the same thing as qualification). How do we stand out in the East Africa community? Won’t they always be viewing us as amateurs? They won’t care whether we are 9000 days since we were born, they will only care that we are another Nation like them and so with our speedy military cars, won’t it be a little set back in that community (leaving other factors constant !)
Our military has been driving like this even before 15th Dec 2013; we expect our military to be driving with care on the streets and to only speed in case of emergency such that we also know the different between when they are speeding and when they are not and it will also help us to differentiate when there is emergency and when there is not.
We want our military to also know that military is a profession of which if you are in its uniform, you are not viewed as an individual by the civilians but as a Nation hence if it is a military man in his full uniform intimidating the civilian then we shall view you as a Nation directly mistreating its own citizen.
You do not need to treat us like your enemies; we are friends, real friends. We do not have any beep between us but you want to make us believe what is not true for doing to us what is so unfortunate of you to do to us. We love you guys only that there is nothing we can do to you to show that we really love you and you are as well too busy to realize that we love you.
We want you to be a military if one glance at, you feel agitated to join.
I once went to Bilpam military head quarters to bank from there at Equity bank and made my own observation of the military of how you drive but I really saw the opposite of what you do on the roads of Juba, I guess you do that (slowly drive) to let your seniors see that you are indeed discipline.
Can you please bring that Bilpam-driving style to Juba roads without the orders from your bosses, the generals but from me, a civilian?!
It is not of recent that we saw this (bad driving) from the SPLA, the present has been there right from the start only that we were either too busy to notice or too blind to see and now that we can see/or if times come, I urge you to curve your driving style a little to the moderate one for I know that being busy is never given a leave for you to adjust yourself (you can adjust yourself while busy).
We want you to be our best friends and defenders to respect and love not our worse defenders to fear and despise.
The writer is a South Sudanese journalist living in Juba and can be reached on j.konleek@gmail.com
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