Girl Rising: the film and the reality

GIRL RISING – the film

Last week I held my long awaited-for big screening event of the film Girl Rising. It features the stories of 9 girls from around the world who challenged social barriers to education and equality. It’s really an incredible film, both thoughtfully and skillfully produced to deliver a powerful message: educate girls and change the world for the better. It is a story of hope, a story of global unity in the fight for gender equality, and an inspiration to take action.

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When I first set out to make this event happen I knew it would be a lot of work, but I’m quite sure I didn’t realize just how much… Over the last couple months, I negotiated prices with the cinema hall, worked to have the film properly translated into Nepali (it’s quite poetic, and I wanted to be sure the translation carried the poetic meaning), typed in the Devanāgarī alphabet, and teamed up with a KOICA volunteer to add home-rigged subtitles. The translation and cinema hall were not free of cost, but I insisted the event be free to the attendees. To assist with fund-raising I found a devoted community supporter – a man who has raised three strong, well-educated young women – and we went around to government and NGO office after office for meeting after meeting. It was a long an arduous process but in the end we managed to have the event fully locally supported. Even while it felt like pulling teeth, begging for pennies, I felt it was a valuable endeavor. And now – I know the program officers for all the offices around town! Valuable social capital for my future projects.

And then – the event day finally came! I arrived early for the tech set-up, the final sound check, and other logistics. My volunteers came on time, and all but three or four attendees showed up when they were supposed to. The majority of our audience consisted of high school students (around 120!),followed by international volunteers from the region interested in replicating the program, officers from related government and NGO offices, and supporting community members. Immediately following the film, my trained VSO ICS volunteers lead discussion sessions with small groups of students – asking them how they felt about the film, what social struggles it addressed, and what they could do address similar social struggles in their communities. I was really impressed with their enthusiasm and participation, young women and men alike, and truly hope they will take that enthusiasm back to their school via their own awareness event.

The film is so incredibly powerful. Spending hours tweaking the subtitles, I watched and re-watched each story. And with each viewing, each story became stronger, touching me more and more deeply. The closing story from Afghanistan still gives me chills. It’s the story of a girl who was sold into marriage at the age of 11. Sold, for the grand sum of $5000 USD, with which her parents bought her older brother a truck. As she puts it, “my body is a resource which can be spent for men’s pleasure or profit.” Nine months later, as a 12 year-old, she gave birth to a son. She does her duty, cleaning and cooking without complaint because she knows that to complain could get her killed. But she is determined not to let this keep her from becoming educated. She tells the viewer “Don’t tell me it has always been so. I don’t believe in your resignation. Do not tell me the blame lies in my religion, in my culture, in my traditions.” She is determined to learn to read and write – to be educated. “If you try to stop me I will just try harder. Put me in a pit, I will climb out. If you kill me, there will be other girls to rise up and take my place. I will find a way to endure, to prevail.” She speaks with such conviction. She informs you, “I am change.”

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It’s incredibly moving – you want to jump to action. You want to help. You want to effect change – if only you knew how. It’s not easy. For my part, spreading awareness by sharing this film with Nepali youth has been one step. Over the weekend, I continued with another – will a new mural, a mural that delivers this message:

I am a women. I am powerful.
I will be educated. I will be heard. I will lead. I will make my presence felt.
I am the author of my own fate. I deserve respect.

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GIRL RISING – the reality

As these words glistened wet on the wall, one of my young friends (who I will call Anita) prepared for her wedding. An arranged marriage that she herself had only learned about one week before. She is 20 years old and had been staying with her brother and his wife in the bazaar while she studied. This was a marriage she had not planned, a marriage she had absolutely zero warning was coming, zero input in the decision. The choice was made for her.

Upon the news, her life changed immediately and forever. She was to marry this man, this absolute stranger, one week later. How powerless would that make you feel? I mean, faced with this news what options did she have? The groom’s family had been promised a bride. Her family had said yes, the community already knew, payments had been made. To refuse would bring shame to her family. To run away would mean losing her family’s support, both financially and emotionally. And yet to go through with it meant to lose her family too. Upon marriage, Nepali brides literally become members of the groom’s family – all of her possessions were packed up and moved into the groom’s family home, her finances become his family’s responsibility. If he chooses to live in village with his family, she must live there cooking and cleaning for his family. Depending on how strict her own parents are, she may only be allowed back home on special holidays, and her father may never take water from her hand again.

I arrived in the afternoon of the first day’s ceremonies – the giving the bride away – led by a priest and the brides family at her parents house, her childhood home. Her makeup smeared gently across her face from wiping a constant stream of tears. Mid-ceremony she went upstairs to change from her green and red sari into pure red, indicating the change from maid to married. I myself was changing into a sari in her room when she entered, pouncing on me for a long hug. Half a dozen relatives followed and began fussing with her cloths and make up. Removing one sari, wrapping her up in the next, folding and refolding until the pleats were perfect. Replacing the green thread in her hair with red. Wiping the smears off her face with fresh powder. A solemn expression sat frozen on her face. As I watched, I could hardly hold back my tears. Imagine what it would feel like to be married to a total stranger! To leave everything you know behind to live with this stranger and his family! I watched as the women changed her jewelry, adding bells around her ankles. Chains, I thought to myself. Binds of new servitude. 

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Sari change complete, she returned downstairs to finish the complex wedding ceremony. She asked me to sit beside her, so I did, only getting up to snap a few photos now and again. Spread out before her and the groom were a couple dozen bowls made of leaves, filled with a variety of items sacred to Hindu religion: ghee (purified butter), sacred thread, rice, vibrant tika powder, bright orange marigolds, oil, holy water, incense. A priest read prayers from a small book, leading them through each step – telling them when to sprinkle water, toss flowers, wave incense sticks clockwise around the fire. A length of white fabric was tied in a large knot, draped over their shoulders. A large group of extended family and community members surrounded them, drinking tea, nibbling sel roti, murmuring among themselves as children bumbled around.

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When the day’s ceremony was finally came to an end, they took a series of group photographs various family members, mostly using camera-phones. There are no professional photographers in village. Then we sat, and she insisted on providing me refreshment – tea and roti. I accepted, only later to realize that she was using me, her special guest, as a stalling tactic. As I sipped my tea her sisters brought down her suitcases and my bag, and men carried them across the bridge to a waiting jeep. Time was up. We were already late. It was time to move to the groom’s house. Time to officially no longer call her parent’s house “home”. And honestly, it felt like she was being kicked out, disowned from her family. When her father told her it was time and took her hand, she resisted. She bust into tears — her face screwed up and wrung itself out. She didn’t move. She grabbed whoever and whatever she could. Obliged to assist, her dutiful big brother – my first true Nepali friend in Baglung – picked her up and carried her, carried her down the path, across the suspension bridge over the river to the jeep waiting on the other side. When he set her down, she clung to him sobbing, desperately asking, “Why? Why?” over and over. As he held her, her brother broke into tears too. Earlier she had said she wanted me to come with her that night, and I said I’d do whatever she wanted me to do. So I ran across the bridge after them and got into the jeep from the other side. I got in and offered my arms to her for what comfort they could provide. She climbed into the jeep, collapsed into my embrace and sobbed on my shoulder, staining my cheek red with the tika powder from her forehead. We sat for about ten minutes that way while others loaded her suitcases and piled into the car. She finally calmed herself when her new husband climbed in and sat beside her, but kept her eyes shut tight as we finally pulled away from her childhood home. 

Four river crossings, one flat tire and three hours later, we arrived at the groom’s village where a welcome party awaited. An archway of bamboo marked the entry, flags stretched over the courtyard filled with peopled singing, drumming and dancing – extended family members and neighbors of the groom. I realized, the bride’s party consisted only of her elder sister, her one-year-old nephew and myself. Never having quite been in this position at a Nepali wedding before I decided to follow the sister’s lead. This meant sticking close to my friend as she parted the crowd and presented necklaces to her new mother-in-law, sister-in-law and grandmother-in-law, then taking shelter inside with a cup of steaming hot tea. The groom joined the dancing outside, popping in occasionally to beckon his bride to join him. I leaned in to ask her what she wanted to do. Dancing was not high on her list, but per Nepali culture I knew well that they wouldn’t stop until the bride danced at least once. After dragging out my cup of tea as long as I could, her sister and I took my friend outside and did everything we could to encourage her to dance. I tried telling her to ignore the crowd and just dance with me, but she stubbornly stood still, yanked around by her groom now and again. In this instance I completely sympathized with her – Nepalis can be relentless about making a person dance alone in front of a crowd, and am of the firm belief that no one should be forced to dance, that it’s something one must be in the mood to do. It always feels a little like being forced to do something for someone’s entertainment. At any rate, her sister eventually said something that got through to her and Anita finally broke into dance for about a minute. That was enough, the crowd was satisfied, and we were allowed to tuck away to the groom’s bedroom upstairs.

As the evening grew on and the crowd gradually dissipated, a quiet sense of guilt crept over me. Here I’d spent so much time and effort raising awareness about women’s inequality, but in the heat of the moment what had I done? How had I been proactive? It’s a tricky balance, asserting change without disrespecting people who are simply following the social norms they know. But it dawned on me: I can influence my friend and the community to challenge those norms. I realized while it was too late to put off the wedding, that there was nothing I could do to stop what had already been done, that didn’t mean there was nothing I could do for my friend. I could help her regain some sense of power; to remember that, despite the powerlessness of the situation, she is not powerless. That even though everything about the ritual and social norms puts her at a disadvantage does not mean she must succumb to it. She can do her duty as a wife without becoming a passive servant. 

As her sister and I readied for bed, Anita asked me where I was sleeping. I told her I didn’t know, that I would sleep where ever she told me to sleep, to which she replied “Next to me?” She spoke in a semi-playful tone, a gentle attempt to mask the sincerity of her request. But the implication was clear: she didn’t want to sleep alone with her new husband yet, she didn’t want the pressure. Consider this: she’s 20 years old, from a culture where men and women cannot touch beyond shaking hands in public, where there’s hardly any real privacy to have the chance to break those boundaries “in private” (there’s virtually no place to go where the neighborhood won’t notice and gossip about it), and between those things and her personalty I can tell you she is almost certainly a virgin. She’s probably never been kissed or even cuddled before. And to have that first time forced upon her so suddenly, after a day that was already emotionally exhausting – I really don’t blame her for being a tad intimidated. At that moment, I realized the opportunity had come for me in influence her story.

And so I told her, in a slow clear voice: “Your husband is not your boss.” Her sister’s eyes darted my direction. I repeated myself. My implication was simple: if she didn’t want to sleep alone with him that night, then she shouldn’t have to. I know well that the day will have to come, she will have to face it eventually, but – in my mind that day would come quite soon enough and there was no reason that it had to be that night. To my knowledge it is not a requirement for it in Hindu marriages. A few moments later I asked her to come beside me on the bed and I asked in a whisper, “Do you have a condom?” “No,” she replied shyly. “You must ask him. I have some in my room. Next time you are in the bazaar I will give you some. Or you can get them from the health post.” I’m not saying she shouldn’t have children, but – I wanted her to consider that she doesn’t have to have them immediately if she isn’t ready to, and her husband should respect that.

When her husband returned upstairs, he opened the door across the hall to the double beds that had been pushed together for her sister and I. Anita took him to the room and they talked, they talked for a good five or ten minutes. Her sister and I exchanged many glances as we waited to learn what decision had been reached. I overheard him say toward the end “This room’s bigger…”

When they returned, she indicated that her sister and I would be sleeping across the hall – and she would in fact be joining us. Her sister and I set up the bedding while Anita had another moment alone with her husband in his room. She popped her head in and told me to move over next to her sister. And then, to my great surprise, when she came in to join us – so did her husband. There I was, on my friend’s wedding night, sharing a giant, hard bed with her, her sister, her nephew and her new husband. And you know, even while it would have been considered an extremely awkward situation in my own culture, I actually rested fairly easily (apart from being a tad squished on a board-bed). Why? Because I knew I was helping my friend to feel more comfortable, however ironic that may sound. I felt quite useful helping her to ease into the transition by not having to sleep completely alone with her stranger-husband quite yet. But what’s more – I was very proud of my friend making a show of power with her new husband, however small. To immediately establish that she would not be a powerless wife. I was damn proud.

To be certain it is clear, I know that the whole thing doesn’t have to be so bad. I know that the groom is not a “bad guy”- he’s a young man who took a wife the way his society dictates, and the whole thing is probably a tad strange for him too. I know if he is gentle and patient then the transition will go fine. I know that with time they will get to know one another and find a way to peaceably coexist, to fulfill their duty. I know that the practice of arranged marriages runs deep in the culture here and is unlikely to change any time soon, but I am certain that it doesn’t have to be done this way – where the bride has absolutely no input about the union. I have heard of many progressive Kathmandu and Indian families that find potential matches, allow the pair to meet, then give both the boy and girl equal dignity of veto power. It doesn’t have to happen over a fortnight either. Why not give it time? Why not allow the both sides time to prepare themselves for the change?

Almost the exact same thing happened to another PCV’s friend last week – nineteen years old, a marriage arranged without her knowledge, set for one week later. She was one semester away from her AA, but now she must move to a different village – about 4 hours away. Her education will depend entirely upon the will of her new family. In a society/culture where marriage means “gaining a daughter”, where the wife literally becomes a new member of her husbands family and is no longer a member of her own, many do not see the value of investing in their daughter’s education.

Luckily not every family sees it this way. About a month ago I had the good fortune of meeting an inspiring 27 year old Nepali woman. It was her father who helped me with the Girl Rising fundraising efforts, attending meetings with me when he could and helping me connect with the right people. Over various tea sessions at his home, I came to learn that he has three daughters and one son, my 27 year old friend the eldest. She has a degree in Environmental Science and has won numerous awards for her organizations campaign to ban plastic bags from Nepal. His son is second oldest and just completed his degree in Architecture. His two younger daughters are studying public health and forestry, respectively. When my friend is home from Kathmandu, she is frequently interviewed, and her father reminds her of her schedule with patient pride. When I see this man glowing with pride for his daughter, this man who clearly supports all of his daughters equally as his son, I can hardly describe to you how happy it makes me. It just so happens that this friend is also getting married this month – to a young man she has known for seven years, who has approached her family and brought their families together to discuss the union. This, in my eyes, is a happy example of compromise: a marriage they both want, done with the blessing of their families.

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And so I find myself asking – what caused this radical divergence? Why did one family take full control of their daughter’s marriage while the other is supporting their daughter’s self-decision? How rapidly does this change happen, and who instigates it? Was it a series of daughters who stood their ground, who demanded what they deserved – respect and equal treatment as human beings? Or were the parents independently inspired to give their daughters more power in the decision?

As a third party, what is my role in all of this? With but a year and half of experience in development work, I still consider this a tough question. But I stand by what I know: that real change has to come from within, and therefore the best development work builds capacity and empowers the locals to make change happen. And more and more I believe the absolutely best place to do this is with the youth. And so – showing movie’s like girl rising to high school students feels like a good step.

Lead by example.
Raise awareness.
Empower youth.
Change the world for the better.