World Views: Turkey-Syria Conflict, Iran's Currency, Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe (Oct 05, 2012)

SISTER ROSEMARY NYIRUMBE: Thanks a lot for having me here in this studio, and I’m sorry that you don’t hear very much about the war in Northern Uganda, and I think that is, for me, an unfortunate situation.  I’m working, in this situation, especially with women and children, putting a lot of attention in trying to rehabilitate them, because for the last 20 years or more, women and children have suffered greatly from the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Now, most of these kids are teenagers, or some of them are young adults, and these are the people I’m trying my best to work with.  We’re trying to rehabilitate them, giving them different activities which can help then to be integrated again in society one day, and be accepted as useful members of the society in Uganda.

GRILLOT: Well you’re running a school there in Northern Uganda, and many of us might think that a school for girls might include typical training.  Learning language, literature, math, science, but your school is focusing on practical skills, and providing these young women the ability to survive by supporting themselves.  Why focus on that kind of school, as opposed to your more traditional reading, writing, and arithmetic school?

SISTER ROSEMARY: In fact, the school I’m running is focused a lot on practical skills simply because most of the people, the young women, the children we have at this school, were deprived of their chances of going on with their education.  The Lord’s Resistance Army target young women and children below age 10, five years and older were abducted and trained as child soldiers.  A lot of these children lost their chances of continuing with their education, and those who were not abducted remained, and were forced to live in internal displacement camps with their parents, where the condition of living was quite pathetic.  The system of education was not functioning anymore.  As a result, for the last 20 years, a lot of people remain semi-illiterate.  For that reason, I find it’s quite challenging that we can live with a society where so many women and young people, young adults, did not go far with education, and would just brush that aside, and leave them, and don’t bring them to the mainstream.  I found that my own background as a person who was born in this society, having seen exactly how culture itself puts women aside, and left them without education.  A lot of preference is given to boys, even in terms of education, Girls who drop out of schools, who are not getting support from their parents, even from getting scholastic materials.  When it came to the situation of war, where these girls were taken to captivity, trained and became sex slaves, and became mothers at a very young age, and lost the chance at education, I was moved to sympathy.  It was so compelling for me to introduce some practical skills, which can make them members of society.  Most of the skills I teach these women are skills that can benefit them economically, and benefit the society economically, and it remains for me, a challenge on my side.  I need to find a market for these girls.  I need to make these girls produce [something] that can be accepted by society, even internationally.  That’s why I struggle and strive for quantity and quality production in all the skills I’m introducing to these skills.

GRILLOT: Well, I’m going to get to the specific skills you’re working in your school in a minute, but I wanted to turn to you, Rebecca.  Tell us a little bit about what it is we can learn here, and why do we expose our students to what people like Sister Rosemary do?  Why should we know more about this?

REBECCA CRUISE: Well, I think we have a lot of people that are aware of situations in the world, and would like to help out, be it in the world elsewhere, or at home.  And they don’t know that they can make a difference, or that their small actions will do anything.  I think small things in very difficult situations do matter, and they do count.

GRILLOT: Sister Rosemary, I’ve watched the video that was produced about your work.  I have to tell you, I watched it a couple of times.  It was so inspiring.  I think what Rebecca is saying about the impact that you’ve had is really remarkable.  I think not only are students are motivated to go, I’m motivated to go.  I really think it’s remarkable what you’re doing.  So, tell us about the specific projects that you’re working on, and in particular this “pop tab” project to support the women in your community that you’re working with.

SISTER ROSEMARY: The “pop tab” project is quite interesting, and it’s something we started very small, as Rebecca has just been saying.  Sometimes we don’t know that small things can change people’s lives.  I’ve always been looking at it as something that is changing a lot of lives, and is touching people, is helping a lot of people.  I found out about this project when I was invited to Hawaii for an international women’s conference.  I was one of the speakers, and I had a speaker, a woman from the Philippines, who sat near me, and we kept trying to discuss how we work in different countries, and she was sharing with me how she works with women in the Philippines.  She came up with the idea of these “pop tab” purses, and she offered me a “pop tab” purse and a bracelet.  She told me, “If you want, you can come to the Philippines, and I can train you.  You can go and train your women, and so forth.”  I looked at that as a great possibility, as something I could take up and so forth.  But, it would have been very difficult for me to go to the Philippines, send somebody or go myself to learn it.  That means spending money.  So I decided to teach myself how to make these “pop tab” purses.  I took apart the one the woman had given me, and I taught myself.  When I was invited to Oklahoma, I was so excited that I was able to make one purse of my own, teaching myself, and took a lot of materials back home.  I sat down, physically teaching my students.  I taught them how to make it.  And of course, the first ones were not very beautiful, but eventually I started emphasizing quality and quantity.  When they brought me what they’d produced in the right way, as I’d taught them, I paid them money.  It was a big shock for them.  They were so surprised that I was paying them, I said, “This is the beginning of a project to let you continue supporting yourselves.”  I like to empower these women to know that they must work.  I don’t want these women to continue begging.  There’s no way you can beg if you have hands, if you have eyes, if you have legs.  Start working towards your own destiny.

CRUISE: Well, you mentioned in one of your articles, and I think again to my class, the “pop tabs” and the skills that you’re teaching these women, is to get them to be married to their skills, the lesson that you’re trying to instill?  You talked a little bit about the situation of women there, in society and culturally, if you could maybe share a little bit about that with us, and how you’re changing that?

SISTER ROSEMARY: Yeah, in fact, what I’ve realized about these women, after receiving a lot of problems from the Lord’s Resistance Army when they return, you’d find most of these girls are deeply traumautized.  Most of them have got children, fatherless children, because these children came from rape, and most of these children themselves are children of rebel commanders.  So, in this case, you find these women are not generally accepted by society.  Sometimes their own family members don’t accept them, and I found out that these girls are just normal women.  They’d love to be accepted, they would love to be in a family.  They would love to married, but yet, culture takes them and puts them aside, because in our culture, a girl who gets pregnant or has children out of the normal marriage system, is always considered put aside, and cannot marry again.  For these girls, they are doubly disadvantaged because they got these children from rebel commanders, and they got these children from someone they might not know, or someone who’s been killed.  So these girls are not accepted because people say, “You have children of murderers.  You have children of the rebels.”  If they get married, they may be married just temporarily for some time, and a lot of people strongly believe that these girls are a bad omen.  These children coming back from rebel captivity, and having been forced to kill, sometimes people in their own community, people strongly believe they will bring bad omens in their families.  So these girls are given names, these girls are left aside, and for that reason, when I’m giving them these skills, I tell them, make sure you stick to these skills.  Make sure you get married to these skills I’m giving you, because it is your future.  It is what will support you.  It is what will restore your dignity.

GRILLOT: Well, Sister Rosemary, thank you so much for talking about this with us today.  We’ve learned a lot, and it’s wonderful to hear your inspiring stories, and tell us a little bit about how we can get involved in small ways to change the world.  So thank you, thank you for being here.

SISTER ROSEMARY: Thank you.

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