Let me start of with saying FELIZ DIA INTERNACIONAL DE LA MUJER..a day late, hehe...Normally in the States I feel that this day isn´t exactly celebrated or even recognized by people. I have to confess I´ve never actually "celebrated" or worked towards any kind of activism on International Women´s day, but this all changed yesterday. It´s been about a week long process. Kim and I put together a few ideas and thought it would be good not only to celebrate women, on their day but promote the equalness of gender as well. As many of you might know people can be a bit machista here and so we decided to stir up tradition a bit.
To be honest I really didn´t think that Int. Women´s day would be that recognized her in Ecuador either. Boy was I wrong. Let´s just say that I received more flowers yesterday than I did on Valentine´s Day. Apparently they use IWD (shortening the words..)to thank all mothers, daughters, tias, abuelas, etc...for having them in their life. They give out flowers and chocolates and say happy day to you...I mean I guess that´s alright, but it seemed to be more a day for the men to use their machista ways to identify women as women-the roles they play in the FAMILY SETTING..what about strong independent women students, single women, lesbians, trans-gender..etc?? this was not at all recognized...
I understand that Ecuador does not have a women´s history like the United States but still I was surprised at how much attention it got...for all of the wrong reasons...you get where I´m going?
Anywho Kim, Paige and I decided that we were going to do a little something and hand made posters, t-shirts and statistics about the inequality (mainly in the work force) to put on suckers. We then passed out differnet flyers and the suckers to ALL of the students. And you won´t believe how many laughs we got, when men, yes MEN too where getting something for IWD. We explained that men can be feminists too, as a way to support equal opportunity in all aspects of life (work, home, social, educational, etc) And that they need to be advocates for change. After some explaining to like EVERY SINGLE MAN I think some of the people got it, and appreciated the gesture.
Because classes just started there aren´t a ton of students on campus. So because March is Women´s History month we are going to do an activity on Monday with students in Kim and Paige´s facultad. We are going to put up a table and have cards that say "Una mujer fuerte es una mujer que...." ( a strong women is a women that...) and then have the kids fill out what they think a strong women is. Hopefully we can get some good ideas, and will post these up around the facultad. Im about to head over and see if we can even get permission. The decano seems pretty conservative about the things that we do, so we´ll see..
Alright on to the next topic. Robberies. So here´s the story. I was waiting for the bus to go to work this afternoon and as the bus pulled up I let two students go ahead of me. I then tried to get on the bus and realized that a man was trying to weazle his way on pushing me as he was going. Then a guy on my right came up from behind and started grabbing my pockets and bag. I started to yell and followed the guy off the bus. He had my bad and I had his arm.. All the while I was screaming and ended up chasing him about a block down. Some stand byers tried to chase them but didn´t succeed. Thank god nothing was stolen. I think my hysterical screaming and running might have spooked them a bit. Who thought a little gringa could be so powerful. Tons of people pulled over to ask if I was ok and came out of their shops. A guy on a motorcycle even offered to take me to the police station or to work. At least there are some good people out there! So Im a little shooken up but besides if anything it´s just a good wake up call that you have to be on your guard 100% of the time here in this lovely pais.. :)
