“Sometimes I thought it was not necessary to join my fellow women in different activities”, said a certain woman. Since I joined, my reaction has varied from crying to laughing. For a couple of years, I have been struggling to have enough food throughout the year. But now women are called boss ladies for a change in agriculture as far as production is concerned.
Agroecology is one of the ways through which we, women (in rural areas) have been changed. Agricultural production has been met with a number of problems like weather changes, poor seed types, soil infertility, lack of technical know-how. Rural women assembly met and discussed the ways on how production can be increased, among other things, they encouraged each other to use indigenous or local seeds. The discussion influenced each of the women in the assembly. Now we are singing a song of good news.
Every human being was endowed with the power of individuality, power to think and to do. It is, therefore, the work of the assembly to encourage every woman to develop this power and provide true education to be great thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men’s (their husband’s) thoughts. With indigenous seeds we have enough food, with indigenous seeds we do business, with indigenous seeds we help other women, with indigenous seeds we pay our children’s school fees, with indigenous seeds we support our families, with indigenous seeds we clothe ourselves, with indigenous seeds we can stand in the world to act for ourselves. We, now, can reveal the fact that we were trained and educated.
The severe training of us [women]-without properly directing the women to think and act for ourselves as our own capacity and turn of mind will allow, that by this means we may have growth of thought, feelings of self-respect, and confidence in our own ability to perform- will ever produce a class of weak women in mental and moral power.
We have been given a mind to use and apply to even the most difficult decisions.