International Women’s Day 2014

This year’s IWD pagne has been something of a damp squib.  A rather nasty brown one, really.  I was going to go for bust and have something made – but brown just makes me think of my fashion disasters from the 70s for they were too many, and far too shaming – especially the perms!

But my neighbours look splendid in their shiny new clothes and were very pleased with themselves and the bank holiday. 

I spent the day with chums in nearby Dano, making and selling kebabs;  we had a stall in the Women’s Museum to be right in the thick of it;  we made about 1,000 kebabs from meat which Arlette had marinaded and tomatoes and onions, and I managed not to eat them all – they were so very tasty!  Arlette does a mean kebab – her sister has a permanent stall in Diébougou.  We also made chips, but I think there I have something to add to her skillset there – after all, I have an ethnic affinity with the potato, and generations of deep-frying expertise on the Scottish side, even if that is all Mars Bars and black pudding.

 

Last year's pagne in the background - much nicer!

There were processions, and speeches, and free dolo and in the evening the President’s wife made a speech on TV.  I begin to wonder why we don’t make more of IWD in the UK?  Feminist chums post on Facebook, or send links to international events ….  Here, men do the cooking for the day! I do hope it is not because everyone in the UK thinks the battles are all fought and won!!

Two days before IWD I was invited to attend a wedding at the Town Hall; lots of bureaucratic hoo-hah and swapping of witnesses, and one of the two couples programmed for the session could not go ahead with their ceremony because of some paperwork …. But finally the words were pronounced and then the Deputy Mayor got onto his favourite bit – the lecture on the importance of communication and tolerance in any marriage, and then 20 minutes on the importance of family planning.  Excellent!  A little wide of the mark as these were people in their late forties/early fifties sorting out property and things, but none the worse for that.  The official line is no more than one baby every three years.  Smiles all round.