Tag: North Africa

Pilgrims cast prayers to the skies from Algeria mountain peak

Pilgrims climb the Azro Nethor peak in the Djurdjura Mountain rangeto reach "el-Jammaa Oufella" (the upstairs mosque). (Pic: AFP)
Pilgrims climb the Azro Nethor peak in the Djurdjura Mountain rangeto reach “el-Jammaa Oufella” (the upstairs mosque). (Pic: AFP)

Determined to rise high enough for their prayers to be heard, climbers defy the stifling summer heat to conquer a summit in Algeria’s northern Kabylie region.

They are women desperate for children, youth seeking jobs, and the sick hoping for a cure.

At the heart of this restive Berber-speaking region, Azro Nethor – the zenith prayer rock – towers at 1 884 metres above sea level, at the end of a steep path in the Atlas Mountains, an exhausting, giddy climb up the rocky mountain side.

Thousands of people climb the peak every year to perform prayers hoping "the saints" will answer their pleas. (Pic: AFP)
Thousands of people climb the peak every year to perform prayers hoping “the saints” will answer their pleas. (Pic: AFP)

On the rock’s summit sits El-Jammaa Oufella (The Mosque at the Top), a small, stark place of worship. Inside, slim candles light the alcoves in its white walls.

For three successive Fridays each August, thousands of people from across Kabylie, and even from the capital Algiers, flock to the mountain peak, wheezing in the suffocating heat, for a pilgrimage rooted in a belief in the powers of holy men.

Islam does not recognise any intermediaries between God and men, but the cult of holy figures remains deeply rooted in Algeria, despite orthodox Muslims fighting to curb the practice.

Before the Bamiyan Buddhas were blown up in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Timbuktu mausoleums destroyed in Mali a decade later, armed Islamist groups in the 1990s destroyed many of the holy sanctuaries that dot the Algerian landscape.

Miracle men

Across the North African country, there is hardly a town or village that does not have at least one mausoleum, like that of Sidi Abderrahman, Algiers’ patron saint.

A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)
A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)

Azro Nethor is named after a legend passed down over the centuries. It says that an elderly wise man topped the mountain peak just as the sun reached its zenith and died there as he finished his midday prayer.

The wise man, said to have received God’s blessing, has since made endless apparitions in the villages dotted along these mountain crests.

His blessing has saved numerous local residents from grief, according to the legend, and once even a plate of couscous that hurtled all the way down the mountain without losing a single grain.

Since, a giant plate of couscous has been offered up to visitors at each pilgrimage, with dozens of sheep slaughtered for the occasion. Pilgrims quench their thirst at a spring said to have purifying properties.

At the foot of the mountain, in the shade of a tent, faith healers offer hope to those who have come to consult them.

Couples, young women and children place their head under a piece of fabric to hear a prayer.

“Next year, you will come back here with a husband on your arm and in two years’ time you will return with a child,” one healer promises a young woman, whose face bursts into a smile.

“I have been coming here since I was 20,” says a woman in her 70s who has made the journey from Larbaa Nath Irahen, some 50 kilometres from the sanctuary.

“The first time, I prayed for a husband, then to have children – and then for peace,” she says, referring to a civil war between the state and Islamist insurgents that abated in the late 1990s.

“The saints heard my prayers and they were all granted, which is why I always come back,” she says, her face beaming.

Prayers cast across the sea

Women make up the majority of those who come to climb the mountain, some launching calls to children snatched up by lives abroad, convinced that their voice will travel across the mountains and the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)
A pilgrim lights a candle inside the mosque. (Pic: AFP)

Three years ago, 62-year-old doctor Mohamed came with his ailing mother, who was desperate for news from a child living in Italy. Her plea rose up to the skies and her son came home within days.

But it was the doctor who had begged his younger brother to make the journey, he says.

“My mother died relieved, convinced that her cry had reached Italy,” he recounts on his latest visit to the mountain, choking with emotion.

Like the doctor, youth huddling in groups nearby do not believe in these tall tales either. Many here say the annual pilgrimages were actually established as a pretext for match-making.

“The legend was made up by a feminist before his time, in revolt at the fate of young women in these mountains,” one explains.

“They were prisoners inside their fathers’ homes and had little chance of marrying outside their tribe’s circle. With the start of the legend, they could finally come to Azro Nethor where they could be seen by men from other villages and increase their chances of marrying,” he says.

“Today, we also come hoping to meet someone nice.”

Outrage as 9 Sudanese women face 40 lashes for wearing trousers

Sudanese women leave after voting at a school turned into a polling station in Al-Jarif West, outside Khartoum, Sudan. Pic: Ashraf Shazly/AFP
Sudanese women leave after voting at a school turned into a polling station in Al-Jarif West, outside Khartoum, Sudan. Pic: Ashraf Shazly/AFP

A Sudanese Christian woman arrested for wearing trousers has narrowly escaped the punishment of 40 lashes, in a case that human rights groups say is further damning evidence of the government’s intolerance to its Christian population.

Fardos Al Toum, 19, was arrested for indecency along with 11 other women in June in front of a church in Khartoum by the so-called morality police, who enforce the government’s strict codes, for appearing in public in trousers and skirts.

A judge pronounced his guilty verdict on Monday, and the rest of the 9 accused women will appear at separate trials throughout July, the threat of flogging still hanging over them.

Muhamad Mustafa, Al Toum’s lawyer, said it was pressure from activists and campaigners which prompted the court to abandon the punishment of lashes in this case. “This is the weirdest decision I have ever heard: the judge instead of declaring her innocent has convicted her without punishment, and this is itself is unlawful decision,” Mustafa told the Guardian.

“He gave her a lecture about the appearance of decent women, and he found himself in a bad position among the activists who came to support her. He didn’t want to lose his arrogance – that is why he came out with this decision.”

The women, aged between 17 and 23 and originally from the Nuba Mountains region on the border with South Sudan, have gained the support of groups who say the case is an example of the ongoing prejudice against Christians by a Muslim government intent on enacting Islamic law.

The group are being charged under article 152 of the criminal code which, based on Sharia law, bans “indecent dress”. Elfatih Hussain, another lawyer representing the women, says that the application of the rule is too broad: “They have different traditions and customs from Muslims, and they are being tried because the law is [too] loose,” Hussain told the Guardian.

Social stigma
In 2009, the Sudanese government faced international outrage following the arrest of journalist and UN officer Lubna Hussain – along with 13 other Christian women – who were also threatened with 40 lashes each for wearing trousers.

Amal Habbani, a rights activist with the group No to Women’s Oppression claims that between 40–50,000 women are arrested and flogged every year by the public order police because of their clothing.

Because the standard for contradicting what is considered “public morality” is subjective and not defined, Habbani says, the law is frequently applied arbitrarily, to the detriment of women and girls.

However not all cases receive media attention because it can “create social stigma to the women”, she said.

Habbani explains that this particular case reached widespread attention because of the activism of the women themselves, and thanks to social media support. “The cases are usually against women in the marginalised areas in Khartoum, and amongst poorer women,” Habbani said.

Amnesty International has called for the charges against the 12 women to be dropped. In a statement released on Sunday the organisation said: “It’s outrageous that these women face a risk of being flogged simply for choosing to wear a skirt or a pair of trousers. The public order law is imposed in a way which is hugely discriminatory and totally inappropriate and violates women’s rights.”

One of the accused, Wigdan Abdallah, said that the police mistreated the group and held them in a truck for hours before taking them to the police station in Bahri district, where they spent a further 16 hours.

“We were taken in a big truck along with drunken people and they kept driving with us on the streets of Khartoum from 9pm until 2am before arriving to the police station. Until then we didn’t know the reason for our arrest,” she said.

“The police abused us verbally – but they didn’t beat us – and we kept telling them we are not guilty of anything because we were wearing trousers or skirts with shirts, which are the normal clothes that we wear everyday and most of the girls in Sudan wear.”

Nahid Gabrallah, the director of Seema, a centre working to protectwomen and children, said: “We are very worried about [the women’s] wellbeing and psychological health, because according to our previous studies in similar cases they try to commit suicide after they go through such experience,” she said.

Organised prejudice
Sudan is a religiously, culturally and ethnically diverse country, however president Omar al-Bashir has long made his intolerance towards the country’s Christian and traditional African religions clear, which together make up 3% of the country’s population, according to official figures.

Bashir declared famously in a speech in 2010 prior the secession of South Sudan, that the country would follow Sharia law: “We don’t want to hear anything about diversity – Sudan is an Islamic and Arabic country.

“Sharia (Islamic law) and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language,” he said.

For the people of the Nuba Mountains, this latest arrest is further evidence of an organised campaign of discrimination against them.

Arno Ngotilu, spokesman of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, said arrests like these are just further examples of the ruling party’s intolerance. “The National Congress Party is a racist group, and what happened to the girls is part of their campaign launched by the president in Nuba Mountains against the Nubian people.

“They want to rule Sudan with a very narrow-minded view, imposing one religion, one culture and one language,” said the rebel spokesman, whose group has been fighting the government in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile states since 2011.

Lawyer Hussain said that a major judicial shift is needed to stamp out such abuses of the criminal code: “We need to change the whole legal system in Sudan, which is against the Sudanese constitution itself and international human rights such as the international covenant on civil and political rights that Sudan has ratified,” he said.

“They were wearing ordinary clothes that all girls their age in Sudan wear, and what happened to them is a systematic discrimination against women.”

Zeinab Mohammed Salih for the Guardian Africa Network

In Libyan capital, hope survives on busy streets

Libyan women shop in the old part of the capital, Tripoli, on March 17 2015. (Pic: AFP)
Libyan women shop in the old part of the capital, Tripoli, on March 17 2015. (Pic: AFP)

Armed convoys, checkpoints and sporadic exchanges of gunfire are still common in the Libyan capital, but residents are flocking back to the streets and surprisingly hopeful of a brighter future.

Sitting in a newly opened cafe overlooking the blue waters of the Mediterranean, Mohammed, a 19-year-old student, said that while fear remains, Tripoli’s residents are trying to get on with life.

“Tripoli is a city that loves life and wants peace and peace must find her,” he said.

Since the ouster of dictator Muammar Gaddafi almost four years ago, rival militias and administrations have battled for power in the oil-rich North African country.

The city was seized in August by the Islamist-backed General National Congress after weeks of bloody fighting with forces backing the internationally recognised government.

That triggered an exodus of foreign residents and prompted most diplomatic missions to close.

The rise of the Islamic State group, which has claimed several attacks in the country, has also raised fears but the city’s residents are adapting as best they can.

Some even sense a changing tide.

In the coastal neighbourhood of Gargaresh, shops, designer boutiques and restaurants stretch for some three kilometres along the seafront.

The streets are crowded with pedestrians and traffic.

Women in colourful scarves, men and children are busy socialising and shopping.

Almost nothing is missing from stores that continue to import goods through Tripoli’s port.

Petrol is still cheap and the Libyan dinar is stable at 1.36 to the dollar. Power cuts are becoming rare and electronic goods are becoming cheaper as imports from China rise.

“There has been some unrest, people momentarily deserted the area, but now they are coming back,” said Anas, who works in a restaurant in the neighbourhood.

He said the shops and restaurants were abandoned during the deadly summer clashes but life is returning to normal.

“That’s not to say that people are totally reassured. They fear for the future, they are afraid of explosions and fighting that could happen any time,” he said.

Peace ‘desperately needed’

Armed convoys patrol Tripoli’s roads daily, often erecting checkpoints. This is reassuring for residents, but few venture out after dark.
“Some people go out at night, but most stay at home because we can’t identify who is on the checkpoints,” said Anas. “It is difficult to know who we are dealing with these days.”

On the short drive to the city centre from Gargaresh, pictures of killed militia fighters adorn the big metal billboards that once displayed commercial advertising.

The facades of the old town display revolutionary graffiti and slogans of the Nato-backed uprising that drove Gaddafi from power in 2011, such as “Free Libya” and “Tripoli: Citadel of Free Men”.

But new slogans are encroaching.

“Yes for Libya Dawn, No to the Murderer Haftar,” reads one aimed at controversial army chief Khalifa Haftar, who was recently appointed by the internationally recognised government and has vowed to take on Islamists.

Anas el-Gomati, an analyst with the Libya-based Sadeq Institute think tank, said that although Libyans differ on politics, they still want a political solution.

“It would be near impossible to generalise as to what Libyans want. What they certainly don’t want is more war. Any peaceful solution to the current civil war is desperately needed,” he said.

At Mitiga airport to the east of the capital, Raja, an affluent businessman, is returning to live and work in the city.

He fled Tripoli a couple of years ago following an altercation with gunmen in a grocery store.

“They came into the store and kidnapped the owner as they beat me and threatened to kill me. After that I left the country immediately,” he said.

“I left then because of fear, but now I have decided to return because I love my city and I believe that peace will prevail soon. But I will never go to a grocery store ever again.”

‘Our hearts are black’: Tunisians in shock after gunmen target tourists in capital

Tourists are evacuated by special forces from the site of an attack carried out by two gunmen at the famed Bardo Museum. (Pic: AFP)
Tourists are evacuated by special forces from the site of an attack carried out by two gunmen at the famed Bardo Museum. (Pic: AFP)

Crouched against a wall in the Bardo museum, Fabienne, a French tourist, hid with her guide and 40 French holidaymakers, fearing they would be discovered by the gunmen who had burst in to take the Tunis museum of ancient treasures and its tourists hostage. Whispering, she told French TV station BFMTV by phone: “We’re all terrified … we’re afraid they’ll appear and suddenly kill us all.”

Tunisia, the small north African country which lit the first spark of the Arab spring when its popular uprising toppled the dictatorship four years ago, has been plunged into shock after gunmen killed at least 20 people, including at least 17 foreign tourists, in the worst terrorist attack in more than a decade.

The targeting of tourists by terrorists is a new phenomenon in Tunisia and a massive blow to a country whose struggling post-revolution economy depends largely on its beach resorts and foreign visitors. Tunisia, which peacefully elected a new Parliament in December, has prided itself as a model of political transition since the overthrow of the brutal authoritarian Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, in contrast to the post-revolutionary difficulties of its troubled neighbours.

But it has also been struggling to tackle the growing terrorist threat in the region and thousands of Tunisians have left to fight foreign jihad. The attack immediately raised questions about the Islamist terrorist threat to Tunisia amid mounting anxiety that jihadi violence is spilling over the border from neighbouring Libya, as well as Algeria.

Three Italians as well as visitors from Germany, Poland and Spain were among the dead, as well as a Tunisian cleaner and a security officer. Around 22 other foreigners were wounded.

Bardo museum
The attack began just after midday as gunmen armed with kalashnikovs opened fire in front of the Bardo museum, the country’s largest and a major tourist attraction, which houses one of the world’s biggest collections of Roman mosaics and is built in a 19th century palace adjacent to parliament.

As the gunmen struck, tourists were getting out of coaches to visit the museum on a spring day that had seen scores of visitors, many from cruise ships docked in the port for the day.

Wafel Bouzi, a guide with a Spanish-speaking group, told journalists that on exiting the museum with his group, he saw in the car park “a young 25-year-old man, dressed normally, without a beard” who was holding a kalashnikov. “I thought he was playing with it. Then he opened fire.”

The gunmen began shooting near the coaches then entered the museum where hundreds of panicked visitors had taken refuge. Josep Lluís Cusidó, mayor of the small Catalan town of Vallmoll, was at the museum as part of a wedding anniversary trip with his wife. “A few men walked in and started shooting, we’re alive thanks to a miracle,” he told the Spanish news agency Efe. “These men suddenly started shooting and people started falling to the ground dead and things started falling from the ceiling … Everything happened so fast. Right now we’re with the police. It’s total chaos.”

Tunisian security forces entered the museum and shot dead two gunmen at about 3pm local time (1400 GMT). MPs had been in parliament nearby debating new laws which were to include an anti-terrorism bill. After the shots began, the parliament session was suspended and MPs were evacuated. The tourists were also later ushered out of the museum as security officials warned at least two or three accomplices of the gunmen might be at large.

More than 100 European tourists freed at the end of the siege were driven out of the museum gates, their faces showing a mixture of anxiety and relief. The mixture of men and women, young and old, stared out into space, some giving smiles at crowds still packed outside the gates.

One young blonde woman inside the first bus grinned and waved her hand. Dozens of armed police and troops remained inside the museum complex sealed off from the city. One Italian couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary on a cruise ship told the Italian newspaper La Stampa how fellow holidaymakers had been rushed from the museum back to the ship. “All of a sudden we saw them all rushing back on board. There was panic among those who had managed to get away from the terrorists,” the newspaper quoted them as telling a friend.

Several hundred Tunisians gathered around the museum gates. Relief that the ordeal was over was mixed with dismay among those watching. “This is a black day for Tunisia,” said Karim Ben Sa’a, a manager in the tourism industry. “We are very sad for these tourists. They visit our country and it is so, so sad to see them die. Our hearts are black.”

There was shock that terrorists had managed to launch an attack at the very heart of the capital. Police set up checkpoints and a policeman with a machine gun was posted outside the office of the UK’s British Council.

“There is a possibility, but it is not certain, that [the two gunmen] could have been helped … and we are currently conducting extensive search operations to identify the two or three terrorists who possibly participated in the operation,” the prime minister, Habib Essid, said.

The president, Beji Caid Essebsi – the 88-year-old secularist elected in December after serving in previous Tunisian regimes – visited survivors in hospital, saying: “The authorities have taken all measures to ensure that such things don’t happen.”

Worst attack since 2002
The museum assault was the worst attack involving foreigners in Tunisia since an al-Qaeda suicide bombing on a synagogue killed 21 people on the island of Djerba in 2002.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said: “It is not by chance that today’s terrorism affects a country that represents hope for the Arab world. The hope for peace, the hope for stability, the hope for democracy. This hope must live on.”

The attack came the day after Tunisia announced arrests of a jihadi group trying to infiltrate the country, and in the week a key Tunisian militant was killed in Sirte. Troops are deployed on the Libyan border to stop suspected terrorist groups bringing in men and equipment.

There have also been concerns about the Mount Chaambi area on the border with Algeria where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has reportedly been helping a Tunisian group that has killed numerous soldiers.

Although the country has been more stable than others in the region, a disproportionately large number of Tunisian recruits – some 3 000, according to government estimates – have joined Islamic State (Isis) fighters in Syria and Iraq, triggering fears some will return to mount attacks back home.

The American embassy in Tunis was attacked in September 2012, seriously damaging the embassy grounds and an adjoining American school. Four assailants were killed. Overall, though, the violence that Tunisia has seen in recent years has been largely focused on security forces, not foreigners or tourist sites.

In 2013, two opposition figures were assassinated in Tunis and, in what is believed to be the first suicide bombing in Tunisia , a man walked off the beach in the resort town of Sousse and blew himself up in front of a seaside hotel. He was the only fatality.

Philip Stack, of British risk analyst Maplecroft, said of the Tunis events: “This attack is certain to have an effect on the tourism industry, which the authorities have worked hard to rebuild after the 2011 revolution. The principal targets of terrorism in Tunisia in the last couple of years have been the security forces. By targeting foreign tourists at a prestigious city centre site, the terrorists have changed their tactics and raised the stakes.”

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said Washington condemned the attack and continued “to support the Tunisian government’s efforts to advance a secure, prosperous, and democratic Tunisia”.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, blamed Isis, saying in a statement: “With the attack that has struck Tunis today, the Daesh [Isis’s Arabic acronym] terrorist organisation is once again targeting the countries and peoples of the Mediterranean region.

“This strengthens our determination to cooperate more closely with our partners to confront the terrorist threat. The EU is determined to mobilise all the tools it has to fully support Tunisia in the fight against terrorism and reforming the security sector.”

Additional reporting by Ashifa Kassam

FGM stops when the holistic recognition of girls’ and women’s rights begins

Women attend a meeting for eradicating female genital mutilation in the western Senegalese village of Diabougo. (Pic: Reuters)
Women attend a meeting for eradicating female genital mutilation in the western Senegalese village of Diabougo. (Pic: Reuters)

Her name is Suhair al-Bata’a. The 13-year-old Egyptian girl dreamt of one day becoming a journalist. In 2013, she was taken by her father to Dr Raslan Fadl Halawa’s clinic to undergo female genital mutilation, also known as FGM. She senselessly died at the hands of Halawa. The doctor, who was initially absolved of any wrongdoing in December 2014, was recently sentenced to three years of “hard labour” for manslaughter and three months for FGM by an Egyptian appeals court. Suhair’s father received a suspended sentence.

This is the first conviction of its kind ever handed-down by an Egyptian court, even though FGM has been illegal in Egypt since 2008. While this may seem like a win on the surface, the reality is that practice of FGM remains endemic not only in Egypt but also in many parts of the world. FGM is known to be practised in more than 27 countries, mostly in the Middle East, Africa and some parts of Asia and Europe. The World Health Organisation estimates that over 100 million girls and women have been subjected to FGM, with an estimated three million at risk of undergoing the practice every year.

FGM happens because families and communities choose to have their young girls undergo this practice. A practice that denies girls the right to physical and mental integrity; freedom from violence; freedom from discrimination on the basis of sex; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and the right to life when the procedure results in death, like in Suhair’s case. With all these rights denied, it’s almost inconceivable to think that medical or religious justifications for this vile practice still persist to this day.

The Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (Cewla), alongside other women’s rights organisations and campaigns, advocated for a ban against FGM which was successfully passed in 2008. The organisation also advocated to get Suhair’s case to court. Sara Katrine Brandt, international advocacy coordinator for Cewla stated, “As much as we succeed back then in getting a ban, many, many years of just not implementing the ban really shows how big of a task it is to eliminate this and that it is very embedded in the tradition and in the culture that this is the ‘right thing’ to do.”

Women’s rights advocates from Egypt and across the globe have long named FGM for what it is: a gross violation of the human rights of girls and women. FGM seeks to subordinate and control women. And in places like Egypt, women’s bodies have been consistently used as a tool for oppression.

Amal El Mohandes knows this all too well. She is the director of the women human rights defenders program at Nazra for Feminist Studies, an Egyptian non-profit feminist organisation. El Mohandes argues that the Egyptian penal code normalises violence against women. When it comes to FGM, there are loopholes within the current law which state that FGM is a crime unless it was performed due to a medical necessity, which leaves the door wide open to interpretation. Whilst El Mohandes says the conviction of Halawa was a step in the right direction, she stresses that it is simply not enough. “Definitely, holding the perpetrator accountable is a step forward however what is really needed is a holistic approach.” For El Mohandes, a holistic approach in Egypt means a comprehensive national strategy to combat ALL forms of violence against women, be it in the public or private spheres.

Even though Nazra for Feminist Studies and other feminist groups want to directly help in crafting a comprehensive national strategy, they have been so far ignored by the Egyptian National Council for Women that has been tasked to work on this. None of the feminist groups that Nazra works with have even been consulted. El Mohandes says this is a lack of transparency on the government’s part at a time when Nazra’s experience in the field of gender-based sexual violence is urgently needed to halt violent crimes against girls and women. “Hospitals in Egypt are not equipped with rape kits, physicians and nurses do not know how to deal with survivors of sexual violence, the police themselves, even with FGM, they are not trained on how to deal with reports of such cases, they tend to sidetrack these cases or not even understand the fact that they are crimes of violence,” she explains.

Brandt agrees that a law banning FGM is only a tiny piece of a larger puzzle. Cewla recommends that the Egyptian government should “take strategic steps in order to be able to campaign and to let people know that FGM is illegal and to educate Egyptians on implementing this ban”. On this International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, many governments will pay lip service to stopping FGM. Egypt will valiantly point to the conviction of Dr Fadl Halawa as proof that FGM is being ‘dealt with’. But little will concretely be done to link this crime as one of violence against girls and women and getting at its root causes.

Until mentalities change radically to embrace women’s bodily integrity as a non-negotiable human right, we will sadly still have to underline that zero tolerance for FGM is needed, for years to come, all the while still seeking justice within corrupt judicial systems and with governments that don’t see women’s rights as important enough on their political agendas. Somali poet Hudhaifah Siyad sums it up best: “They called it circumcision, I retorted mutilation, They called it dignity, I retorted inhumanity, They shouted, “get out of our sight!” Sorry sister, none couldn’t hear my plight.”

Nelly Bassily is a member of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development. Connect with her on Twitter: @nellybassily