This post is part of the Global Moms Relay. Every time you share this post, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 (per action), up to $250,000, to the Global Moms Relay, to help improve the health and well-being of moms and kids worldwide in support of MAMA, Shot@Life, and Girl Up. Scroll to the bottom to find out more.
I was born in a very remote area in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called the High Plains of Itombwe in South Kivu Province. I was actually the fourth child born to my parents, but the first one who lived. At the age of two, I contracted polio. As my mom had not been successful in delivering a male child, or even healthy children for my dad, he was culturally free to take another wife. In our culture, a wife is not fully considered a wife until she delivers a son. The birth of a son brings gifts of cows and other things in celebration, but the birth of a girl comes without any fanfare. So now, after more than six years of marriage, and my dad’s only child a polio stricken girl, he decided to to marry again.
In my community, when a husband takes a second wife, both wives bear a heavy stigma. The first wife feels the heart wrenching pain of rejection and humiliation. The second wife, usually in an arrangement occurring without her consent, is cast as the “second” and therefore illegitimate wife of her husband. Even though our culture allows the second marriage, religiously she is regarded as a mistress or even a prostitute.
My mother however, refused to take on this shame the culture required her to bear. She was able to somehow walk above all that. Children with disabilities are often regarded as a curse from God in the DRC — on the child for sure, but on the family as well. But my mom loved me with all her heart. Our extended family and community would continually challenge her investment in me, my mother brazenly, if not defiantly, went to great lengths to support me and protect my opportunity for a different future to the one they all expected.
Her care for me enlisted my young brothers, cousins and other relatives as well. For example at bath time, they had to fetch water that my mom heated for me to wash in the house, while they had to go back to the cold river to wash. I didn’t have any crutches back then so if it was raining and the trails were muddy, my mom would carry me on her back to and from school, while the other children had to make their own way. The love and respect my mom had for me nurtured a strength and confidence within me. Her love, her sacrifice, her wisdom, and her resolve lifted me. My mother’s vision for me, led me into that better future she had in mind.
She always said, “Catch every blessing God gives you; don’t miss even one.” I took her counsel to heart. When I was in the third grade my mom arranged for me to live with her brother and his family away from the village environment, in a small city. She always made sure my dad sent school fees to my uncle for me. When it was time to enroll in the seventh grade, my uncle was away, taking his sons to a boarding school in another province. So I grabbed my stick and vaulted myself to the Secondary school and enrolled myself. I went on to become the first girl with a disability from my tribe, to graduate from university. I was privileged to serve our nation’s minister of gender and family as technical advisor for persons with disabilities, and was able to put my three younger brothers through school.
In the last couple of years, with the help of World Pulse, I opened a center in a rented room of a Cyber Café where women could come and get connected online and tell their stories. According to the UN, the DRC is considered the worst place in the world to be a woman. Through our work, these women found their voice and began calling for peace, for dignity, for sanity in Eastern Congo. They named themselves the Maman Shujaa, which means Hero Women in Swahili, and the world logged in to hear these resilient, strong solution providers, trumpet their universal song of peace, hope, and a future for Congo.
I am known as the founder of the Hero Women of Congo, but there is a woman who founded me – a simple woman from a very remote village in Congo. She was an illiterate professor of life who birthed an infectious hope and expectation of a different future in her daughter. Polline Nyirambarato is my exemplary Hero Woman of all of Congo’s Hero Women. She was, and always will be, my mother.
You share, they give: Each time you ‘like’ or share this post via the social media icons on this post or comment below, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 (per action) up to $250,000, to improve the health and wellbeing of moms and kids worldwide through MAMA, Shot@Life, and Girl Up. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a vaccine preventable disease. $1 provides a measles or polio vaccine for a child through Shot@Life — a campaign to raise awareness, advocacy and funds to get vaccines to the children who need them most. You can also use the Donate A Photo* app and Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 when you upload a photo for Girl Up or Shot@Life, up to $100,000. You can help make a difference in seconds with the click of your mouse or snap of your smart phone. Share this post with the hashtag #GlobalMoms, and visit GlobalMomsRelay.org to learn more.
The United Nations Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, BabyCenter and The Huffington Post created the Global Moms Relay with a goal of improving the lives of women and children around the globe.
Neema Namadamu was born in a remote tribal region of Itombwe, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Stricken with polio at the age of two, Neema has been an advocate for change for most of life, starting in the 11th grade when she began a weekly, one-hour radio program raising awareness for persons with disabilities. Neema was the second woman from her tribe to graduate from Congo’s national university, and the first woman with disabilities to graduate from college. Immediately after University, Neema was selected as a Deputy in her province’s Parliament. From there, DR Congo’s Minister of Gender and Family selected her as Technical Advisor. Neema is now based in Bukavu, her home province of South Kivu in Eastern DRC, where she has continued to promote right mindedness in her nation; advocating for women’s rights, rights for persons with disabilities, and rights for the indigenous people through a Media Training Center for women, part of World Pulse. Neema also supports an NGO of handicapped women seamstresses who make purses and fashions for U.S. based Shakoshi Imports.