A reflective blog post from AdvocAid’s Advocacy Specialist, Rebecca Mweru Kabejja
As 2022 came to an end, we as staff from different office locations – Freetown, Makeni and Kenema – gathered in one place to reflect on what we have done throughout the year and look towards what 2023 will look like, moving on.
Listening to each other share about the great work we all do made us realize that our daily interaction in the spaces we work in has affected our lives. We acknowledged that we are not just staff but we are also mothers, wives, friends, fathers that have different experiences like histories of gender-based violence, poor mental health, have experienced loss personally, experiences that are triggered often because the work we do requires us to show up in trauma spaces.
We acknowledged that the work we do is tough, and adds to our mental load. For our team, it’s not uncommon to hear that another woman has been arrested while defending herself from violence; hearing about a child dying in custody; being told about another woman needlessly incarcerated for loitering, separating her from her young children; or learning about a woman dying at the hands of an abusive husband. The list is endless and it doesn’t stop. This takes its toll on the team.
Creating time for rest has been and remains challenging for feminists and women generally because the work we do demands that we are always present and in an emergency mode. So creating time for rest has to be very intentional. As Audre Lorde wrote:
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde
So, if we are to self-preserve, we have to fight back to reclaim our power back. We realize that we are humans and not machines or tools of production so exhaustion and burn-outs are inevitable.
At the gathering, we made commitments to create more selfcare spaces and to individually and collectively take care of each other. Our emphasis was put on celebrating not just our big achievements but also our small achievements; what are we grateful for everyday; start journaling; reclaiming our time to rest everyday be it 20 minutes or 1 hour; appreciating each other and saying “you did a good job, keep it up!”; checking on each other every day; reminding each other to rest as we usually get carried away in our work and forget to plan our annual leave and most importantly how to set our boundaries in our personal and professional life. It is very okay to say no.
As we came to the end of our gathering, appreciating our most exemplary staff for the work they have done was a key thing in our planning and also a commitment to our 5-year feminist strategic plan. Strategic direction 4 on Empowering our people reminds us to appreciate the work we do and value our hard work and commitment. At this moment, we collectively recognised our co-worker and friend Mercy Bangura, a social worker at the AdvocAid Makeni Office for both AdvocAid Awards. She was voted by staff for the Best Staff Award 2022 and the Sonia Macauley Award 2022. In her appreciation speech, Mercy said that “I find fulfilment in working for the justice of women and girls because they are at the heart of everything we do as the AdvocAid Fambul. As Jane Barry’s (2010) statement interrogates:
“What’s the point of the revolution if we can’t dance”
Jane Barry
Indeed it is time to Rest, Reset and Restore.