Dare 2 Dream

This weekend I attended my first conference in Tanzania called Dare 2 Dream. It was an inspiring 1 1/2 day conference about mentoring, not giving up, not listening to anyone who tells you "You can't do that because you're a girl", about believing in your self, health and beauty, and of course I threw in a talk about violence in the work place, just to chipper things up a bit : ) It was attended by 200 young aspiring African women and elder successful African women. The contrast between the views of the young and elder women was evident from the talks. The elder women, who are taking on the role of a mentor for the younger women, were married young and strongly dislike men. On the other hand, the younger women were looking for a way to be a feminist without hating men. In a way it was proof that social change had taken place and we had gone from one extreme to another in the past and were now finally reaching a middle ground.


I also met local designer Doreen Mashika Funny enough I had emailed Doreen last week to see if she would be at fashion week since I love what I have seen of her stuff so far (think modern African chic). She emailed me back and said she wouldn't be there but I was welcome to her shop anytime in Zanzibar. I guess the universe liked me this weekend because she happened to be at the conference in this fabulous mix kanga print dress she designed herself. I talked to her briefly, while trying not to make it obvious that I wanted to strip her of her dress and run away with it. She told me that she would send me pictures of some of the fabrics she has and she would help me design a dress for myself. Now it would cost well over a 100 bucks, so I'm still debating on whether I'll actually do it. Man, but it would be such a unique creation better than what I was able to create on my own. We'll see...


All and all it was an interesting conference that really tried my patience at times. Nothing started on time and the speakers time was not moderated so some spoke for hours and by the time it came to be my turn to speak the audience was tired and it was already 7pm (we were supposed to be done at 5pm). The slogan of the event was 'YES we can' with a clear acknowledgement that they were taking Obama's slogan. This is the third time I've heard reference to Obama's 'YES we can'. I must say that many people here are proud of him, even sporting his face on t-shirts and kangas (I promise a picture of this will come).


The take away message from the conference: We, as women, can do anything we set our minds to. Like one man said at the conference, one of the only men, "There is a reason why computers can only do one thing at a time...they were created by men and men can only do one thing at a time" hehehe This is true, women can multi tasks quite well. One topic that remained unanswered is how women can balance there multiple roles because even with our multi tasking abilities, it can get extremely overwhelming. It was a concern raised by many of the girls, but never got a clear cut answer....I wonder this all the time.