"VOFWeek4(Beating me even in the presence of my child? Enough is Enough)"

Life is endured from birth to death, a life style where, my kids know and, will see me beaten if I do not obey papa. What a plight? Enough is enough.

Arguing on issues of violence against women and girls when I was 16, a close relative said “if you joke, you will be offered as one of the chief’s many wives. Your treatment there will make you understand why women must obey their husbands”. This pricked my heart and I understood these were ways to torture and keep young girls and even women under bondage and modern slavery. Discussing this with my friends in the village, they said, “If that happened to us, we will just get pregnant for any man because notables don’t marry girls who already have children”. What an alternative! But you wouldn’t believe this is the cool path that, my primary school mate of blessed memory took to her grave. Attempting to abortion a pregnancy aimed to sabotage one such marriage for which she was a victim, death came with its cold embrace. Getting pregnant for any kind of person to be free from imposed marriage arrangements in an era of HIV/AIDS! These are just a few among many bottlenecks in our world as women.

My vision is to mobilise for rights of rural women and girls such that, one day in Cameroon the parliament votes an effective law against physical violence and psychological torture on rural women and girls. I foresee a country where rural women and girls can have a say about their lives and development orientations. I intend to mobiles women, girls and men of good will such that we move up with an online petition which I title ( Enough is enough, our mothers are human beings too) and submit it to both the Ministry of women affairs and parliament. Physical violence and torture of rural women and girls has been forgotten but, are constantly reproduced over generations. How will you convince a boy who grew up seeing his mother beaten or tortured not to, beat his own wife? How will you change the mentality of a girl who knows she can be beaten or tortured by her husband if he dislikes her initiative? How will women be initiators of development and economic growth if they can’t take initiatives?
It is argued that birth rates are very high among rural women but, have we ever questioned if they really wished it so or, society compels them to? Do they control their sexuality? Why are they beaten until another conception in case they dared attempting to stop? Are they just reproductive machines? Is life really worth living without even the least bit of dignity?

Being a correspondent will help me report these diverse scenes of violence and human deprivation which rural women and girls suffer in Cameroon. I wish to speak up our nightmares to all possible activists in the field of women and human rights. This will expose their plight, our plight to the world and inform other activists for alternative options which can help us sail through for the rights of basic dignity.

I wish to be a correspondent because I love the interactive nature of this online media. It brings me into contact with great women with different experiences and expertise. Human rights abuse in Cameroon is deplorable, if women rights are often fought for, what more of those of rural women and girls? Is it in villages with matrilineal succession where upon your husband’s death, all assets are taken away from you and children abandoned to you? Is it in cultures where fathers offer daughters as young as three years to aged notables either to gain traditional recognition or, as a form of punishment to their mothers who were not submissive? From violence against women, the problem of children’s right violation is born.
Being a correspondent for world pulse will help me expose these risky troubles of rural women and girls for alternative policies, assistance and global petitions in a bit for us to feel life is worth living.