My Journey to world pulse

It was November 2009 around 5.pm shortly after the end of my literature class. I was walking to the bus terminus in the company of two other classmates-a man and a lady. We were walking leisurely carefully dodging the evening bustle of office workers keen to get home. The topic of our discussion was the different work and activities that each one of us was engaged in prior to the commencement of our master’s program. Mine was a brief tale, that I had finished college in October 2008, and had worked for only six months as a high school teacher before I got a scholarship to further my education. Then it was my friend’s turn, Joanne to tell her story, she suddenly proffered business cards to the rest of us. I remember clearly the envy in me when she said that she was doing some journalism work for some women’s organization. One side of the card had the inscription ‘Voices of our future correspondents’ and on the other “Global issues through the eyes of women, WORLD PULSE, transform” and two website addresses for world pulse and pulse wire. What really caught my eyes was the Caption “Global issues through the eyes of women”, that was clearly very new, a website dedicated to women? It was different, unique and there and then I vowed to become part of this community.
A week later I walked into an internet cyber cafe’ and opened the word pulse website then read some of the posts she (Joanne) had made and other member’s posts. I did not join then for I did not want to work from a cyber with all the possible distractions and temptations to check out other social networks. If I were to join and remain active, I reasoned, then I better do it from my own PC.
Come January 2010 I got my PC, joined world pulse, introduced myself and promised to tell the rest of my story. But it was very painful relieving long buried memories. Though I was unable to post any other thing on my journal I kept logging in to read the posts .Finally this month I decided to post the rest of my story. Incidentally, that day I saw the call for the 2010 VOF application; it was 3 days to the deadline, I completed the survey, and waited for the journey to begin.
When I contemplate my life, I know that my story is only a version of other women stories. I am aware of my society’s silences concerning sexual abuse. Although the mainstream media gives attention to these acts, I know more needs to be done, those who have gone through these horrendous acts need to come together, to speak out. My vision is to avail this opportunity. It starts with my story, breaking the silence, airing my voice. It started the day I joined world pulse and with my participation in the 2010 VOF program, my faltering steps towards that vision grows firmer.