“I’m really excited that Leymah Gbowee alongside President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Tawakkul Karman have been jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Award. There seems no better time to publish the interview I held with her in 2008 on the sidelines of the 2nd African Feminist Forum” Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, Communications Officer, AWDF

NS: Who is Leymah Gbowee?

LG: How do I describe who Leymah is? Usually I will start with my children because that is one identity I really love (I have 4 biological and 1 adopted child) but I think I am a person who from a really young age has been looking for answers to life and this was reinforced during the early years of the Liberian war. I am a helper and a woman who loves herself. I am an activist at every level. Everything that touches a woman’s life, a girl-child’s life and a child’s life touches my being. I have a lot of compassion and a lot of energy. I find it difficult to relax. I was brought up in a home and was the fourth child of five girls. I had a mother who was an only child and a father who is sympathetic to feminism. It was my father who resisted us being subjected to female genital mutilation. I come from a family of activists. My grandmother got divorced thrice and taught us that if a husband brought in the charcoal or rice you should be able to bring the salt. I will also describe myself as a politician; I have a head for politics.

 

NS: I only became aware of your work through ‘Pray the devil back to Hell’…

LG: (wry smile) that’s funny because that is not what I focus most on. What I pride myself on the most is starting WIPSEN – Liberia from scratch and bringing it to international standards and through that making progress in the lives of women and children. While I celebrate ‘Pray the devil back to Hell’ I celebrate WIPSEN, which was founded by Thelma Ekiyor and myself.

 

NS: What is WIPSEN about?

LG: The co-founder of WIPSEN, Thelma was also the founder of a previous organization WIPNET, which focused on grassroots activism and what we realized, was missing was the links between policy and grassroots activism. Some of these grassroots women who were very good mediators were not being called up to serve as mediators at an international level. Good initiatives like resolution 1325 were also not filtering down to the grassroots. WIPSEN however focuses on peace and security governance, which allows us to fill in those gaps so at the moment for example we are working with the army in Liberia to ensure that women’s issues are reflected in policy.

 

NS: Where do you get your strength from?

LG: I get my strength from my faith in God. Pain has a way of moving people to 2 levels. When you are in pain you want revenge or you want the pain to go away. From the age of 17 till I turned 31 all I saw was different versions of pain. The situation went from bad to worse to ridiculous. It’s almost like you are sinking and you can see no end. I experienced this personally and this was also the experience of other women in Liberia. This is how I started working to build peace in Liberia and I was grateful when the women said ‘we trust you, guide this process”. Daytime was the time for action and night-time was when I would do my strategic thinking and planning. During the war it was the pain that gave me the most energy. There is a scene in ‘Pray the devil back to Hell’ when we barricaded the men in the venue where the peace talks were being held. That was the time when I was most angry; I wanted to grab an AK47. I started stripping like I had threatened to do (The documentary ‘Pray the devil back to Hell’ explains that it is a taboo for African men to see the naked bodies of their Mothers so stripping in front of men is an act of defiance)

 

NS: How did you meet Abigail Disney? (Abigail Disney is producer of ‘Pray the devil back to Hell’)

LG: That was a weird one. I had gone to the US to attend university in Virginia; no one knew I was there. I got invited to speak at the 5^th anniversary of 1325 and Swanee Hunt told me that ‘Someone is looking for you – Abby of Disney world’. So Abby and I had a meeting and she asked me about the work I had done and told me that she wanted to explore this as a movie. We went back to Liberia and set up a meeting with key people and Abigail’s team interviewed lots of people, took tons of footage and images of film. When I saw the final piece I thought they had done a good piece.

 

NS: What kinds of support do women working in peace building need?

LG: One of the things I firmly believe in is giving the support that is needed. Never underestimate work anyone has done. Validate and show confidence in what women do. When we started it was a lonely road. We started our activism with $10 from a woman’s handbag. For two months we were fundraising. We had no support from NGOs and initially had a church help us with fundraising. When we went to Accra for the peace talks we thought we would be there for three weeks but we ended up being there for twice that time. AWDF gave us support, which enabled us to stay, and women from Northern Ghana gave us support. They sent us 5 women who sat down and cried with us. When the press asked the women why they were there, they said, ‘When our time comes, the Liberian women will help us’. That’s the kind of support we need. Technical, financial and moral support – it makes you feel good. At the same time we also heard that Nigerian women had presented a statement on our behalf. That’s what we need to do. When we hear something has happened women all over Africa need to start mobilising.

 

NS: How have you found the AFF so far?[1]

LG: Spaces like AFF is where I come to rejuvenate. Over the past year I have been mellow and quiet. Yesterday during the trial (As part of the AFF a ‘Feminists on Trial’ session was held which explored through a mock trial critical issues that feminists need to address) I was jumping about and people said, ‘This is the old Leymah’. You are able to rejuvenate when you are with women who share the same challenges…