Buttons Made With Love

Show the wonder of your great love, you who save by your right hand those who take refuge in you from their foes. Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.”-Psalm 17:7-8 

For the last 4 months I have been spending my Wednesday mornings at the youth center here in Manzini. Myself and 2 of the girls on my team work with 8 women who spend their days at the youth center making clay jewelry. Businesses purchase the products in mass amounts and the women are paid for their work. Along with getting paid, they are also learning a valuable craft which they can use to make money for their family outside of this job. We have fallen in love with these women and my heart has truly been broken for them. They are all different ages and have different personalities but they have taken us in as their own. We laugh as we sit and make buttons with them and learn about their lives.

Over the past couple of months God has really been bringing to my awareness all that women go through here. The culture is so different than in non-third world countries. Women here are not treated with respect at all. They are treated as less than men and have no voice of their own. The men here beat the women on a regular basis. It is more abnormal for a man not to beat his wife that vise versa. The women here have very few ways to make money on their own so they depend on the men to provide for their family. Because the women are dependant on the men, the men therefore think that they can make the women do whatever they want. You are considered as less of a man if you treat a woman with respect.

Last month a woman from England came in to speak to the women about women’s rights. This in itself is a whole new concept for most of the women here. They have been raised to think they have no rights. The topic of the day was violence against women. The speaker asked the women to name some of the ways men can show violence towards women. As I sat there listening to the women talk my heart started to ache. The first thing that came up was marital rape. The women here don’t feel like they have the choice to say no and therefore are physically forced many times against their will. They are beat many times for no reason. One woman that we are very close to said her husband used to beat her before he left her and she didn’t seem to think anything was wrong with it. Another lady said that her husband took the scarf off of her head one day and tied it around her neck and tried to strangle her. My heart started to break. The speaker asked if the women had been told that they were rubbish and worthless by their man and they all said yes. She asked if anyone’s man was not faithful to them and their response was that it was impossible to find a faithful man here. Their husbands would marry them and then within 5 years would have another younger and prettier wife. Some even said that the man would bring their new girlfriend over to the house and use the girlfriend to disrespect his wife in front of her. My heart broke a little more. The speaker asked if there were any places the women could go for help and they said that the few women who have had the courage to ask for help have only ended up with worse consequences. Their husbands just beat them more. By this time they have 5-10 children and are scared to leave because they will have no way to support the kids. Then I thought about the beautiful children of this country. They have some of the most beautiful children I have ever seen and to think that the children have to witness all of this just killed me and my heart broke even more. I looked at the gorgeous women sitting around the table that have been abused and told they are trash and my heart screamed for them. Even more than hurt I started to get angry. I want to fight for them. I want them to know that they are not worthless and they do have a voice. I want them to know love how God intended it and how they are being treated is not ok. 

This past Wednesday was our last day with these women. We brought cookies shaped like buttons and other snacks and had a really sweet time of showing them how much we love them. I can’t believe I have spent 4 months with them. In a way it feels like a flash of light. I can’t believe it is already gone. I will never forget these women. They mean so much to me and I truly love them.