When A Woman Meets A Woman, For The First Time

When A Woman Meets A Woman, For The First Time

In my senior one, I won a whopping Three Thousand Shillings (just slightly less than a US dollar now). Then, it felt like I had won a Hundred Thousand shillings.

It was a school dance competition at the famous all girls school, Gayaza High. Even before I showed my dance moves to the sea of onlookers, whose faces I couldn’t make out in the dark, I already knew which dance moves I would use, no matter the song they played.

And that is how I won. I won, because in my mind, no matter what they played, I had my dance ready. It’s a lesson I use in life. I am always ready to dance. It wasn’t the prize that mattered, as much as what it represented. The entertainment prefect at the time, Susan Nsibirwa, met me on the school compound and said, ‘Beverley, Congratulations, here is your prize.’ As she handed me the money, I knew that I had sat in the place of privilege.

An A-level prefect had walked up to me and spoken to me, without the need for me to fling myself off the pavement, which has always been an unwritten code. Senior ones never walked in the path of their ‘elders.’

There are some women you meet for the first time and they give you a seat of honour. Susan was one of them.

My favourite type of woman, is also the one who makes me understand that the two of us, in that moment, are enough. It may be a phone call, a lunch, a female client, or someone I meet on a taxi.

Early March, I served as an adjudicator at Kampala International School Uganda's Poetry Slam. The talent there is potent and mind-blowingly impressive. The English department staff told me that Tusiime Tutu was my co-adjudicator. Concentrating on the programme and filling in notes while waiting for the contest t begin, I see her walking in. With her Karamoja beads, short stylish kinky curls and dressed in a comfortable way that also says, ‘I am content with who I am and I love life,’ I immediately felt at ease.

And indeed, as we chatted and pored over the poets’ deliveries, never at any moment, did I feel I needed to impress her in order to feel I would fit into her life. The most confident people are those who put others at ease. The people with the highest self-esteem, are those you are able to rely on. And we relied on each other’s skills, to deliver our results.

To the women whom we meet for the first time who mix the red in their white to create pink and who mix the yellow and brown to make the gold, Happy Women’s Day.

 

Bless!

Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva