Back Stateside...

Oh my. So this is certainly not the end of the adventure, but the end of my Fellowship and the current Vagina World Tour have arrived. I hope to keep blogging/writing/publishing/learning/questioning and presenting about this experience, so stay in touch! Especially if you want to come to a presentation, or if you have any advice about publishing. I wanted to include my final Watson Report. My personal Vagina Monologue is at the bottom.


FINAL REPORT
Thomas. J. Watson Fellowship

Jennifer McKenzie

“Women Echoed Each Other”:
Breaking Silence with The Vagina Monologues

I have delayed writing this report, because I endowed it with a melancholic symbolism as The End of my Watson Year. I imagine you would respond by saying that the Watson experience is one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and that the perspective and direction it has nourished in me is but beginning, not terminating. I agree, and am trying to view this report as a reflection; a validation of sorts, an opportunity to truly thank the Watson Fellowship, to share what I have done, and to ruminate on how I have changed. Writing this and thinking about what I want to say, I do deeply feel this gratefulness- but even as I marvel at what this experience has meant, I also can’t help grieving its loss. This year I felt so incredibly alive. I was so enmeshed with my project and the daily business of creating and fully living a life in Mexico, England, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Thailand, Cambodia, India and South Africa; everything felt vital and somehow more vibrant.
Even now, as close to the experience as I still am, it can feel like a dream. Looking at my photos can feel unreal. To have been so many places in such a short time… But this was only a month ago, and it was my life, just as these more mundane days of the job search are. My backpack probably still smells like South Africa, but it is in my basement and not on my back. I’m going to fight against this though; I refuse to give in to nostalgia and rather choose to struggle to hold onto the truth of the experience. I don’t want the people I met, the stories I’ve imbibed, to reek of fantasy and glimmer with this nostalgia. It was real, I did these things, and I am changed. My goal I guess is to preserve this sense of wonder, of awareness, curiosity and openness that should be as vital here as it was traveling this year. Yesterday I was walking home from yoga along Division, the very street up which I walked to Elementary School. And yet, it was like I had never seen it before. It felt as new and unfamiliar to me as any random street in Budapest, Barcelona or Bangkok. And one thing I’ve learned this year is to take that fresh perspective, and instead of letting the unfamiliar be lonely, let that perception, whether it is actually a new street or one I’ve traversed for years, color my mind with new thoughts. So although this the end of my Watson journey, I am trying to remind myself that meaning is not dependent upon location, but rather my own attitude. I loved my life and hence myself while I was traveling this year. I want to be present and intentional “here” (wherever that ends up being) with as much passion as I was there (oh, there were so many “theres” this year).
This year I learned dozens of words for vagina in eleven different countries and even more languages. Of the over four thousand V-Day events this year, I covered twenty-five. My methodology included monitoring press reaction but was primarily based upon extensive interviews and participant observation among cast, crew, audience and beneficiary organizations. I also attended the V-Day European Organizers Workshop where I met V-Day staff and author Eve Ensler as well as influential activists. I completed over 200 interviews, and spoke with well over 225 informants in individual and group settings. But what do these numbers tell you about what this year was like, about what I learned and accomplished? The experience was so much more nuanced than mere statistics.
To my great surprise and joy I found that my project, while personally challenging and simultaneously gratifying, was a cathartic experience for my informants as well. And informants quickly became friends. I could never have realized before I stepped on that first flight (of many) how my role became so much more rooted in the personal validation I provided this year than on any final product. The Vagina Monologues portray real women’s stories. Just as most of these women had never shared these experiences with anyone before they became Vagina Monologues, most of my informants had never given themselves the chance to process what being involved in the play meant to their lives. I am honored to have helped them to feel legitimized, and delighted to find my work this year was often so reciprocal. I had feared being a story vulture. The first question I always asked was why they came to be involved. And I cannot stress enough the depth of the responses, the complex yet universal reasons women felt lured to speak out publicly, sometimes at great risk. Oh so naturally, my process of collecting testimonies about their experience with the play became about so much more; about their experiences being women, about their joys and trauma relating to their own vaginas. Often we both ended our interviews exhausted, but filled to the brim rather than drained. I think every interview ended with a hug, and as I left on the Mexico City metro, or the Bangkok BTS, or a Mumbai rickshaw, I would mull over the words I had just heard. And I knew that other soul heading off in another direction in the same city would be similarly holding in their mind the words they had just spoken- sometimes for the first time.
These conversations truly transformed The Vagina Monologues into dialogues. All of these incredibly poignant moments flicker through my mind. I found I would be thinking of Spanish abuelitas waving around bright pink vibrators while attending the Marathi dress rehearsal, in which some women were dressed in red sneakers and others in Saris. Or perhaps I would be chilling in the anti-trafficking NGO I studied in Belgrade, and something would conjure an image of the Mexico City AIDS Conference Vagina Monologues Open Mic, and I would be two places at once: preparing for the first rural performance in the previously war-torn former Yugoslavia and simultaneously remembering how thunderous monsoon rain couldn’t dampen the spark of stories that poured forth from HIV/AIDS activists. Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I still often have that experience of being many places at once. Because I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.
I used to make collages. I loved how all the pieces made a vibrant whole, and how seeing the images in bits or combined made me reconceptualize their meaning. In the same way I hope to collage what I have learned this year into a shareable product. I have an article that is being published (attached), and hope to expand this into a book. I also look forward to sharing a presentation about this year with communities around the city. I feel urgently responsible to do something with all that I have learned this year- as though I owe it to these women who so bravely spoke out to me, and who wished to share their stories with a wider audience than one.
I fell absolutely in love with my project. Just as past loves have busily occupied my mind and heart, during down time I was thinking about how to pack lighter, or about how to make informants feel more comfortable, or what sort of challenges they must be facing in their unique contexts. I was in love with my work and it also allowed me to focus on my relationship with myself. And, a year later, I’m convinced that I have found the equivalent of my soul mate in terms of the kind of work I want to do. I am still moved and engaged by it and would see The Vagina Monologues any day. I truly felt as though I was exactly where I was supposed to be, and doing what I needed to do. This year helped me to learn how important it is to give myself over to the work that I do; I enjoy being a vessel and feel I am most effective in this line of work. I have learned how to listen. I have learned when to talk. I am a witness. I now firmly believe that the world is smaller than I was led to believe, and am more sure of the role I am meant to play as an active citizen of this world.
After the kick-off event of the first V-Day ever done in Cambodia, I was getting late night eats with the leaders and their friends who had attended the screening of the documentary about The Vagina Monologues, ‘Until the Violence Stops’. In the humid night we were talking about how it has become a tradition at the end of the show to ask anyone who has survived abuse to please stand. Over curry and drinks the women were marveling at the strength of the women who stood in Brooklyn, in Kenya and beyond. They were chatting about how connected we are in the violence that is done to us, but more than that, connected in our strength and ability to feel empathy for one another. We could have been a scene in the movie. I listened intently, and noticed that one other woman was also silent. But hers was a brooding silence, her ears turned pinker and pinker, she had stopped eating. As I knew she would- she spoke. She said she felt like a liar sitting here at the table with us and speaking as though these were things that happened to other women, because that was her experience as well. She said she had never spoken about her abuse to anyone, but that when she saw all those women standing she desperately felt she had to do something. The organizer responded perfectly. As the women at her side reached out to her, as our eyes filled, Nora asked, “Would you like to stand now?” The woman considered it. And though we were in a rowdy crowd, she pushed back her chair and under the Cambodian sky she stood. She was regal. We all stood as well. I will never forget moments like these; how sometimes we have to stand, and how much easier it is when we stand together.


My Vagina's Watson Year

My vagina comes from a very female family My radical mother chose my genetics from a sperm bank and raised me to be always leaving her. Ever leaving her to follow the "wild collective song" that Eve Ensler shared with the world. She said, and I found, that women echoed each other. This song, these vagina monologues, became dialogues. They rang forth in cowsheds, hotels, restaurants, elderly homes, refugee camps, public parks, schools, malls, domestic violence shelters and antifascist festivals.

Danijela, a V-Day activist in Sarajevo, told me about one time when she was sitting on a beach. She was moved. Maybe it was the sea, or maybe it was what she calls the beautiful breaking of silence. She stood and started shouting monologues. I can picture her: surf in her hair and salt in her voice, spouting, "My vagina is angry! It is! It's PISSED OFF. It needs to talk. It needs to talk to you!" I imagine the shock this must have been to the sunbathers around her. I have learned this year that shock can be good. The moments when we are most jarred, most overwhelmed, open a little window of opportunity: for a
new thought; a new conversation; a new question, doubt, or validation. Opened up the window for a lot of joy.

Me and my vagina have been traveling this past year. We've been listening. We've been focused on the stories of others. The art of witnessing; the practice of empathy that sometimes swamps. Believe it or not, it wasn't sexy. Most of the time. I'm trying to absorb the survivorship, the hope and community instead of the rape and abuse and
fear. I'm hoping to put into practice what I advocate. I want a quizzical, questioning, intentional vagina. I am most present in my body when I am traveling.

My own vagina monologue has merged with the main players of my year. Their story is mine and mine is theirs, and taboos are broken and words created where they didn't exist. This year there were a lot of moans. Mine tended to be rooted more in the exchange rate, Mumbai traffic and computers crashing than in lust. I cried in most of my
interviews, and hugged in all. There was vagina art, lots of chocolate, alcohol, coffee, eighty year-old senoras auctioning dildos, massages, red lipstick, and vagina birthday cakes.

Lori in Serbia used to go to refugee camps alongside the medical services. Afterwards, they would do an informal reading of The Monologues: just there, behind the van, in the streets where they happened to be. She said afterwards, a woman inevitably said. "Ah.
Now we have all heard this... And so I will tell you my story." And like magic, they would begin to share. Lori said, ‘It's the end of the performance, and they are speaking. You are speaking with them. The performance is over, you are packing your stuff- you are leaving. They are staying and speaking more and more and more. You are gone and
they are still speaking." Though I am gone, or rather here than there, I know women are still speaking everywhere I went and beyond. I can almost hear them as I walk these familiar streets. I know what they are saying and I love them.

Women talking about their vaginas tend towards circles. They sit in circles, they hug in circles. What I learned, and tried to share, was the place where all these circles connect. Like links. Becoming ever stronger. Like ever widening ripples that touch individuals and catalyze communities. In the end of my own vagina monologue, there is no
end. There is only connection; there are only more stories.

A Sunday-like Sunday

I am in Port Elizabeth, (P.E.) now, and it is a quintessential lazy Sunday. I am catching up on sleep, grooming, reading, solitude and sun. Stumbled into a sweet coffee shop, then stumbled upon St. Georges park and the monthly flea market where I purchased a carved wooden flower to replace the button on my sweater and dried apricots, which I munched while languidly reading against the kiddy park and people watching. Last night after a sauna-esque bus skipped the station, I was left stranded in a creepy vacant mall parking lot. A kind family adopted me and drove me to my backpackers.

Tomorrow I have a group interview- perhaps the last interview of the year. I hope to volunteer at the Women's Haven here for a few days, before heading to Cape Town to see Mollie's life, and to meet Dawny! As you can probably tell from this post, I am feeling present-bound and more focused on current enjoyment than on deep reflection. This feel alright at this stage. More than okay, it feels good. Though, crunching through some fallen Oak leaves today, I felt a hunger for familiar seasons, one that will be satiated soon enough. I feel like napping, stretching, crying (in a good book kind of way); I feel like kissing someone, I feel momentarily brave.

I am reading Bahjallanie's "Midwives" and though it probably shouldn't, it makes me want to be a midwife in spite of having ruled it out. I love helping people, women, babies, vaginas. I loves science without doctors offices and bureaucracy, and I love warm fuzzies. I think I could be comforting, I know I wouldn't be squeamish. Hm. Something to think about, talk to Steph about.

In Which: the end was filled with laughter

I didn't realize how much I was online until these last few weeks when my absence was noted by conscientious friends, Mom was called, etc. Course I don't want to make anyone worry, but nonetheless it was a cozy feeling to have people looking out for me. Aware of me, even the cyber version of me. I know you're rolling your eyes, but I do have a tendency to think I am forgotten, and to underestimate my friends- not them, but them in my life. I picture myself, when everything is going crappily, crying with the end conclusion (of flooded art buildings, burnt sinks, unhappy endings, wailing: "I don't have anyyyy f-f-f-FFFFFriennndddds!" And Dawn, or Katie, or any of my fabulous loved-ones, exasperated, but kind, reminding me of my own ridiculousness.

Since Durban research I have been traveling with Mollie- another gift I've received from Andrew. We absolutely hit it off from the first moment as I tumbled off that stale buss in East London. Chattering wildly and hyperly as we made our way to the bathroom, she: "ARRGH! I just started my period and don't have my diva cup!" Me: "Ha! Mine's inside me!". With a glee resembling A.D.D. we bought 2 kilos of carrots and yogurt and trundled immediately to the coast, where a peace both friend and sea-related overswept me, and hasn't disappeared since. From then on, we didn't really stop laughing. We laughed as we nearly got stranded there and drank cider and played horrific pool, we laughed as we WOOFED at an organic permaculture farm and dismantled prickly pears and assassinated invasive plant species; as we crashed a farm party (we taught the lady farmers the macarena while the men shyly chugged beer by the fire and gossiped in a middle school parody- apparently we were quite the hit!); We laughed our way down the Wild Coast, as we unstranded ourselves in Umtata, as we perused the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We marveled at the sparkly depth and magnitude of the stars on the farm where we stayed.

Being in her constant jolly presence relaxed me in a way I haven't felt for ages, and I promptly responded by absent-mindedly forgetting things everywhere I went, which have since been returned through the kindness of strangers. Because of her easy company I checked out of my "reflective travel mode", and just enjoyed. Sharing details, decisions, and company- processing verbally and being entirely myself... We were bad at shutting up to sleep; I read maybe twenty pages during the time we were together. She helped me with my Americorps app (I got an interview!), and even de-boned chicken for a Mexican feast we prepared for a VM focus group with Rhodes Univ. Students.

Rainy day

Don't ask me why, but the rain in Bulungula smells like Michigan air. Which means o me it smells of nostalgia, innocence, magic summers and sadness I'm not old enough for. Too many mothballs of grief for comprehension.

Mollie and I got up for a rain splashed sunrise, from which the sun was as sluggish to emerge as we were to wake. Walking the fluctuating waterline in the liquid dawn, I kept hearing slapping footfalls running up behind me. Whether they were really leaves, paranoia, or ghosts I know not. But I wasn't scared.

It reminded me of other early morning beach walks, it reminded me of reminding myself of my mother. That moment in the D.R., with my toes the first to touch that Caribbean morning foam, and jotsom and ... flotsom? (How does it go?) I was maybe beginning to grow up, because the similarities between my mother and I were comforting, were a dose of her, as opposed to the stereotypical teenage grimace at any familiar resemblance.

I am sitting here in the eco-lodge, fresh solar made Xosa bread and veggie sausage brekky on the way. Mosaics and murals and drift wood chandeliers are above me. It is a rainy day, a rained in day, a day of rain, and the sea is visible just outside the dripping and salty window. There is local jazz playing, and this morning, everyone is slow to wake. We have bi passed the paraffin-powered showers in deference to the water shortage and our own cozy laziness. Need I say more? I am happy.

Taking my vitamins

(Political cartoons. Second one a counter attack to the outrage and rebuttals. He is being sued I am told.)

Durban is a delight. My first day I awoke at dawn (momentarily) and peeled back the curtain to see a rose sunrise splashed across the horizon, which was two-thirds round, round, ocean. Drinking nescafe and obligatorily admiring their obese sea-lion-esque labs, I saw whales spouting! (okay, moment of sharing: wrote “whales sprouting” stared at it for a sec, ‘something is wrong about this. Then realized, and struck me as hilarious. Sprouting!) There were dozens of dolphins cavorting amongst their own breakfast of sardines. The water was quiet. Auntie Raj told me she calls it a tea-cup sea when it’s like that. Staying with Nikita’s family and their friends was a window into a large family. Her parent’s relationship, forged in the Apartheid resistance movement, is the kind everyone dreams of. Or, the kind I dream of anyhow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a partnership more tender and respectful. She told me, “Watch them- every morning it’s like they fall in love again.”



Some of the tension, and most all of the cold, is alleviated here. Walking the tree-lined avenues, meeting interviewees at Botanical Gardens where symphonies play, used bookstores, curling amid funky décor and ordering hummus, sipping coffee in sunlit street cafes- all of these things are welcome. My enjoyment of them can feel vaguely guilty, because I appreciate these things for their familiarity. But I have long given up trying to find the quintessential “South African” experience- it is all South African, just as it was all Indian. The 7-11s in Thailand were Thai!



I’m also at the point in my year where I make real vegetable soup and squash for dinner, where I transcribe in the corner and read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” (my find!). In Spain the difference between Emily’s lives and subsequent attitudes and I was so clear- she was so interested in making friends with everyone, “Where are you from? How long are you here? Where are you coming from and where are you going next?” And I was just happy to be with a familiar soul and tired of asking and answering those same questions; I am meeting people all the damn time. I love it. Of course I do. But today for example, after three interviews, one rape disclosure, I am exhausted. I had real connection, I made them feel comfortable, I described my project for the thousandth time. I am not lonely. But I am a bit weary. And I just don’t want to play nice with the other backpackers.



Like the veggies (whose need I feel after too much hearty South African fare of meat pies, “chips”, billtong, and bunny chow), the solitude and my new book are my nutrition. Another job application is my nasty vitamin pill. I am fortifying my cerebral cortex. Though the academia of Wits University was tantalizing, I don’t really want to go right back to school even if the economy seems to want me to- instead, I need to keep LEARNING other ways. I cannot wait to go to Portland’s public libraries! We are so damn spoiled with educational opportunities.



I do have this sense of… Not quite getting to the heart of the issues here. My interviews are satisfying, interesting, similar, but my research stays on a safe level. The Medical Research Council says that there are 40,000 rapes per month in South Africa. ONE THOUSAND RAPES EVERYDAY. Interpol says SA leads the world in rapes. The facts are more than sobering, they are crippling. A new fear- being raped and becoming HIV positive. These conversations are moving, but I am on Florida and Davenport road, I am not seeing the townships, the grit, so apparent in Jo’burg, is hidden- where are the drug pushers? The children sniffing glue? The cornrows being done on the corners? I keep wanting rip off the facade, “5,000 toddlers are raped every month! 20 infant rapes per day here!” One out of two women in South Africa will be raped or violated. I feel frustrated, impotent- my questions feel futile- “What is the point of The Vagina Monologues?” I ask, and here, I wonder, I need answers. “What does it mean to have it here?” I am trying and trying to focus on the individuals, how these young women’s lives were broken open, how they now feel stronger, inspired, validated. Nombuso told of having her first baby at fifteen, of not knowing anything about sex, about her babie’s father stalking her, raping her. She paused. And then segwayed, “I think I am strong for leaving him. And that’s why I did The Vagina Monologues. We have to tell girls about these things!” But these statistics are looming, and threatening to swallow the beauty. Can I do this work my whole life? Will I be able to keep believing in humanity? … There are some books and films that capture life’s ephemeral and epic yet mundane qualities- every now and then I get a glimpse of this perspective for my friend’s lives, ever so rarely my own. Oh, I don’t know how to explain this. Gonna go eat some "grenadillas" ie. passion fruit, to feel some vibrancy.

Howziit. Stayed in Jo'burg, hey.

Accidentally spent nearly two weeks in Jo'burg! Interviews, outdoor rock music festival, rare rain made the coziness that much more appealing. I went to uni with Niks during the day, and between interviews just revelled in a university setting- I was feeling nostalgic and strangely drawn to go back. Until I went into a classroom! Got sucked into the daily life of a beautiful family, and felt so at home I procrastinated leaving. Like Ana in Brighton, Nikita welcomed me not only into her heart and insight about The Vagina Monologues, but brought me home with her. Her fourth/fifth generation Indian South African family were an amazing transition- daily curries so comforting. I am covered in lab puppy hair- I have no doubt at least a kilo made its way into my backpack. Their incredibly tight knit family made the uniqueness of mine shine anew. Her mum, Auntie Janie told me, "You have no sisters?" No, none. "Well, now you have Nikki." I got goodnight kisses along with all the other "kids" and am driving down to Durban with them today where I have gazillions of interviews set up with her cast for the next three days. Then I head to meet Mollie and woof! So excited to get my hands in some dirt and see some greenery after Mumbai madness and Jo'burg cemented and gated cosmopolitan entity.

Severally Alone

Jo'burg feels oh so different from Mumbai, though there are parts that are eerily familiar. I admit I let myself be intimidated. How does fear form? In warnings, in an extreme sense of not belonging, of standing out- being the only white person in sight. In an emergency button I'm supposed to push in case someone tries to break in during the night, in, "so I'll just ask directions" and "umm, no. Don't talk to anyone" Everyone, black, white, foreign, local say to be in by darkfall- which means 5 pm! Because of the cold and the fear I feel strangely hibernated tucked in to wait out a violence that will probably not come, but whose presence seems lingering. Venturing to the market felt like an adventure- the way people were talking I pictured- what? gangs roving the streets? Instead, it was a sunny crisp Sunday afternoon. Could have been any inner-city area. I saw a literal craigslist of agitated white handwritten papers with crowds pressed in. It felt surreal, people lined as though watching parade or army pass by- but staring instead at a wall full of overpriced non/possibilities.

Babies are the warmest people I have seen. Securely strapped to their moms' backs like sleeping spherical precious cargo. I want their security- or even the comfort of caring for a little person. I imagine they are tiny sloberingsnoring furnaces- even warmer than the sun that settled over my own shoulders and back as I sipped endless tea- trying to imbibe warmth and confidence.

The minibuses felt incredibly familiar, and safe to me. It felt like AMIGOS, or like Mexico city. I love watching everyone on their way to work, school, the drivers joking with each other, instead of shooting up as I'd been told.

I slept under four blankets, the tip of my (I swear) growing nose frigid. While the chimes chimed, and the dog orbited my "cottage," the inexplicable movie of my dreams unfolded. They say you don't imagine strangers, but I have never met the man I loved last night. Only I could see his bruises. I traced the texture on his back where he had been beaten with wood. The grain pronounced in his epidermis like a wood cutting. We were trying to save a child.

The city felt untouchable, impotent, from the 50th floor of the Carlton Center. It made me feel lonely and as though I could never understand or touch anything about this place. I love the quotes at the beginning of 'Maximum City'; "We are individually multiple" (Kabir Mohanty) and "I am severally alone" (Kumar Gandharva). The Soweto Artists gallery was the perfect anti-venom- Peter's colorful chalk pastel rubbed off onto me, and the grassroots single room filled with dancing, pain, music, AIDS, poverty, gossip and flirtation calmed me in a very real way.

I've lightened up and am so very mobil that there is none of the distracting "settling" in that normally eases me into a place. This nomadness, my utter lack of a plan that is in fact necessary- knowing this is almost the end, and that Dawn is coming- all of this swerves me into countdown kind of mind. Is this good? Bad? I think it just is. So much of life IS; value judgement free because of its inevitability. I am not an advocate for passivity, but the moments we have the least control can be oddly liberating.