My name is Cassilde, president of the Friends Women's
Association, in Burundi.
It's pleasing me to share with you how things went on our March 8, 2003
gathering.
I personally participated on two levels:
We put on our uniform and ran to the stadium, and we met on our way other
later groups of women coming to gather.
First I was invited as a volunteer nurse to offer my services at a 4 days conference organized for Christian groups of women by the National Council of churches where 250 women were participants (from March 5- 9). That kind of conference happens every five years.
Women from different religious organizations bring their handcrafts and other handmade materials to sell. They had guests speakers from other African Countries like Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda and Canada.
The conference ended up by a long march for peace in the streets of the capital city toward one stadium where officials and women leaders delivered some speeches.
Second, 29 women out of the "Friends Women" met together on March 8, from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
As many of us were also invited to participate in the peace march organized by the National Council of Churches we decided to join in as much as possible.
We quickly talked a bit about our initiative as a small group, I handed out to them some papers that they have to sign up as a form of commitment to follow our association's regulations and talked a bit about the outcome of our previous activities.
We afterwards shared the gather the women vision statement and situated
ourselves in the network of the world peacemakers.
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The Minister of planning and good governance who is a woman spoke to us. The gathering was honored by the presence of the Vice-president.
We
sang, danced, laughed and listened to beautiful drumming.
The ceremonies ended up at around 1:00 p.m. and people emptied the stadium
saying good bye to each other.
Some went straight home, others have organized themselves and shared some food and drinks. In our group , we sat down in quiet place and after eating together, we exchanged nice and upholding words to each other, promising to always seek unity, first between ourselves so that we can better strive for peace and then went home.
Peacefully,
Cassilde