Recently, some women in my form in boarding school got together. We decided to come together under one umbrella, have meetings and support each other in any way we could. So we created a chat group on WhatsApp, and one on Face book and we are also looking into creating a website for ourselves. Less than a fortnight into the creation of the chat, 105 of the 152 girls had been added to the chat. Looking at the bio data of the 105 we got so far there are 38 clinicians, 26 business owners, 5 lecturers and 2 stay at home mums. The rest are in the civil service, armed forces, information technology, banking and telecoms in the different sectors of the economy.
These figures alone make us all agree with Jennifer Hudson’s statement, ‘’I am so glad I was born a woman in this time.’’ Also the statement, ’’This is the best time to be born a woman.’’ It took just 72 hours to have a meeting with 25 of us in attendance. There was so much left over that almost everyone took something home and we were able to thank our hostess’ husband with a bottle of Hennessey and a small tray of snails. On the downside, 3 of us are drifters and were unable to finish their university education and are yet to acquire any skill to irk out a decent living. 2 of us have been widowed, the first after only 3 years of marriage and one child.
 Nine of us are of blessed memory, 2 as a result of accidents, one of us was shot in cold blood by her husband of 12 years and the rest were due to complications from child birth. 3 women have never married while 28 are divorced. This reality was the hardest to put away as just another statistic. So as I looked at our pictures on Facebook, the other coordinators related the events that led to the different tragedies we had faced over 25 years.
I could not help but notice despite their geographical locations, personalities and backgrounds, so many of us had lost that lustre and glow that we took for granted while growing up. Thanks to modern technology we were able to upload tons of our school pictures on Facebook and have them all side by side – graduations, weddings and award pictures. It was quite clear how much pain and sorrow had crept into the once innocent and care free eyes and hearts of so many of us. No matter how we smiled, did our hair and make-up, like stubborn stains it could not be wiped away or properly camouflaged.
I forgot to add, in 2009, one of us delivered a 3.75 kg baby boy after her fallopian tube had been surgically removed 9 years before he was born. He is a bundle of great joy and energy. Again, it was extremely difficult to overlook the reality that his mum has one of the greatest glows of us all on Facebook and at our meeting as we voted officials.