Can you tell me about one of your first acts of resistance during your adolescence?
One of my first acts of resistance was to get my first odd job. It wasn’t anything crazy, but it was completely liberating. Right after graduating from high school, I found an internship in one of the first private radio stations to be created in Niger, then I was hired there. I was doing a little bit of everything: host, director, producer, freelancer. I had a small salary, but it was a guaranteed monthly income that came from the work I was providing.
That didn’t go well with many, many people. People thought that it wasn’t a good idea. And by people, I mean everybody: people I knew, strangers, people that knew me but I didn’t know, some who knew my father but to whom I had never spoken. And all these people allowed themselves to share their opinion and to pressure my father to make me stop working. A young girl working wasn’t appropriate, especially in a public job… at an age when she should be thinking about marriage. Moreover, by being in the public eye, your worth decreases a little in the marriage market.
That’s when I resisted. I had a real adult conversation with my father and we cut a deal: as long as having a job didn’t interfere with my college grades, I could go on.
What impact did your teenage resistance have on your life and the lives of others?
In concrete terms, I acquired financial independence, which allowed me to support several projects of family members early on. Yes, I do what I want, but I manage to keep this balance between what I want to do and the relationships I have with my community.
And there’s also my cousins’ daughters. They can see me and think: “she’s one of us, she’s creating her path, and it’s going well for her. So, it’s possible for me too, if I want something different.”
When you look ahead, what does the world look like that your resistance of yesterday and today will have helped create – especially for the girls of today and onward?
What world do I want for girls? Of course, it would be a world where being a woman is not an obstacle to self-fulfilment. It would be a world where the system we live in today, capitalism, is not based on the exploitation of women. Because this system stands nowadays because women are exploited. At least in my opinion. So, it would be a world where women and men can become accomplished thanks to our aptitudes, our qualities, our ambitions, our values…without being hindered by a defined gender.
I really count on the next generation of women and men to resist, to refuse this system that serves neither women nor men.
