I have been thinking about what women get celebrated for.
Almost everywhere in the world, the list is short and it is always the same. Birthdays. Weddings. Babies. The milestones that happen to a woman rather than the ones she builds herself. And underneath that, the quieter measure we are all held to, which is how much of ourselves we give to other people. How loving we are. How much we carry. How well we hold everyone else up.
A woman's own success is rarely the reason a room fills up.
Nobody throws a party because she made money.
Nobody sings because her business worked.
And then there is Malawi.
You hear it before you see it.
Our team does not arrive at a celebration in Malawi. They arrive into one already in progress. The singing is already happening. The drumming. The ululating, that specific sound that goes straight through your chest and makes you feel what a blessing experiencing other people is. It was underway before we got there. It was never for our benefit.
And then you see them. Colour everywhere. Traditional patterned skirts, headwraps tied high, chitenje in reds and greens and yellows that do not ask permission from anything. Groups of women who clearly coordinated, who decided this was an occasion worth dressing for. Others in whatever they had that was their best, showing up because something was happening and something happening means you go.
Crowds of women and children. Dancing like it is their last day on this earth and they intend to go out with a bang.
I have watched the footage more times than I can count and I still get the same feeling every time.
I wish I was there.
All of that noise was for Efness.
One woman. One small business.
And here is what gets missed. Efness did not become capable the day she received it. She was always capable. She had the discipline, the instinct, the head for it, the work ethic that would put most of us to shame. All of it was already there, fully formed, waiting.
What she did not have was capital.
That is the whole story. Not a woman who needed rescuing. A woman who needed the one thing standing between what she could do and what she was allowed to do.
The look on her face in that footage is not relief. It is pride. And underneath the pride, something quieter that I keep returning to.
Peace. The specific peace of a person who finally has somewhere to put everything she has been carrying.
The part that undoes me is the women who came to clap.
Because not all of them have received a business yet.
Some are still waiting. Still in the queue. Still watching another woman receive the thing they have been hoping for. And they turned up anyway. Danced anyway. Sang for her win with their entire bodies while their own turn has not come.
There was no jealousy in that crowd. None.
Where I live, achievement is private. You get the promotion, you tell a few people, you go home. Nobody sings. Nobody comes. There is often a strange thin air in the room when someone else wins.
In Malawi one woman rises and forty women lose their minds about it.
I used to think of Malawi as a country behind us. Behind in development, behind in opportunity, behind in time.
I do not think that anymore.
Because we have not worked out how to celebrate a woman for something she built herself. We are still handing out applause for weddings and babies and how much she gives away. We have not learned to sing for each other's wins without something tightening in our chests.
They have.
Maybe Malawi is not behind us at all.
Maybe they are years ahead and we have not caught up.
For Efness, and for every woman still dancing while she waits,
Hafsa