Grandmothers to Grandmothers

Toronto hosted a very unique and important conference this weekend: As part of the annual AIDS conference, the Stephen Lewis foundation created a “Grandmothers to Grandmothers” gathering. 100 African grandmothers were flown into Toronto (women who had never even left their village), and joined 200 grannies from across Canada. In fact, unknown to me, there exist many many Granny groups across our country – women who have come together with the avid desire to help the world in this way.

The conference aimed to create a dialogue between the African grannies and the Canadian ones. It opened up a conversation so that the Canadian Granny chapters could respond to what exactly the African grannies needed. The other thing that happened – that was so evident – was camaraderie between them. There was a profound respect for the African Grannies; women who have lost their own children to AIDS, who have never had the opportunity to grieve for this lose, who are now caring for sometimes dozens of grandchildren.

My own role was a volunteer with the film crew. We were filming testimonials from both the African and Canadian Grandmothers. One interview was with a woman who spoke Zulu. She told her story to us with a translator sitting next to her. Another woman, we went over-over-over time with --- and just after we finished and turned off the camera, she told us “no wait, turn it back on, I have something else to say.” There is something very empowering for these women to tell their stories to a camera, and to hope that it will be heard. The intimacy of these interviews I think came from the openness of them. There was no specific agenda for them, but rather they provided an opportunity to give voice to whatever these women needed to express. Breakthrough Films provided the crew for the filming, all of who were volunteers. I think the eventual form of the video is TBA - for the moment I think it was mostly gathering and will be used in a few different ways for the Stephen Lewis foundation. The director of the documentary was Shelley Saywell. She created the film Martyr Street about the lives of a Jewish and a Palestinian girl living in Hebron, which won the Best Canadian Documentary prize at Toronto's Hot Docs International Documentary Festival.

And then there were the celebrations! I arrived to the evening dinner at the same moment as a busload of African Grannies and was caught (happily) in the middle of them as we danced and sang all the way into the building. And the rest of the evening saw many Grannies go to the front of the room and take turns singing for the crowd! There's something to dancing and singing that can bring hope and determination to action, I'm sure of it. This was absolutely a bonding experience for the grannies from different sides of the world.

There was one strong exclamation of negative energy --- the fact the PM Harper did not make an appearance, nor will he at all at the international AIDS conference. He was 'booed' loudly by the crowd - and deservingly so. I am so upset by this. To be honest, I was so proud to be a woman and to be a Canadian this weekend. This is a Canadian initiative - these are Canadian Grandmothers who want to help and who are helping; who showed compassion and action; who will encourage grandmothers from the rest of the world to act; who are starting a movement. Yes, I did feel pride, amongst a million other emotions, but this pride was hurt enormously by Harper's inability to show Canada's commitment to this issue - to the world.