Tapestries of Hope

I heard about this movie from Sally Lieber's email list. She was telling us about some sort of premiere. I went to it and found out the film maker (Michealene Cristini Risley) and the star (Betty Makoni) were both there for it. Not only that, but Amnesty International leadership was also there, along with somebody important from the website where the film maker had learned about Makoni and her work, www.thewip.net. Most of the rather small crowd was very well dressed and genteel. It wasn't long after I got there that the movie quickly got to the point about the problem they wanted us to know about.

The essence of it all is that shamans have been spreading the story that having sex with a young woman cures HIV and AIDS. There are many desperate men who don't want to die, and they have been trying the idea. Girls who have had the experience are getting the "damaged goods" treatment, making them effectively orphans. Betty Makoni has feelers out for such girls, and she tries to help them as soon as possible after the event. When they come in she sits with them, listens to their stories and cleans them up as much as possible. Then she works to get them educated and empowered, making them assets to their community.

Supposedly, if she can get them cleaned up within 72 hours of the rape AIDS can be prevented. Unfortunately, that is often not possible. A lot of the film was brief stories of girls who were there when Risley and her crew visited. One or two of them did go on to college, but many died of AIDS. The most galling case was a girl that died of AIDS at only eight months of age. It was clear that Betty Makoni did have a good strategy for healing the women's psyche, because many of the girls were able to smile for the camera despite what they had been through.

They also had footage of a guy with an advanced case of AIDS who told his story. He said the healer had told him a young womans sex could solve his AIDS problem. He tried it and it didn't work. Not only that, but now he had the knowledge that he had killed someone else with his AIDS to carry around. It was clear that knowledge bothered him. He also died before the movie ended. Dying of AIDS in Zimbabwe doesn't take that long, and happens a lot.

Nobody wanted to go first, so I went up and said "That was a very touching movie. Maybe if you get guys like the one who said raping youngsters doesn't work to tell their stories widely so more other guys get it from a guy that knows the truth the rapes will stop." Betty Makoni said something like "I agree with the comment, we are going to try that."

When the movie was made Betty Makoni only had one crisis center/girls school, but since then she has franchised the model to a place in (I think she said Botswana). She explained that she picked that place because they had the same problems and it was convienient to get to.

I'm not sure what the question was that elicited this, but Betty Makoni said that she had done something that had freed 50,000 women from rape camps, but it had also made the political system in Zimbabwe furious with her. She is now a penniless wanderer, trying to figure out how to change things with just her words. She is hoping to build a global movement out of it. Find out more at:

The last question went to an Indian guy that said "In India there is massive aborting of female fetuses because parents want boys. These girls don't even get a chance to cry. You should do a film about that." He finished by saying "this isn't just a problem of Zimbabwe, it's a global problem. We are all affected by the abuse of women."