Speakers’ Corner: On remaining drunk on the right stuff

On Mondays, http://www.global-changemakers.net turns into Speakers’ Corner: members of the network and community have their say on their work and the issues that concern them.

 

 

This is a slightly modified version of a poem entitled, “Be Drunk” by the 19th century French poet Charles Baudelaire. It was modified by Dr. Sylvia Tamale of the Faculty of Law, Makerere University Uganda, in a paper titled “Fanning the Flame of Feminism in Uganda” presented on the occasion of celebrating ACFODE’s 18th anniversary, November 17, 2003 at the International Conference Centre, Kampala.

Reading her paper about how women rights activists need to become feminists if they are to achieve gender equality, I think to myself: perhaps the reason we have many human rights activists and very few human rights defenders is because the latter are drunk with justice, equality and passion and the former only concerned about salary and the niceties of life! And I choose to remain drunk with justice, freedom, equality and passion!

One should always be drunk.
That’s all there is to it; it’s the only way.
Not to feel the horrible burden of Time
That breaks your back and bends you to the earth,
You should be continually drunk.

Drunk with what?
With passion, with anger, with outrage or with justice, as you please.
But get drunk.

And if sometimes you should happen to awake,
On the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a

      ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and

      find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has

      vanished,
Ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings,

      everything that speaks,
Ask them the time; and the wind, the wave, the star,

      the bird and the clock will all reply:
“It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the

      martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk!
With passion, with anger, with outrage or with justice,

      as you please.”

- Anita Ayebale, Global Changemaker

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