Letting go VS Ignoring, Pangani couples reflects.

Over the years UZIKWASA has been promoting gender justice among Pangani and neighboring communities through gender-sensitive interactive radio Programs. Pangani FM Radio has been a very powerful tool to reach communities in wider coverage.?

Community, religious leaders, and couples from different levels have been supported to realize their leadership gaps through reflective training that supports individuals to work on the ‘self’ hence developing individual growth questions.

Through these reflective approaches, couples who experience conflicts have been benefiting from healthy relationships.?

This year UZIKWASA used valentine’s season as an opportunity to initiate a special campaign dedicated to couples who are a key target of the program for strengthening the couple’s relationship among Pangani FM listeners also to promote its key radio programs, especially its couple’s dedicated radio program known as ‘Busati la Wenza’.

Busati la wenza is a couples dedicated program that airs every Wednesday from 6:30 PM which aims at improving communication and relationships among partners to alleviate pain for themselves, their families, and the community at large by involving various stakeholders from within and outside the Pangani district. ?

A campaign-themed mapenzi masikilizano that emphasizes listening as an epicenter of healthy intimate relationships which reduces chances of IPV amongst Pangani couples took part on the radio from 2nd to 14th February

On the actual valentine’s day, UZIKWASA had a special session with 13 couples who underwent reflective training on previous occasions.

According to their testimonies, it shows that reflective training has sustainably influenced couples’ relationships towards positive changes.

During the day couples were facilitated to reflect on their journey and came up with reflective thoughts that support them to develop pieces of learnings that fit their gaps.

In a session where couples were supposed to draw images that represent their relationship majority of them came up with tree images?symbolizing that their relationships are rooted, growing, and bearing fruits unlike their experience before attending reflective training.?

Most of them credited listening, conscious use of power, and respect as values that led them to success, however, while facilitators were surfacing on the discussion some new learnings emerged.

While the deep reflective moment was taking place majority of the comments that supported ignoring as a means towards healthy relationships came from experienced couples while few of them supported letting go as something that has contributed to a healthy marriage. In other words, it’s like they were saying that ‘we have managed to maintain good relation after deleting unnecessary ‘apps’ on their relationships which is a metaphor for the use of phone applications.?For this case, the apps represent toxic traits. While others who supported letting go just didn’t bother with the unnecessary ‘apps’ in their relationship that’s why they have healthy relationships.

At this point a silence was held and while exhaling couples asked themselves if they really let go or ignoring and if it helps or it actually does damage.

Facilitators observed that there has been ongoing anguish in the name of ‘letting go’ that couples have agreed to tolerate things that lead to damages rather than a healthy relationship. For that reason, the facilitator supported them to see how these both confusions can be dealt with through strengthened communication instead of just deleting unnecessary ‘apps’ or ignoring in the name of letting go as it can lead to chronic behaviors resulting from un-attended relationship issues that ultimately may lead to separation or intimate partner violence.

To cement, the insightful moment facilitators supported them with strategic questioning skills so as to address their issues without attracting resentment. And the following testimonies emerged.?

“Today I have learned that if something has to be addressed it should be addressed in a good way, while the discussion was going on I turned to my husband and we talked about this because I use to tolerate a lot of things and I couldn’t tell him because he is my husband what can I do??But for now, I learn something new that I will work on it I got something new that wasn’t on my mind” - one woman aged 40-45 years?

“Today I got something totally new that you can tolerate until you break your back but ‘kumbe’ there are ways to do things without even tolerating but manage to change your partner’s bad manners like you might think it’s okay to mute when your husband comes back late at home because you’ve lived together for so long, but there is a way to deal with that rather than just tolerating, too much tolerance leads to problems.” one woman aged 35-40 years?

We used to think you just have to tolerate just tolerate like even on minor issues you know your partner has a bad odor you just tolerate, but the issue is if he/she smells you have to tell her about perfume or something to stop that, so instead of just tolerating today we got the cure of tolerance it’s not only about tolerance while in pain but you have to speak about it so you can solve” -one man aged 45-50 years

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