About Me

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Welcome to my world. I'm Tricia Gloria Nabaye, on a mission to advocate for gender equality, human rights, and democratic governance through the lens of feminist intersectional practices. With nine years of experience, I've honed my skills to be a force for positive change. My strengths lie in problem-solving and effective cross-cultural collaboration, and I thrive in leadership roles. My analytical perspective ensures that my advocacy is data-driven and impactful. My primary focus is on feminist leadership consulting, where I provide valuable insight and guidance. I also offer rapporteur services, ensuring that essential discussions are documented and shared. As a feminist researcher, my deep commitment lies in addressing gender issues, empowering women and girls, and advancing public policy advocacy. I'm a visionary dedicated to shaping the future of advocacy with a strong focus on human rights. Join me in our journey to drive positive change. Together, we can build a world where gender equality and human rights are at the forefront, ensuring a more inclusive and just society for all.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

It took "GRACE"

This week started out on a low for me, as the year winds down, it must have hit me really hard that a lot of the things I had set out to do got barely done. Most of them, died in conception while others died in their manifestation. 

My prayer topics which were my goals this year, where rooted in Isaiah 50:4 " The sovereign Lord had given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.He wakens me morning by morning,wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed."

This key scripture was meant to be a foundation to my dreams and purpose through the year 2015. Yet my speech gave me away a lot of times, it  was not seasoned like salt,to instruct and encourage the weary. I managed to "labor" through morning devotions but through a lot of conviction, I realized I was missing God's great hand on why he would stir me up in the morning to his presence. I was not listening like I was supposed to and if  the foundation was not holding, then the goals were not shifting. 

Life can be so planned out and we forget God's hand on the things that he wants to accomplish in us.While I reflected on the year and while I battled unbelief and self doubt. I found myself standing on two doors, like how Noeline Kirabo says "the bridge of a breakdown or rebirth" I had to decide whether I would doubt God and his ability to see me through many more days of life or to trust Him with all my heart. It is easy to believe when everything is going our way but for the very first time I was choosing to believe when all around me, things were not going my way.

The masters scholarship, I had prepared to apply for was closed, the other two scholarships that I was planning to apply for lacked very vital documents,I had fallen out with two of my friends. And there I was,, frustrated at the fact hat life was not going as I desired it to go. But now, I see the picture clearly, Christ can satisfy me not these temporary delights. It felt more empty giving up Christ than giving up these desires.

In grotesque, I hoped that I could give up on looking to God and struggle through it all with my own strength. My friend Manzi, says there is no such thing as God, He(God) is rather an invention by the British imperialist (He has his many reasons). I think there is God, otherwise Ethiopians would not be Christians or anything else, for they were not colonized.

Today, as I sat reading from Grace Chun's thanksgiving topics on her blog (http://blogracechun.blogspot.com/), I realized that I was missing the bigger picture.Yes, everything can go the other way, but there is a lot that went right for me through this year. Yes, the trials were there but so were the good times.Reading the book, "Crazy love" by Pastor Francis Chan: made me realize through the words of the little Missy, Brooke Bronkowski in her essay," Since I have my life before Me" She echoes the truth that,"Oh, I will have moments, good and bad, but I will wipe away the bad and only remember the good.In fact that's all I remember, just good moments nothing in between, just living my life to the fullest." 

That truth jolted me back to my reality, I held my head high and saw the cross, in my face for a while. I do not know, what Jesus looked like, but his story is powerful, I see it change me everyday. Maybe it might sound like a fallacy but I believe in the good it has given me. Life is always going to be hard but the Apostle Paul, says it doesn't compare to the glory that awaits us. I might not be certain of  heaven but I am certain of the power that hope gives on this journey. And I am going to be thankful for that and everything in between.

It took Grace reminding me to read the Francis Chan books, it took Manzi, to bring me back to questioning my belief in Christ but most of all it took Little Brooke's child-like wisdom and the many thanksgiving topics on Grace Chun's blog, to look back in gratitude and jolt me back on my feet. 

I am writing my own thanksgiving topics, I am celebrating the life that has been re-birthed in me, I choose the rebirth instead of breaking down. And I know, I might forget this truth but I plan on remembering it's purpose each time, I ran into the hole of ungratefulness. And it only took Grace..God's grace and My dear friend Grace Chun.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

WILTING SURVIVAL: A Soul Demise

Today, she stood at the doors of her life and she observed a pattern that had for so long trailed her existence. She thought of letting it all go, yet she did not.
She heard her gut give way, the outflow of her being was crushing yet she polished it up for the next day.
As she read the final lines of man's intellect and as the words gave birth to cynicism and doubt, she rubbed his name off her heart. He was poison in every way, a good man who would cause her death. He trusted his knowledge and forsook love. He thought less of the Gods surrounding the earth. She buried him there with many other dreams she had mastered to bury.

The year was winding down, yet in retrospect she saw her dreams fall in shambles. Everybody said tomorrow was a better promise than today, yet tomorrow was always no different from the today she travelled . There in the  presence of life, she was caught between what was and what would be. Her heart had given up on many people but to survive, people had to be there they said. So she walked off in despair and in desolate hoping that in the absence of what was, she would create her own haven.
The other day, she closed her heart from touch. She blocked out any potential ability to be seen as in need of love. So now, she wears her heart in hardcore garment, hoping that a little selfishness will redeem her.

How it grew so dark? We all do not know! How we all missed it was a question of whether we ever cared enough to reach out to her. Between the cracks of her reality,  she saw her dreams crashing yet she stood tall. The routine of life, brought comfort to her reality. She must have felt the emptiness creep in every passing hour yet even still, she kept going. She was the evidence of a life that weathered the storms. She was going to make it someday, somehow. Her dreams, had a life of their own. Through moments of passing they survived, they went on with her as though soldiers on a journey. She will make it to the end, her quiet determination proved itself strong.

A moment ago, she had her dreams challenged. She almost gave up, in the moments when the journey was at its peak.Anxious in the wake of a pending reality, she almost fazed out her push for life. I saw her strive, I saw her, swallow her tears deeper. She should have cried, yet she didn't. She had every right to break down, yet she didn't.It was going to tear her up yet she didn't mind. She missed it, she failed to see it but despair was eating up her humanity. If someone could save her, then the redemption would change her. But to her...no hero was named.

Her story is being told and I want to be there to see it end. Her death, we do not know but her life we will see unfold. The truth is she will live on and maybe find her soul's redemption.

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The dark tales of many of my damsels are reflections on life that I can only grasp through words. Not as real people but as real emotions.

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

LITTLE MISSY TALES


Little Missy, was full of life! It was an energy that came from a deep genuine love  that gave her a glow.She was a delight to behold.
Missy loved the far lands,she didn't know where that was but she hoped beyond all hope that  time will come when she would visit the far off lands. All the while,all that Missy knew was the little dusty road that closed off in her village, a few market days that her daddy would take her to and many days by the river that flowed through the village. As she found out that the heart can feel so much love,she also found out that the heart can feel nothing.
Missy's dad found love,not with her mother for she had known the story of her conception from the village folks and how her mother had died in child birth.
" Daddy had found love right next door, her name was Mama Kwezi, she was a very beautiful woman. The hills sang choruses when her feet befell the ground." that was Missy's description of Mama Kwezi.
The village folks started to envy the old man for falling in love with the  most beautiful mama in the village.Shestarted living with them,now a family of three.Just them, now Missy was sure she could get all the care and love she wanted from a mother,she ran every evening to the river to silently tell the stories of her new found love in Mama Kwezi,she would ran down to her only friend Tendo,who lived at the end of the river and together they would share about everything that was going on in the village.More often than not,they would talk about the city and the village boys that were promising the girls they were relating with a chance to take them to the city.
One November day,after a thrush of rain on the ground,Missy came out of her hut to smell the ground ;like most of us, the smell after the rain is magical. That day she learnt a new feeling,it didn't have any description.It was just a gut feeling that the heart can stop beating and yet one can stay alive. She felt numb to the ache and stiff to the jolt of pain that was beating in her chest. Across the yard in her father's hut,lay Mama Kwezi in a  pool of blood.Cold and near to death.Her slow whispers must have broken Missy's whole world. "Your father  doesn't love anyone,Your father did this to me" Those words made it impossible for Missy to speak for a long time,as Mama Kwezi gave her last breath so did Missy's heart. She finally could put a face to what her mother went through, the very reason that was taking Mama Kwezi from her grip.
"Daddy never returned and it was time to find a better cause to live,one that the village could not give me.It was time to visit the far off lands." she said as a matter of fact.
December left Missy more than an adult,she was different. She forged her way through the city and realised that it was not what Tendo described to her.It was far better than their little fantasies. The buildings were very massive and tall. They had iron sheets and never had she seen so many cars! She promised to tell Tendo all about it,when she got back home someday.She managed to get a job and also learned how to sew professionally. Missy beat the odds of life and learnt everything she needed to survive. For her father,she never heard of him ever since.
And then,something new happened! She fell in love. She never knew how one can gradually have a liking for another until it happened.It was different from what she used to feel for Daddy and so much different from what she had felt for Mama Kwezi. She loved them but not this much. He was different from the men from her little village.He knew his way and was confident in his strides.He taught her many things about the city and gave her a fairytale kind of experience. A few more months and she knew she would not love any other person that much,for her love had been give fully to Ssebo. She blushed everytime he said she was beautiful,he brought her her first kitengi and she wore it every Sunday to a near by Church. Ssebo made it impossible for her to think of anything else while she was with him. Until she started to hear people pity her. Missy had only listened to what Ssebo had to say, but now she had to learn what people had to say about Ssebo. Love can cause havoc,while Missy refuted all that was told to her,jealousy crept in at  the thought of Ssebo looking at another woman,the way he looked at her.Or much less the way he had taken her in his arms the day she gave herself away to him.She shivered through the months with fear of such a loss. She rehearsed all the nice sweet things Ssebo had whispered to her many times on their late night walks and on those beautiful sunsets most evenings.
After many months of denial,it happened! There in her own house she found another woman in Ssebo's  firm hands. For her it was now marked out, for her it was the line between love and nothingness. When she loved, she really loved. When she stopped, she just felt nothing after that, no remorse and much less hate.She just went into nothingness .And that is what made it different for her. She didn't feel a thing for her daddy and not for Ssebo.She didn't cry and she didn't even think of hating any of them. The reality was that in loving others, she had failed to make a line where she could start to hate.  The far lands, were no different to the little village she hailed from because they all taught her what lay between the thin line of love and nothingness...it was her.
 And Missy still goes through the motions of everyday indulgences, waiting for the next moment when she will love but as well dreading the moment when she would  feel different.

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