From Me to We | Global Connections Call Notes 3.6.2024

Mellissa Fung is a courageous truth teller.  She is a journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker who has literally gone where others fear to go - telling stories of trauma and violence and also of resilience and strength.  She has written two books - 'Under an Afghan Sky’ , which shares her experience being abducted in Afghanistan in 2008, and ‘Between Good and Evil, the Stolen Girls of Boko Haram’ which shares the stories of girls and women of Nigeria impacted by violence. Her recent article is titled: “Sexual Violence is the Hidden Crime of War, But We Must Not Look Away” shares the dark truth of the violence in the Middle East. 

Mellissa has seen the darkest of humanity, looking it squarely in the eye, not hiding from the truth, and through it lifting others up in the process. We are honored she could be with us today for our Global Connections Calls that honors Women’s History Month. To view the full 60 minute call recording, please click here. The following includes excerpts from our conversation on March 6, 2024.

Our Conversation

Community deepens and widens when we tell and share stories. Story, community, and heart to heart listening are pillars in practice of peacebuilding. Let’s look into these stories together:

Mellissa: I deal a lot with trauma and trauma affected communities, especially women in post-conflict societies. In Nigeria and Afghanistan now, I don't even know if you call it a post-conflict society because for women that conflict still exists. So it's really important for me to empower women to share their stories. 

I am the journalist, but it's not about me. I had my own experience being taken hostage in Afghanistan, it was more than 15 years ago now.  I was held captive for a month underground in a hole by militants. That was a personal trauma and I could have come back and hunkered down and quit. Yet because there was so much attention on me, a Western journalist, I decided that I was going to use my voice and my platform as a journalist to to amplify the voices of other women who have been trauma affected who are in these post-conflict societies. 

My own experience allowed me to enter that community in a way that other journalists haven't been. I really saw that as a privilege, my own trauma opened a door for me to learn how others are healing. I think it's this exchange of stories, this empowering of women to tell their stories, even about the worst thing that ever happened to them. I think that's the first step in healing and the first step in peacebuilding.

It’s 2024 now, and there is a country on our planet that is denying fundamental human rights to half its population - it’s gender apartheid. It's unconscionable that it's happening and it is frustrating that there doesn't seem to be anything we can do to convince the Taliban to allow girls to go back to school. 

There is a straight line from that to women in Iran not being able to drive, to women in other countries having their rights taken away little by little. I don't have to point to what's happening in the United States in terms of women's rights when it comes to their own health care. I think that erosion of women's rights may feel like it's happening in Afghanistan, but If it happens there, and nobody does anything about it, then we're powerless to stop it from happening in our own countries as well. We need to be aware that there is a straight line from allowing women to be subjugated in one part of the world to women losing their rights in another part of the world.

Facilitator: I'm thinking about the concept of resilience and how it's not just a positive spin, but a necessary component of how we move forward and how we find hope and work towards creative solutions. I wonder if you have examples or if you would like to share what resilience means to you?

Mellissa: I think that Aquila and Manoz, the two Afghan women from the documentary, are the definition of resilience. Aquila, the principal in the film, had already left Afghanistan in the 90s. In the 2000s, President Karzai made this plea to the Afghan diaspora to come back and help rebuild the county, and that's what she did for the last 20 years. She went back and tried to make a difference for the girls in her community. 

There's 14,000 students going to her school, with the boys and girls going in different shifts. Before, the girls were sitting out on the dirt; under umbrellas when it was raining, under tarps when it was too sunny while the boys were inside. Aquila decided this was ridiculous, so she did a lot of fundraising and built all the buildings for the girls until every girl had a classroom. This made the school a target. Right after the school was bombed, she was still determined to go back and lead the girls - that is resilience.

I went to Nigeria as a journalist to learn about how the survivors of Boko Haram were healing from their trauma. In the documentary, I follow three girls, three friends who escaped their Boko Haram captors. I met a woman named Dr. Fatima Akalu who is bringing the concept of psycho/trauma therapy to northeastern Nigeria. 

[When I joined these therapy sessions], I knew there was something profound happening. I later talked to my three girls about how their trauma sharing affected them. They said it really helped them to know that they were not alone, to start to accept that this trauma had happened to them. Instead of being angry or asking why it happened to you, it's a part of who you are now. But you can take that and use it to move on with your life in a new and maybe even more meaningful way.

I find Inspiration and hope in other women when I sometimes can't find it in myself. I think sometimes trauma can really bring you down into a dark place, and it's very hard not to spiral.

I talk about the hole - that's where my kidnappers kept me for a month (literally a well in the ground). I talk about that as a metaphor now, as in I'm mentally going back into the hole because I can't find hope. Luckily, it turns out for me as a journalist, there's always stories of hope. 

“I find Inspiration and hope in other women when I sometimes can’t find it in myself. ”

Community Discovery Time

Community Member: You mentioned that when you were assisting the three Afghan women to get to Canada for asylum, you weren’t being a “proper” journalist. My hope is that you can put a positive adjective in front of “journalist”, because to me you are a journalist who is so much more. 

Mellissa: Thank you! I only say that because journalists are supposed to keep a distance, but sometimes I can't because these people, especially in Afghanistan, these women have risked their lives to speak to us on camera. So I have a responsibility. When it came time to try to help get them to Canada it was really a group effort. 

Community Member: You're talking about the most extreme removal of women's rights, but the thing is that in the U.S., people don't seem to care. How do you get people to care that our own rights in this country are being eroded or have been eroded? How do you motivate people to care? 

Mellissa: I go back to the sharing of stories. It is an integral part of raising awareness. I just encourage women in the States to share their stories if they can't get access to healthcare, to abortion, to share what's happened and what's happening to them. I think that in itself can be a very powerful motivator for a lot of people to actually go to the polls and do something about it in November.

Final Thoughts

Mellissa: You inspire me to keep doing what I'm doing because sometimes I often feel like we are. I'm just screaming into a void when I tell these stories, but to see you all here this morning, your time it's really it's making me feel like I can keep doing it that I'm not really screaming into a huge void that you know there are people who who care and that just means it means everything to me because it's it's hard. And I'm gonna get choked up here because journalists are under attack everywhere. And we're just trying to tell stories. And so I'm really just grateful to this community for allowing me to share a few of my stories.”

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