Laiman isn’t afraid to tell it like it is

Laiman Bidali, founder of Alabastron Network Trust. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA 

By JACKSON BIKO

In Summary

• We quickly settled into a long interesting conversation about gender. Turned out I didn’t need a helmet after all.

Breakfast, Java Valley Arcade. Wintry morning. I’m sitting with Laiman Bidali, founder of Alabastron Network Trust. She’s not as fierce and scary as I had anticipated. (Wanted to wear a helmet for the interview).

Laiman founded Alabastron eight years ago for women who are “restless for transition” and want to move from the comfort zone to a greater zone.

The public view of Alabastron is polarised; there never seems to be fence sitters. Over 5,000 women have since gone through the programme and she has reached 14,000 more via her live events and millions via her Unspoken TV programme.

We quickly settled into a long interesting conversation about gender. Turned out I didn’t need a helmet after all.
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What sparked Alabastron?

I was a management consultant before this and this day in 2001 I was doing a leadership development programme for career women, directors and CEOs. They all had that dead-cat fish look, these successful women. So I had them to start talking about their lives, I asked them to talk about what destroys the self-esteem of a woman in leadership. That’s when I saw the room changing. I saw the women relax, remove their shoes and all. They started talking about these things that were really affecting their self-esteem and just like that I got an idea for Alabastron.

Where did you grow up?

My parents have a home in Kikuyu although my early childhood years were in Riruta – then we moved to Kikuyu. I went to Riruta Primary School, Kagwe Girls High School in Kiambu and then University of Nairobi to do a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology.

Are you surprised by the reaction of some men when it comes to Alabastron?

I’m not. I’m not actually surprised because they’re coming from a space of fear. The moment they hear women empowerment, they think, “She’s going to grow horns, she’ll start wearing pants in the house, she’ll start controlling me – telling me what to do…” That’s what they think because that’s how women empowerment unfortunately was packaged.

Men get scared when they hear that their women are going to get empowered because what they view is a woman who is controlling, hostile and aggressive and you can’t tell her anything. But I said, “If I start trying to assure the men, we will lose our focus. What we need to do is to do more of what we’re doing.”

Do you think a man is or even should be the head of the family?

I think so.

What does being “the head” mean to you?

I believe that there has to be someone who offers guidance. As an institution you need someone who is accountable and who takes the final decision and takes responsibility for it. But thinking the man is the head of the house for the sake of it without understanding the responsibility, then it creates men who will not take into account anybody’s input or idea.

So it’s also for men to understand that every position, if you’re the head, you have a lot of responsibility from how the children turn out to whether your family has a vision or not. As a woman I will not feel devalued as long as my contribution is respected.

Is there a scenario where women will be so empowered, more than their men, and that imbalance becomes a problem?

It’s like asking you Jackson, “Can you be too healthy for your own good”?

Ha. Good one!

You know? There’s nothing like that. What has been misconstrued to be over-empowerment is when somebody is using what they know to discredit others, to make people feel lesser, to instil fear either in the children or in husbands as well, to suppress. So there’s nothing like over-empowerment.

Do you think we, Kenyan men, have a problem?

(Pause) I think Kenyan men in general are… What shall I say? They have got their challenges. Especially on how to deal with and handle women.

By the way, you can be blunt with me. Here we don’t do politically correct things...

We have men today who are caught up between being modern and well exposed and also being the way they saw their father treating the mum or their uncles treating their aunties. So, they need help. They need help to be able to understand us. They need help in being able to get the best out of partnerships, because these are partnerships. If in a partnership you’re always trying to suppress one party, there will be no fruitfulness.

Do you think what you’re trying to do will be fruitless when you’re empowering women and nobody is talking to the men, or making them understand this journey women are embarking on? I mean women don’t live in a vacuum.

I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a problem, but I think that it is important that both men and women are equipped on how to do life. For you as a man to know, “How do I optimise my potential? How do I become more of who I am and not be apologetic about it?” I think that’s important. Men have their fears and insecurities.

As a woman I cannot stunt my growth and my progress because my significant other is not growing or progressing at the same level. Because who’s going to help the other when we’re both so disempowered?

So when I say I’m not going to improve on myself because this man I’m with is a caveman – he’s not getting it. But at the same time, I think it’s important that you don’t undermine the power and the influence of a woman in men’s lives.

There is a space a woman holds in a man’s life that leaves a lasting impression. You can leave a man so bitter and angry or very empowered. So I think it’s 100 per cent responsibility. We can grow separately without growing apart or we can grow together.

“There are just no good women to marry anymore.” Ever heard of that statement

Where do you think it stems from?

I don’t know. You’re the man. Ask me about good men, I’ll tell you why there are no good men anymore. (Laughs) I don’t know why men think that, because that must be coming from a man. All I know is in all this understanding of empowerment, women have lost their femininity and want to be like men. And I tell women, “Even when you’re trying to be a man, why are you becoming the nasty men? Why can’t you be the good version of a guy if you’re trying to be manly?” So I think there are a lot of women who are broken, women who have been hurt by their fathers and mothers and by other women and they have baggage. Ultimately, it’s how you want your relationship to be or to be in.

So how then do we then socialise our sons to be able to be the kind of men you want to relate with girls in future?

I think you cannot give what you don’t have because children relate more with who you are, than what you’re saying. They’re observing more and they’re imitating than what you’re telling them to be. I think number one, we need to realise and acknowledge our weaknesses and we need to realise some of the habits and patterns that we keep on repeating that are not making us progressive.

Men need to work on the unhealthy beliefs they have about women that ‘‘Women are users’’ or ‘‘women are gold diggers’.’ If women are gold diggers, why have the men themselves not found this gold that we’re supposed to be digging in them?

You seem solid and confident, but I’m sure you have your weaknesses as a woman, what are they?

One of my weaknesses is that I am very impatient for results…(Laughs)

Readers will roll their eyes and think ‘Oh, please’...

(Chuckles) I lead women by telling my story, by my vulnerabilities, by my sharing the struggles I am having. If I’m having a challenge with a family member and I’m finding it difficult to forgive them, I will come and vent and say this is what I’m struggling with.

So I process my life as it’s unfolding. So at the moment I can’t think of one thing I’m struggling with as a woman, because… Gosh… I’ve come to accept myself 100 per cent. If I’m irritated about something I will speak it out and say, ‘‘I’m not pleased about this.’’

How do men relate to you?

They relate to me from a pedestal. They relate to me from a space of, ‘This is the queen’. So the first thing is to deconstruct that pedestal. To let them know that I am a woman and I am human. So I come into the interaction as number one, human and number two, a woman. So, if you don’t return my calls, I’m hitting the roof. Please understand that.

Oh come on, you can’t be strong about that.

(Laughs) Oh, I won’t, but I will do it with dignity. With class. If you push my boundaries, I push back. So it’s about deconstructing the pedestal and getting them to see me. In fact, when I meet a guy and I want to start dating them, I don’t like dating them in a formal way. I like to meet them in informal spaces. Let’s go to a children’s home, let’s take a walk somewhere.

No. But I am in a space where that for me is beginning to matter. I’m giving it a lot of thought. I haven’t considered it before by the way.

Why?

I had such a negative belief about men. I used to say, “If your man is cheating, cheat on him twice. We can sit and I can show you the strategies”. (Laughs).

So I needed a lot of healing myself and I needed a lot of restoration to be able to see a man for who he is as opposed to the men that he represents. When he comes into the picture, he comes as him. Not as ‘‘Men in Africa’,’ ‘‘men are like this’’. So it’s only now that I feel I’m in a very healthy space, I’m in a very secure space and I’ve worked so much on my values that I’m thinking about what values I can add to another human being as opposed to what they do for me.

What did it take for you to come to this space?

It’s been a journey and I’m still on it. I’m not yet perfect. It’s taken a lot of acknowledgement. I acknowledged everything that I believed that wasn’t right about men, acknowledged the relationships I had been in, owning my part in ‘Why would I attract that kind of a man’. It’s about that and just being able to do self-interrogation and self-audit and all of that