Climbing Kili for abused kids
Lynn Forbes has turned a traumatic childhood experience into a mission to empower others
WHEN Lynn Forbes was 11, Kilimanjaro was her magical place to escape. The 5 895m snow-capped highest point in Africa was the place she would go to in her mind – to hide from the secret horrors she was enduring in her real life.
This year, the day after she turns 50, she will board a plane to Dar es Salaam and from there fly to Moshi at the foothills of the mountain to finally make her childhood dream come true and summit on the centenary of Madiba’s birth, July 18, as part of Trek4Mandela.
Forbes won’t just be doing it for herself but for girls and women all over South Africa. Trek4Mandela is about ensuring no girl misses a day of school because of her period. It’s about breaking the taboo around menstruation by opening up the conversation and driving awareness around Caring4Girls, which receives donations of sanitary pads and distributes them to schools.
For Forbes getting girls to speak is critical – if they are ever to be able to find the courage to stand up for themselves and speak out about other forms of discrimination.
Sexual abuse is one. Forbes knows all about that. She was sexually abused at home in Oppermansgronde, west of Koffiefontein in the Free State, when she was 11. Her abuser was a lodger living in a back room, a friend of the family.
The abuse went on for about eight months, until the work contract he was on ended and he returned home to George, to his wife and his family.
She struggled for 38 years with the secret, until finally it became too much.
“I was wrestling with the fact that I couldn’t go to my grave never having spoken out. I just had to find my voice.”
That voice came when she held her new-born grandchild, Kairo, in her arms in 2015. “I realised now is the time – I have to climb Kili for Kairo to speak for her and for every other child in Africa.”
But she had no sooner found her voice, than the family was caught up in a media tumult, between her son, Kiernan, better known as the rapper AKA, Kairo’s mother, DJ Zinhle and celebrity Bonang Matheba.
Forbes, as the mother, once again felt the need to hold back and mute her voice.
“I needed to get away just to get some time for myself. There had always been three magical places for me; the Serengeti, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.”
She booked her flight on the Monday and by Sunday was on the island paradise. It didn’t disappoint. “Stonetown (the Unesco protected heritage capital) gave me peace. I forgave myself. “Sexual abuse tears at the victim. You feel guilty, dirty. The anger I had felt towards that man left me. I just wanted to make sure what had happened to me would never define me again.” The key was to find a channel for that voice. Before she could start writing, she had to tell her parents. Her mother took it the hardest, she blamed herself. It was a very difficult time for her boys too. Forbes had to manage this too. At first, she thought of penning a memoir, working with some of the best publishers in the country, but later she realised the thing she wanted most was to help others and not hurt anyone else inadvertently. “I know where the man lives who did this to me. He lives in Bloemfontein now. His wife has passed on. I can contact him, but I have no desire to. If he reads this, he’ll know who he is – and he’ll have to deal with his own demons.
“He was the nice, kind man that nobody ever suspected. I want to warn parents with young children, about nice kind men who pay attention to their kids. I want to warn parents not to trust anyone with their children.”
She started her blog ‘According to Glammy’ (https://lynnforbes.co.za/blog/) on Women’s Day last year. The catharsis was immediate. “It was a healing,” she says. The blog inspired her to start speaking, wherever the opportunity arose.
The response was tremendous. Forbes became overwhelmed.
“The key for me is not to become a counsellor. I’m not qualified. My role is simply to give others the courage to speak out about what they have endured.”
Now she is working with established NGOs and charities to channel people who reach out to her, to social workers and other trained professionals who can make a critical and positive intervention.
“It becomes easier every day. You find the courage and then it becomes second nature because it was always within you. My job now is to become a force for good.
“I work closely with the AKA Foundation and I am committed to working with Caring4Girls at least until 2020 – I want to help them reach 2 million girls and keep them in school, but the most important thing is to get those conversations started, to unlock that courage.”
On May 28 Forbes flew to Durban with Caring4Girls for the launch of International Menstrual Hygiene Day. She was struck once again, by the scale of the problem.
“Not having access to pads is one thing, but the taboo around menstruation is at the next level. If you can’t speak about normal things like a period at home to your mother or your aunt, how do you speak out about sexual abuse? Sometime I feel as if there is a whole group of children who have been lost.”
Forbes won’t give up though – any more than she’ll give up on her dream of standing on the highest point in Africa.
“Physically, mentally, I’m ready, I’ve been training hard. I’ve always been fit, I’ve done ultramarathons before, I’ve lived a healthy life, but there is a fear. “The horrible doubt that I might do all this and not make it to the summit. But I’m not going to fail for lack of trying. It’s not the mountain that we conquer, but ourselves. Everest climber Edmund Hillary said that. It’s as true for Kilimanjaro as it is for life. Just getting to Kili will be the achievement of my life’s dream.”
On July 12, the scared little girl who dreamt of going to her mystical place above the clouds will start that adventure. But the person who comes down from Uhuru peak on July 18 will return as a whole, healed human being – with new mountains to conquer back home.