Lucile Loucia, storyteller of the Afrotitude Home team, invited to this great meeting of women talks about her experience
I was invited to tell a tale on a great women's date. When I arrived, I recognized some faces, crossed others for the first time. The atmosphere was warm: women gathered around a magnificent feast, ready to exchange, chat, just be there. On that day, I was also going to hear about the Free and Creative Dictionary of African Feminism. I didn't know yet that this meeting was going to motivate me to invite them to the Sikoum website for a beautiful experience of Resourcing and Sorority.
I entered this workshop with curiosity, without really knowing what to expect. Feminism, for me, was a heavy word. A word full of stories, sometimes distant, often misunderstood. I was associated with fighting that I respected deeply, but in which I did not always fully recognize myself. Then the first readings started... and something turned.
I quickly realized that this dictionary was not a book like any other. It was not a set of fixed or theoretical definitions. It was a collective breathing. Words born of our bodies, our silences, our wounds, but also our joys, our heritages and our resistances. Live words, incarnate, that do not ask permission to exist.
I saw women read with trembling voice and straight eyes. I have seen tears sink without shame, smiles born in mutual recognition, hands naturally tender. I saw silences that were not weighing but healing. That's when the word sorority made sense to me. Not as a slogan or concept, but as a lived experience: feeling carried, recognized, safe, surrounded — Just because we were women, together.
On that day, I realized that African feminism is not an opposition, but an opposition. reinvention. He doesn't always scream. He's talking. He's treating. It connects. He allows us to say I without cutting us off from we. It creates bridges between our individual stories and our collective strength.
I went back and changed. With the certainty that this dictionary has not only changed my vision of feminism, but also my way of living the world. And above all, with a deep conviction: When women give their word, they give each other strength.
