Live from New York: The Audacity! Global Stories of Daring: The Moth Radio Hour

In this hour, a special live show from New York City, featuring storytellers from around the globe. Tales of bold moves, facing fears, and risky decisions. This episode is hosted by Moth Executive Producer, Sarah Austin Jenness, with additional live hosting by Nolo Mokoena. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Semiye Michael breaks with tradition to help his mother. Nolo Mokoena practices radical truth-telling on a date. Korto Momolu longs to become a fashion designer, while growing up in Liberia. Gracia Violeta Ross grows up in her sister's shadow, until the roles are reversed. Podcast # 964

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• 1:39Speaker 02

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Sarah Austin Genes.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  This episode was recorded live at our Moth Mainstage at Symphony Space in New York City.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  What you're hearing is the Honk Family Band, a community band based in New York. They have a brassy New Orleans feel and they play world music. And 30 members of the band opened this show by walking down the aisles of the theater playing this song.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  The host for this event is a writer, entrepreneur, and activist who flew in from Johannesburg to emcee for us. Here's Nolo Mokoena, live at The Moth.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to The Moth.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  I'm your cousin from the Moth family, all the way in South Africa. I know there's another South African here, I heard it here.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Today's theme is actually fantastic. It's called "The Audacity: Global Stories of Being Daring." Think about the world we live in today, where doing the most ordinary, human things we fought to do can be seen as daring. Listening to someone with a different political opinion is daring. Loving your neighbor is daring. Allowing people to be is daring. And it seems in some parts of the world, protecting the very freedoms we fought for is the most daring.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Before the storytellers come up, I asked them one question. And the question we asked them today was actually, "What's your go-to method to psych yourself up for a challenge?" This next guy is absolutely amazing. When I asked him the question, as you go, "What is your go-to method to psych yourself up for a challenge?", he says he spends time with people who have overcome great challenges themselves. And I thought to myself, here's a guy who knows what it's about. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome up Mr. Simeon Michael, if it comes up.

• 3:51Speaker 04

  So I had this very special bond with my mother. I was her only boy child and she had waited for so long to have a boy. We shared very dear relationship. You know, in Nigeria, a boy child is like a king. And I enjoy being treated like one. But then, it also made me have a feeling of responsibility. I had plans. I was going to be there for my mother.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  And I was going to grow up to be a shoulder she would be able to rest on. But if I were accomplished that, I was also going to work hard. So I had to move to the city to be a grown-up man, be a rich boy that would be able to help my mother. I remember in 2014, I was at home and I got a WhatsApp message from my nephew. And it was a picture of a maggot. I was shocked. I called him, "What is this? Is that a mistake?" And he said, "Oh, no.

• 5:20Speaker 04

  The picture, that is a maggot that came out of my mother's leg." "Okay." Just few months ago, she had complained of sensations in her right leg. "I thought I had you to, you know, keep a tap on it. What changed?" I quickly drove and went to the village. When I go to the village, the sight I saw was horrible.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  They've rubbed different traditional ointments and medicine on that leg.

• 6:04Speaker 04

  I immediately said, "You know what? We're going to the hospital." But then my mother said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." "Same here, this is not an hospital matter. This is a spiritual attack. Don't worry." "Oh, they've contacted some traditional healers. Oh, the pastors are praying." I'm like, "What? With this situation?"

• 6:31Speaker 04

  My nephew stood with my mother. The other elderly women, they stood with her. I was alone. I had to go back to the city, hoping things will improve. I called, and then they said, "Oh, things are getting better." But two months down the line, I received another WhatsApp message.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  "The leg has gotten worse." So I placed a call to my sister who lives in another community, and then we drove to the village. This time, I made up my mind. Nobody would dare stop me from taking my mother to the hospital. And with the face they saw on me when I go to the village, nobody dared stop me. In the village, everything was traced to one spiritual issue or the other. And they rather choose to use traditional medicine rather than trying alternative healing processes. And so many people have lost their life in this process.

• 7:40Speaker 04

  But I made up my mind, my mother was not going to be one of them. So I go to this village, put my mother in the vehicle, and we headed to Ebbe. Ebbe Town is a five-hours drive. That is the community where we can find an hospital that can attend to the situation we find ourselves. That five hours was one of the longest drive I had had in my life. Not because of the time, but watching my mother lying at that backseat, groaning in pain.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  I almost felt she was not going to make it to that hospital. But then we made our way to the emergency session of the hospital. They put my mother on a stretcher. And I saw people looking at her and her leg. I could see it written on their faces, how they were condemning us. They would be like, ah, these are bad children. How would they have allowed this woman's leg to be this? I felt guilty. I felt I have failed my mother with all the love she showed to me when I was young. But then the doctor came, received my mother and quickly ran some checks.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  The doctor said, your mother's leg has cancer.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Cancer, how, when? And then he said, that is not all. You have a decision to make immediately. Either to amputate her leg or just watch her die in the next two weeks. She barely has two weeks to live.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  I was lost in mind, I couldn't even think. As a boy child who had enjoyed a childhood of a king. Now the responsibility of a boy child is killing me. I now have the responsibility to decide whether my mother will live or die. The doctor said again, what is your decision? And then I said, I would rather amputate. I knew it was not going to be easy convincing my mother to amputate her leg. But then I called my uncle, my sister and the elder, we went to her. And then we talked to her.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  This is the situation, we have to amputate the leg. Before we land, my mother said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I would rather die with my two legs than live with one leg. What would people say? They would say, oh, that woman with one leg.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  It was difficult. But she slept over it and the next morning she agreed. She said, "You know what, Semir, if you said it is okay, it is okay." I told her, "Don't worry, Mama. We will provide you with prosthetic leg. It will feel like you didn't miss anything." And then it was going to be a night-long operation. When it was night, they were taking her to the theatre and the doctor came back again and said, "Just for you to know, with the age of your mother," she was seventy-four at this time,

• 11:12Speaker 04

  "and the weakness, this sickness had imposed on her for the past few months, "the chances of her surviving the operation is fifty-fifty. So whatever happens, just for you to know that she might survive or she might die during the operation." They were not going to provide us feedback throughout the night until the next morning when they were done.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  So I walked through the corridor of that theatre hall. All the night, it was a long night, hoping one person or a doctor or a nurse will come out and just whisper something to console me. But all through the night, nobody came.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  The night ended and finally the doctor came out of the theatre door. But you see, he was coming disappointed. You could see it written on his face, frustrated. You know the look doctors make when they don't want to say what has happened? That was what was on his face. So I condemned myself. I had killed my mother.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  I was given an opportunity to choose what to do and I had chosen a decision that has killed my mother. But we have to hear what he will say. And he came and said, "Your mother's operation was successful."

• 12:57Speaker 04

  What?

• 13:01Speaker 04

  This is a bad doctor.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Why bring such a good news in a bad containers?

• 13:11Speaker 04

  That was when I realized, when responsibility whispers, you must dare loudly. I heard fear in one hand, and in the other, I heard my mother's life. I dared. And my mother had ten more years to live.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  So, my mother passed away last year 2024. On the day she died, she had called me early in the morning. We made guests, we laughed, just as usual. And three hours later, my nephew called me that Mama has passed away. But I felt fulfilled. Thank you.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  That was Semiye Michael. Semiye lives in Nigeria with his family, and we met him in a Moth Global Storytelling Workshop in partnership with the Gates Foundation. Semiye is a social justice activist and the founder of the Dean Initiative, which mobilizes youth to take action on everything from climate change to democracy. To see photos of Semye and his beautiful mother dressed to the nines, go to themoth.org.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  In a moment, our host shares a story of his own, of a daring first date, and a young Liberian woman dreams of becoming a fashion star, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 15:13Speaker 02

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• 18:07Speaker 02

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness, and this episode was recorded live in New York City with stories of audacity and daring from storytellers around the world. The host of this live event is Nolo Mokoena, a co-founder of innovative startups and a champion of raising up the voices of young people in South Africa. Here's Nolo, live at Symphony Space.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  As I described to you, you know, I'm from Johannesburg, a wonderful city. Much like New York, we also have a reputation, right? So, I mean, I love New Yorkers and New Yorkers for a number of things: yellow cabs, obviously, sex in the city, huge exports. And number three is notoriously bad coffee. So, that's... By the way, that's not me. That's TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor!

• 18:58Speaker 03

  But Johannesburg also, we have a reputation for a number of things. One, obviously, you know, South African Nelson Mandela. Yeah, you know? Basics, huh? There we go. Number two, Trevor Noah. Of course, he lived there as well. But the third thing we have a reputation for is something we call Dirty December, or we will all go home in December. Now, December is a big deal at home because we all go home for Christmas. And so I love going home for Christmas because all our friends come back from all over the place, even cities in South Africa. And when I go home, I love it because I'm the cool uncle at home. You know, all my nephews would call me unc, you know, not even uncle, just unc. And it's like, I'm gonna pull up in my car and they're gonna be like, Uncle Z,

• 19:43Speaker 03

  all in unison. And I wanna come out and they're gonna be like, wow, look at this guy. He's so cool. He's my hero. I'm basically like the salmon wearing Black Panther when I get there. It's like, it's absolutely amazing. But I know, you know, family being family, while I'm basking in my glory at the, at the peak of my moment, I'm gonna hear a voice in the back say, in our native language, Sivana, Mosari Ukai. So what that means, someone's laughing already, what, what that basically means is, did you bring a wife for us this time? Now, now, I don't know about you guys here, but being over thirty, stable, and economically viable, and single,

• 20:27Speaker 03

  is one of the biggest sins you can commit back home. And so after years of torture, about two years ago, I thought to myself, you know what? That's enough. I've had it with a disrespect for my aunts. I wanna take this into my own hands. I'm gonna do something about it. And so when I got home, back in Johannesburg, I thought to myself, right, next two weeks, one focus, find a wife. Because you've got eleven months to bring someone home. And so lo and behold, I set the strategy. The strategy was in motion, and I organized the date. The date was organized at this wonderful restaurant called Marble. It's got fantastic skyline view

• 21:10Speaker 03

  of the savannah. So when the sun drops, it literally looks like the first scene in The Lion King. So I'm sitting there, I'm looking at the sunset, I'm drinking my Old Fashioned. I'm thinking, yep, this is it. You're about to transform your whole family, brother.

• 21:27Speaker 03

  And there she is, she walks in.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  She's lovely. She's absolutely stunning. She looks exactly like the superhero who can defeat my aunt, right? So she comes in, I'm like, ma'am, how are you? She sits down. We start talking and I don't know about you guys, but dating today is not how it was back in the day, right? Like back in the day, you used to date, you used to talk about art, fashion, the news, family, history. Now it's just TikTok, attachment styles.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Apparently if I put my right shoe on before my left, it shows I have daddy issues and stuff like it's just, there's just too much going on. So I'm already nervous at this point. But needless to say, she sits and the date is lovely and as it's going, I'm thinking to myself, yep, it's probably gonna go left at this point. And for me, it always goes left with this dreaded question. I don't know about you guys, but I hate that question. And the question is simply, so what do you do?

• 22:29Speaker 03

  And so she asks the question and I'm like, oh, here we go again.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  And I think to myself, well, do I tell her the truth?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Or not?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  But I think, ah, let's just tell her the truth. So I look in the eye, dead in the eye, and I say, ma'am, I do my best. She says,

• 22:53Speaker 03

  she says, what?

• 22:56Speaker 03

  I said, sister, I wake up every day and I do my best.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  At that point, she, she kinda giggles and, you know, but we can both tell, yep, this, this shit show is over.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  And it'll probably be our, our bon voyage. But the truth is, I do do my best. You see, I, I specifically do my best to be daring at things I'm not allowed to do. I actually stutter. Anyone who knows me personally will tell you I stutter quite severely. So in some ways, I'm, I'm actually not even allowed to be doing this here tonight.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  You know, I'll never forget this day, June 16th, the year 2000. I was kind of almost 10 years old and 2000 was a great time to be 10. I had my little Walkman with my M&M CD in there blasting it out. And it was sort of the Y2K craze. I don't know if anyone remembers Y2K? And so we convinced my mom, who's a single mom, that the world's ending and like, we'd gotten all these presents. I had a Sega. Like, it was just amazing.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  But I remember that day because we went to the hospital and June 16th in South Africa is actually a public holiday. So that's why I distinctly remember this memory. But we went to the hospital, which I was familiar with because I was going for speech therapy classes. And we walked in as usual to speak to my speech therapist. My mom sat down. I was sort of minding my own business. And I could see my mother have a conversation with the therapist. And as they speak, you know, I could see her body language kind of, you know, get a bit tired and I could see her face change. And during that time, I thought, well, this is, I should probably pay attention. And all I remember is hearing the words from the therapist going, "Mrs. Mkuwena, your son likely won't be able to speak like other children

• 24:55Speaker 03

  and he won't be required to do prepared speech assessments at school because his stutter is so severe." And I remember leaving and thinking to my, I mean, most 10-year-olds would be like, "Yeah! I don't have to do schoolwork." But for me, it was kind of tragic because, you know, if you're from the family I come from, your voice is actually an instrument of belonging. So I come from a family of very strong social advocates and politicians and so forth. And kind of if you don't speak up, you don't have space. And so voice is not just expression. Voice is actually belonging. And even growing up, being a teenager, you know, I always have bad dates.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  But anyway, I was 12 years old and Valentine's Day was coming up. And I saved up money to buy a gift for this, I won't mention her name because she's still not my favorite. But anyway, I saved up money to kind of buy this gift. And I'd rehearse the speech that I was going to give it to and say, you know, "Hi, I like you and this gift is for you. Would you be my Valentine?" After saving up, washing dishes, making a lot of cup of teas for aunties who pay very poorly.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  I gathered up my sense, bought the presents, and when I went to see, I was like, hi, I, I, I, I. And so for me, being daring is actually speaking every single day.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, and I'll be accepting sympathy drinks later at the back.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Alright, we're ready for more stories. We've got two more stories coming up. In fact, the next two speakers are actually graduates of the Moth Global Community Workshops program that we've had, and we're very excited to actually have them here. Actually, something was highlighted, which is really great, is that most of the speakers today come from different parts of the world, and it's so crazy as the stories are going to realize different places, same stories. We're all kind of connected in some way, and that's really amazing. Absolutely, absolutely. I think the next storyteller is going to be absolutely great. When I asked her, "What is your go-to method to psych yourself up for a challenge?" And her answer was, "I listen to Glorilla

• 27:31Speaker 03

  and some good trap music."

• 27:34Speaker 03

  Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome up the great Katu Momolu, as she comes in the chase.

• 27:53Speaker 06

  One of the fondest memories of my childhood is a family gathering we had, and my father asked my older sister and I, "What were we gonna be when we grew up?" So my sister went first, and she said she was gonna go into business, and everybody started screaming, and there was so much pride and joy in the room. And then my father looked at me and said, "What are you gonna be?" So I got up proudly and I said, "I'm gonna be an artist." Yeah, it was just as quiet as this room right now. Crickets, no joy, no excitement. I think the room went dark real quick and um my father broke the silence and he was like, "Yeah, no, uh-uh." "I'm not paying for you to go draw all day, so literally go back to the drawing board and figure something else out."

• 28:36Speaker 06

  So that was the day I realized that being African and being an artist just didn't go together. You know, education was always key in my family. A lot of people don't know this, but in Liberia, if you don't have any money, you can go to private school or public school. It didn't matter. If you didn't have the money, you just couldn't go. So my father, being the eldest of sixteen kids, was the chosen one. He got to go to school. And he would come home and he would teach his other siblings what he learned at school. And my grandfather was able to take him all the way up until he got into high school and couldn't afford it. So a family friend took my father in and put him through the rest of the way. So upon graduation, my dad wanted to honor this man, but he didn't have any money, he hadn't worked yet.

• 29:20Speaker 06

  And the only thing he could think of was to take on his last name, so that's how I got my last name Mamalu. That was the best way to honor him, because what does a father do? He gives you education. So he started to work in the ranks of government in Liberia with his political career, and he got to about thirty in government. And we had a good life, you know, we had a big house, we went to the best private school with the president's kids, and we didn't want or need for anything. And then in my seventh grade year, the teachers in Liberia went on strike. And we were out of school for like three or four months, and my parents were starting to get antsy and felt that we were falling behind, so they started to look for other schools abroad. And my father had a good relationship with the ambassador from Liberia to Canada, and they found a boarding school there.

• 30:04Speaker 06

  And just like that overnight, my sister and I were shipped across the waters to this boarding school.

• 30:10Speaker 06

  We got there, it was bittersweet because I knew the sacrifices that they had made and other kids in my class were still out of school. So I had to kind of suck it up as always. But there was this art class that I loved in the school. I really took a liking to it and the teacher saw something in me that I honestly didn't see in myself and she nurtured me. She helped me build a portfolio up and actually get to where I wanted to go and apply to one of the top fashion schools in the country. So yeah, even though he said he wasn't gonna pay for it, I kind of wanted to see if I still had it anyways. The next day I went to biology class and my biology teacher was like, "Aren't you from Liberia? I heard there's like a coup or something going on there." And immediately my heart just dropped because I knew what that meant.

• 30:52Speaker 06

  A coup in my country meant that if you're in government, immediately it was execution by firing squad. I knew my mom and my siblings would be taken into captivity and my family would be probably murdered. So I ran to the first payphone I could get to and called my guardian and he said that the phone lines in Liberia have been cut and there was no way to reach anybody but to calm down and go back to class and everything should be okay. So about a week later, my mom and dad called. My sister got on the phone first and it was quiet at first and then she started whimpering and it turned into screaming and shouting and she dropped the phone and ran. And then I picked the phone up and I believed they were telling me exactly what they had told her, that you know, things were not good in Liberia and they didn't know if they

• 31:35Speaker 06

  were gonna be able to get out of the country. And that because me and her were the oldest, we had to now be in charge of the family and really get together and be strong. And then they said they loved me. And for most people, that's normal, but for an African child, an African parent doesn't tell you they love you, they show you they love you. So here I am on the day where two of them say, "I love you," and I was like, "Man, this is really serious. They really think they're gonna die." So I go to my room the same way and I'm crying and then I got on my knees and I started to pray. I was like, God, please save my family and make sure we get back together, make sure we're reunited. Don't kill my parents in this.

• 32:15Speaker 06

  About a week later, we got a call that my mom was able to get on the very last flight out of Liberia with basically the clothes on her back. And a week later, my dad was able to escape to a neighboring country, Guinea, to a refugee camp there that a lot of my family members had started to gather. It was in that refugee camp that a newspaper article came out that the rebel leader Charles Taylor wanted my father to be captured by anyone. And if they did, to bring him directly to him because he wanted to be the one to personally kill my father. He was able to take that newspaper article and take it to the US Embassy and with that, he was able to get political asylum. So soon enough, we were all reunited back in Canada, but it wasn't joy and it wasn't happiness because every day the phone kept ringing.

• 33:00Speaker 06

  Somebody was getting murdered, somebody was missing, there was always doom. But it was during this time that I really dug into my artwork. My sketchbook was like my savior. Like I would just sketch and draw all day and just try to escape all the negativity and that was like my peace.

• 33:17Speaker 06

  And then one day, Joy called. I answered the phone and it was that school that I secretly applied to. They decided to not send me a letter, but call me directly home to tell me I got in. Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 06

  But it was short-lived because after I started screaming around the house, I got in, I got in, yay, all the things. My parents waited until I calmed down and called me into their room. And I remember going in there, my mom was looking at the floor, my dad was looking out the window. And I was like, oh God, somebody died. And soon enough, my father said, congratulations for getting into that school, but um, we can't afford it. We're refugees, we don't have any money. You know, we have to get on welfare and kind of wait for the immigration process. So for now, we have to put that dream on hold. And I remember trying to keep it together because I imagined what I was feeling was way less than what he was feeling because he worked so hard to make sure his fate wasn't the same as mine. And I went to my room and I just bawled.

• 34:17Speaker 06

  And I was like, man, God. I prayed for my family to be okay, but I never prayed for my dreams to be okay, for me to still have my dreams fulfilled. But I couldn't even fix my mouth to even pray another prayer because God had done so much for me so far. So I just dug deeper into my art. Like, that sketchbook was my everything. I would draw and sketch and do anything I could do just to escape all the things that was happening around us. And one day, my mom found my sketchbook. And she was like, "I didn't know you were this talented." And in my sarcastic 16-year-old head, I was like, "Well, I tried to tell y'all." But nobody would listen. But it didn't matter because we didn't have any money and it wasn't going to matter anyway.

• 35:00Speaker 06

  So who cared, right? And she would say, "God will find a way. God's going to make a way." And she would take my sketchbook to anybody that would listen and anyone that would look at it. Everywhere she volunteered. And one day, she took it to our church. And there was a lady that just joined the church from Montreal who happened to be in the fashion industry. And she saw my sketchbook and told my mom, "I think your daughter needs to go to fashion design school. You should try to get her in." And she said, "Well, she actually got accepted to the number-one fashion school in the country, but we can't afford it because we don't have any money because of the war in Liberia." And this woman, a stranger, looked at my mother and said, "If you will allow me to, I would love to pay for your daughter to go to fashion design school." And she did.

• 35:45Speaker 06

  She paid for me to go to school. She took me to fabric stores to make sure I would have everything I needed so when I started school, I'd be on the same playing field as everybody and no one would know my situation. And I excelled. I graduated top three in my class. And after, continued in the design world to see where I would lay my foot. And eventually, this reality show came around called Project Runway. And when I saw the first episode, I knew, I was like, "I gotta get on here." And I did. Season five. I auditioned, I got on, got all the way to the end and finished second.

• 36:30Speaker 06

  Although it was bittersweet because I didn't win, when I got home, it was the emails and the letters that I got from all over the world. But it was especially the ones from Rwanda, from Somalia, and especially from Liberia, of little girls that said, "I watched Project Runway with my mom and dad, and because you made it, now I can go to fashion design school. I can be an artist because you did it." But it was this one letter that came from this young lady, and we had the same story, except her prayers didn't come true and her parents didn't make it out of the war. And something just had it in me to just stay with her and mentor her through high school. She got into fashion design school, and eventually after school, she opened her own business. And she called me up and said she was showing at Fashion Week, and I just knew I had to be there.

• 37:16Speaker 06

  So I'm sitting in the front row, and as she walks down, I just kept thinking of all the random acts of kindness that affected my life, from my father to me. But it was the ripple effect of how it affected so many other lives. And it was that one random act of kindness that really, truly was the difference between me growing up and saying, "I would have been a great artist. I could have been the best fashion designer." Then this woman that stands right before you today, who's living her dream out loud, literally, one random act of kindness at a time. Thank you.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  That was Kato Momolu. Kato lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her two children. She's a visiting professor, and she loves empowering young artists and fostering creativity. Kato is renowned for her striking prints and Afro-Bohemian approach to women's fashion. And she says each of her pieces tells a story that reflects the individuality and confidence of its wearer. To see photos of Kato behind the scenes of Project Runway and with her beloved family, go to themoth.org.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  In a moment, our last story. A woman stands in her daring sister's shadow until the tables turn, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 39:07Speaker 07

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• 41:09Speaker 02

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Janess, and this is an episode that was recorded live at a Moth Mainstage event in New York City with global stories of daring. Here's Nolo Mokouwena, the emcee of the night, to introduce our final storyteller.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  The next storyteller, when I asked her, "What is your go-to method to psych yourself up for a challenge?", her response was, "I reflect on my family's love, and more importantly, the love for myself for the strength that I need." Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome up Gracia Pioneta Ross.

• 41:57Speaker 09

  Growing in a rural community in Bolivia, one person was my hero. She was beautiful, she was intelligent, courageous, brave. This was my older sister, Dorcas. Often, my parents gave her the responsibility of taking care of me, and I needed that. I was shy, small, very quiet. I could not defend myself. Since we are daughters of an evangelical pastor, often we were compared, and people used to ask me, "Are you the sister of Dorcas?", and I was, "Yes, I am the little sister of Dorcas." This seemed to be the only way in which they could remember my name.

• 42:38Speaker 09

  When you grow in the church, they tell you to marry someone from the church. So when we reached the teenage years, I started looking who could possibly become my husband, and there was this young man. He was in the university. He looked very charming. I managed to make him notice that I was attracted to him. He was not very enthusiastic about this.

• 43:03Speaker 09

  Not only that, but he started dating my sister. Yes, this very same sister. And they spoke about getting married. I was shocked. I took it as a betrayal from her. How could she do this to me? She started dating him, knowing that I like him. This is the moment that I said, "No, I don't love her anymore. I hate my sister. And I don't want to have anything to see with these people from the church." So I thought, "I need new friends." And I started looking. These friends became available in the neighborhood. But these friends were different. They didn't care about the church or the university.

• 43:45Speaker 09

  They just cared about drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, and what else. I knew this was not ideal. It didn't matter to me at that time, because these were my own friends, and they didn't know my sister. One night, I was with them. They were drinking. It was getting very late in the night. I needed to go back to my home, because I escaped. There was this methodology that we had. One sister would escape, and the other one would open the door. This is a system my sister invented, and she kind of forced me to be on it. At the end, I accepted and enjoyed it. That night was my night out. I left a note for her in the bed.

• 44:30Speaker 09

  "I will be back at 3:00 a.m." But when I was there, the door was locked, and I realized she didn't see my note. And there I was, out at 3:00 a.m., without a way of entering my house. I remember once, she told me, "If you ever need to get in, you can climb the balcony, you can break the glass, and you can enter." Ah, yes, but that moment, this balcony seemed very, very high. And I was drunk, so I said, "No." "Let me find my sister. I knew she used to go frequently to a pub. And I said, "Let me go and find her."

• 45:14Speaker 09

  I walked two blocks from my house, and I don't know from where, two men appeared, one on the front and one on the back. They grabbed me by the hair. They beat me, they hit me, they put a knife in my neck. They took me to an alley, and they both raped me. They robbed me and they left. And there I was, at 3:00 a.m., reevaluating this plan of looking for her in this pub. This was no longer possible because these men could still be around. They could attack me again and maybe kill me. Out of the desperation of leaving, I found the courage to go back to my house and climb the balcony and be in the house. Next day, she came in the morning.

• 45:59Speaker 09

  She saw my red eyes and this bruise in my face, and she said, "What happened?" I said, "I blame you because you didn't open the door to me." Now see what happened. I had been raped. I told her everything. She started crying. She wanted us to go to a hospital, but I was so traumatized. I didn't want anybody to touch me. I was thinking, "If I only get enough showers, I will get rid of this stain that I am feeling now." This seemed to work until two years after the attack in 2000, when I started feeling sick, like getting this nose bleeding and very weak. And I had an injury in this hand when I was working in the tropical area in Bolivia.

• 46:43Speaker 09

  I had one insect biting me, and this injury would not heal. And so I thought, "Maybe I have a tropical disease." And I went to request this test. But my sister, who was the only one who knew about the rape, she said, "Why don't you also take an HIV/AIDS test?" I was thinking, "What? I don't think I am one of those persons that get HIV/AIDS." But I went to collect the tests, and all of them were negative. They were like six tests. But this HIV/AIDS test was positive.

• 47:17Speaker 09

  I was thinking, what else is life going to throw at me? Life was daring me, death seemed also to dare me at that moment. You know, in 2000 HIV was a death sentence. There was no medications, there was stigma, discrimination, there was a lot of rejection. And the prognosis that we received was probably that I could live maybe six months, one year. They didn't know, but there was nothing like a life with HIV. I considered the possibility of accelerating this death, because what was the purpose of living with a deadly virus?

• 47:58Speaker 09

  And telling these news to my family was another challenge. I didn't want to do it, I never wanted them to know about this. My sister said, "You must try to live this time that you will live. We don't know how much, in the best way possible, but also you must tell our parents your story, your version of the story." Because what happens if you really die in six months and the doctors will tell them whatever they think? I couldn't find the courage to tell them everything that happened to their face. I didn't want to see the pain that I could cause, but also I didn't want to see the possible rejection that I was going to have.

• 48:42Speaker 09

  So I wrote a letter to them, telling them everything, the escaping from the house, the rape and HIV, the HIV test. And my sister delivered the letter. Meanwhile, I was in the house of my friend two days, waiting for them to kind of give me a response. These two nights that I spent in the house of my friend were very long. I was thinking, what if they really asked me to leave the house? Because I didn't do whatever they told me to do in the church. Because my father was the pastor, what if he could lose his role in the church because of myself?

• 49:19Speaker 09

  When I went back to my house, there was the living room, the family reunion. My father spoke on behalf of everyone and he told me, "We don't need to know how you got HIV. We just want you to know the most important thing. We love you and we are going to be with you. Two years, six months, 10 years, whatever life you have, we will be with you." When he said these words, I felt this life that escaped from me. When I was raped and also when I received this test, came back to me. And in this moment, I said, "I will live." Now, living with HIV in 2000 was not something easy. Maybe you remember the first years of the epidemic.

• 50:02Speaker 09

  There was really disease, there was death, there was stigma, discrimination, there was a lot of bad things. I managed to connect with a group of people living with HIV. And we used to meet every Saturday in order to just check on each other because nobody was thinking of a life. But the group was becoming smaller every Saturday. One day, we said, "What are we going to do? Just wait here for our deaths to come? Or are we going to do something?" So we decided to put a petition in a Human Rights Court, International Human Rights Court, demanding from the Bolivian government medications. We won the case. Fifty-two people signed this petition.

• 50:46Speaker 09

  But when we won the case, only 24 were alive. And today, only six are alive, and I am one of those. In all this... Thank you.

• 51:00Speaker 09

  In all these fights, my sister was with me. She helped me getting ready for the meetings, drafting the projects, reviewing the brochures, designing the brochures. And she was with me in every funeral that I had to go because I had so many new friends, but they were dying young. The access to the medications was not immediate. But in every little of these victories, I managed to collect some power, some hope, some of this courage. And little by little, I started becoming a different person, a very different person from this small, shy girl who could not live out of the shadow of the sister.

• 51:43Speaker 09

  Après avoir sécurisé les médicaments, il y a eu la lutte pour le cadre juridique et puis le financement pour soutenir ces gains. Dans tous ces processus, ma sœur était avec moi et je suis devenue la leader du groupe parce que j'avais du nez et j'avais ma famille, mon amour et mon soutien. Un jour, je pense que c'était en 2010, j'ai reçu un appel de l'embassy française. La personne m'a dit que j'avais été donnée un grand prix, le prix franco-german sur les droits humains et le règne de la loi. Ils m'ont invité à la cérémonie des prix. Il y avait ma sœur, bien sûr, ma famille. Il y avait de nombreux journalistes, aussi les ambassadeurs.

• 52:25Speaker 09

  Et je n'ai pas payé trop attention aux questions qu'ils me demandaient. J'ai vu qu'un des journalistes approchait ma sœur et il lui demandait : "Qui êtes-vous ? Être-vous la sœur de Violeta ?" Elle me regardait et nous sourions les uns aux autres et j'ai senti que la justice poétique était faite pour moi.

• 52:50Speaker 09

  Parce que nous avons réfléchi à ça. Nous avons réalisé que nous avons fini par vivre la vie que l'autre voulait. Quand nous étions des enfants, je disais : "Je veux seulement être une mère." Et elle était celle qui disait qu'elle voulait voyager dans le monde et être sur des stades comme ça. Nous avons fini par vivre la vie de l'autre pour que nous puissions grandir ensemble, pour que nous soyons plus courageux ensemble. Je pensais que Derrine était à être vu et entendu. Maintenant, je sais que Derrine refuse aussi de disparaître. Il trouve sa lumière propre et il part de la ombre, ce qui est ce que j'ai fait. Merci.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Gracia Violeta Ross lives in Geneva, Switzerland, where she leads the HIV Reproductive Health and Pandemics Programme in the World Council of Churches. Gracia Violeta is also a graduate of our Moth Global Storytelling workshops.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  She sees her family and especially her sister twice a year when she visits them in Bolivia. They love and miss each other dearly.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  Here's Nolo Mokoena one more time to close us out along with the Honk Family Band.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  What a way to end the night. This brings us to an end. Absolutely incredible. Different shades of being daring. Hopefully, you saw yourself somewhere in tonight's stories. And so, thank you again for being here with us. I want to encourage you again. If you want any information, please go to themoth.org to find out about our podcasts, other stories such as this, ways to donate, ways to participate, to collaborate, and any other information you need around schedules and other shows that will be happening that hopefully I'll be at.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You've been absolutely incredible. What a night.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  Thanks to our host, Nolo Mokoena, to Symphony Space, to the Honk Family Band, to all of our global storytellers, and to you for daring to listen. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

• 55:33Speaker 05

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Sarah Austin Jenness, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show, along with Meg Bowles. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. This live event was produced by Jody Do and Chloé Munoz. The Moth's leadership team includes Christina Norman, Marina Cluce, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardenale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Russ, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricio Uraina. Special thanks to the Gates Foundation for their support of the Moth Global Community Program. Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by

• 56:14Speaker 05

  The Drift. Other music in this hour from the Honk Family Band with Frank London, Nada Sedana and Kevin Courtney, and Karoko. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching as your own story, and to learn all about The Moth, go to our website, themoth.org.

• 56:54Speaker 02

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