Tarisai Nyamweda

The year 2010 put Africa on the global map with the Soccer World Cup coming to South Africa. It also made me travel a journey that continues and whose impact persists even today.

My learning journey at GL officially started in January of 2010 as a media intern from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST). But I had already been introduced to Colleen Lowe Morna’s triangular test for news stories: depth, breadth and context in my second year class on “Gender, Race ,Class and the Media.” The course, drawing on GL publications, opened my eyes to gender gaps and stereotypes in the media.

Being at GL was both a challenging and exhilarating experience in my personal capacity and also in terms of my career. It was a different scenario from the academic life that I had grown too comfortable living in. It gave me a feel of what the industry is like.

Reflecting on the GMPS a project I worked on through out my internship what pops in mind first is the amazing team work and unending fortitude the media department displayed. It made it all exciting and worthwhile even in times when we thought GMPS was never going to end because of the countless newspapers to be monitored; the spreadsheets and the databases. It also helped me to sharpen my writing and analytical skills as I wrote a couple of stories and some case studies. It all seemed so complex at first but it became doable. All this taught me to uphold the spirit of hard work so that you can achieve the best regardless of problems you may encounter along the line.

Everyday at GL you get to learn something new or get to do old things in a new way. You just have to have a passion for learning. I have learnt a great deal and I have grown. I don’t take things at face value. I am more critical of the media texts produced and I see all these through a gender lens. I have also realised that even though I am a woman I have the same reasoning capacity as my fellow male colleagues and I don’t take kindly to being told I can do this or say that because I am a woman.
Now some people in my class say every thing about me has to do with gender and that I shouldn’t argue as an activist but well all the same I don’t mind as long as they don’t package my ideas in box and forget about them. Gender Links is indeed a place where you can grow.

Tarisai Nyamweda, former intern