Now, Chika, I would like to talk to you about the threat of war against Iraq by President Bush, who by the way, I think is a maniac, but that is beside the point. I wonder what women writers like you are doing or can do, to prevent this war especially as it relates to women. What am I talking about? Every war affects women in more ways than people realise. Wars expose women to rape by unscrupulous soldiers and other war opportunists. Wars widow women, often reducing them to emotionally raped single mothers left to explain to their children why they have not fathers. Wars ensure that many women bury their own children, some of them as young as 18 years old. What can women do, not only against this war, but against all wars?

Women can only do as much or as little as men can in such a situation. There are women in politically influential positions just like there are men.

War is a human problem. As poets, we can join the anti-war movement by writing poetry (there is a poets for peace website), we can sign petitions and try to pressurize the American government from pursuing this war, we can organize rallies and demonstrations.

But these are not focused on how they specifically affect women. Why say it is a human problem? Can you imagine what would happen if women all over the world came together and articulated the specific costs and risks of war to women? If these women marched through the streets of the world one day banners screaming - Don't kill our husbands! Don't kill our sons! or War Creates Mad Soldiers, Mad Soldiers Violate Women! things like that, maybe not in those words, I am just being dramatic. The wives of those warmongers would see their womenfolk in the streets speaking even for them, which might lead to some pillow talk that may avert war. Poets for Peace are intellectual invisibles writing poems somebody like George Bush, Tony Blair or that Colin Powell chap has no time to read or may read and not understand. Let me put you on a spot. You are a wife and a mother. In a few weeks some women may be widowed and their sons cut down in their youth. Don't you feel compelled to raise a voice against it?

Okay. Maybe women should take a leaf out of the books of the Nigerian Igbo women who in 1929 successfully took on the colonial administration and stopped taxation. We should have million-women marches, hold rallies, talk into the ears that be.

Women are owners of the wombs. They are life. If women got together and screamed, the earth will shake. Such is the power that we wield. We should use that power and shout down the war.

Is it me? Or are you being careful about what you say or are you so happy to go with the flow of things and never get upset? I admire your sense of peace and acceptance of the way things are. It takes a different kind of courage to do that.

I am angry about a lot of things: I am upset that women can be raped with impunity, especially in Nigerian colleges. I am an attempted rape victim. He did not succeed, but had he, I would never had had the guts to report him because I have seen rape victims pariahed by society and blamed because of what they wore: short skirts, tight pants, half-tops, or because of how they walked (did you see her twisting her waist like an ashawo?*) or...the list is endless.

I am angry that some people pre-judge you based on the colour of your skin: I walked into an interim agency once and without asking what my qualifications were, the woman in charge ranted on about a cleaning job they had an opening for.