You told us you wanted more stories of inspiring women in last year's members' survey... and we got that by the bucketload when Misba Khan joined us as our speaker for May's main meeting! We also welcomed members from the wider WI - from Wiltshire and beyond - plus three prospective new members: Deborah, Margaret and Michele. It was good to see advantage being taken of the recent relaxation of Covid restrictions for some of our Belles' to invite prospective members into their own homes to share the meeting with them. Such a welcoming thing to do, thank you ladies.
Misba was the UK representative for the Womens Euro-Arabian North Pole Expedition 2018, an expedition set up with the aim of fostering greater understanding and dialogue between women from Western and Arabian cultures. These women should then go on to become ambassadors for change in their own countries. It's clear that Misba is performing this role brilliantly.
You can read Misba's own expedition report here - produced as part of her Churchill Fellowship, which she obtained to help fund her part in the expedition. The report will give you a clear idea of Misba's presentation at our meeting.
If the expedition wasn't gruelling and challenging enough, it soon became clear during the lively question time that Misba had a lot of personal challenges to overcome to even get to the start of her journey to the North Pole. Here she opened up like a flower, and a bubbly and engaging personality emerged underpinned with a lot of determination. Many years previously Misba had decided she didn't want the usual role of a Muslim woman and simply by starting to go for walks and joining a local Ramblers group she set off an a path towards finding a new role for herself in life. As a result she faced and overcame a lot of cultural barriers and criticism from her family and community. She also confessed she had also been economical with the truth at times in order to get where she wanted to be. She also made it clear her faith remains important to her, which her experience on the expedition has served to reinforce.
We all agreed Misba is an inspiration and wish her well with her women's walking group in Manchester. Also look out for the feature film 'Exposure', due for release later this year, which tells the story of the expedition. We were treated to a sneak peek of the trailer!
Elsewhere this month the Walkie Talkies had a splendid time discovering bluebell woods at Bird's Marsh, Mortimore's Wood (including the fab new sculptures there) and Bowood. Some of them even ventured forth on a bus! The Flexi Group enjoyed Chippenham's Street Fair and Morris dance displays on Bank Holiday Monday, followed by coffee and cake in Monkton Park.
Several members rummaged through Diane I's fabric stash to help with their own projects and the Happy Hookers added popcorn stitch to their repertoire. Book Club enjoyed Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club, rating it amongst their top 10 reads of all time.
The Boneyard Belles got underway in virtual sense with some members enjoying The Churchyard Monuments Society's talk on the history of municipal grave digging in Bristol (better than it sounds!). Others joined the WI Wanderers at various events - burlesque and another session with the Quirky Bird (the latter for the Wanderers' first birthday celebrations) were of particular note. Finally, Denman's restful sleep workshop as part of early May's Mental Health Week proved useful .