‘To
be a girl’ is a wonderful campaign launched by Water Aid:
It
highlights the mediaeval task-list that gets handed out to children across the
world, along with their two X chromosomes. For girls, from as soon as they are
no longer carried, they carry.
They carry water …
They carry water …
babies
…
…
or often both:
Weighing
down your head with water many times a day becomes a substitute for school,
where you otherwise might have weighed down your head with something altogether
more useful and liberating. And school is where you might have hoped to be a
girl - a child being cared for, instead of one doing the caring.
(As
a non-girl, I have here to say that we males also suffer our unfairnesses. One
of these is that girls routinely outperform us when they do get to school:
In
the article quoted, they put this down to learning styles, and I think that
there might be something in that. My daughters’ learning style was to listen to
the teacher and participate in class, then after school to do their homework.
It seemed to work for them, I must admit.)
Nevertheless,
the sad fact is that millions of girls, even in the twenty-first century, never
experience the luxury of having a teacher to listen to. The insidiously grave consequences
for the world of this huge burden of unfairness, go way beyond the problem of sexism.
It is true of course that girls and women are far more likely to be oppressed
or suppressed by the opposite gender, but the origin of enforced girl-labour is
not archetypally sexist in the way we now define it. It is cultural. And that
makes it much more difficult to undo: The division of labour between males and
females in under-developed rural settings was a practical response to the
challenges of Africa. In general, in centuries gone by, men were more suited to
hunting and to protecting livestock and families. Women were more suited to
child-rearing. This culture was just accepted, and put up with courageously. Then,
as now, for many put-upon women, laughter and song were never far from the lips,
just as tragedy and hardship were never far from the door. The realities of
life.
However,
in this more enlightened age, we have opportunity – indeed a duty – to deal with
the realities of death. In rural Tanzania, a peaceful country, approximately 1
in 30 women can expect to die prematurely related to conception and childbirth.
99% of these deaths would not have happened, had the birth occurred in the UK.
1
in 10 children die before the age of 5. The causes of child death are also poignantly
preventable: birth complications, malnutrition, malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea,
and infectious diseases, (TB, HIV, measles, meningitis, whooping cough,
tetanus).
For Europeans, it might seem that this is a comfortably distant problem needing a little humanitarian largesse. Bear in mind, however, that no cossetted comfort of a rich civilisation ever lasted more than a few centuries. Every so often in the history of mankind, there is an 'adjustment', with a regression to the mean. For much of humanity, we are currently living through such an adjustment, whereby our European level of privilege is dropping towards the world average. How awfully far we have to fall, if we do not do something to bring up the underprivileged underclass, who even now, far too often, sell all they have to pay bad people to despatch them from the African coast.
For Europeans, it might seem that this is a comfortably distant problem needing a little humanitarian largesse. Bear in mind, however, that no cossetted comfort of a rich civilisation ever lasted more than a few centuries. Every so often in the history of mankind, there is an 'adjustment', with a regression to the mean. For much of humanity, we are currently living through such an adjustment, whereby our European level of privilege is dropping towards the world average. How awfully far we have to fall, if we do not do something to bring up the underprivileged underclass, who even now, far too often, sell all they have to pay bad people to despatch them from the African coast.
What
can be done? Well, reading the list of causes of death, you would be forgiven for
thinking that the solutions were uncomplicated, relatively cheap, and surely
manageable, even in rural Africa. Family planning for a start. In a setting
where six babies is the average, reducing this to two or three would deal a
hefty blow to both maternal and child mortality, at the same time as reducing
HIV. Immunisation would pick up half the list, and better nutrition, more breast-feeding, and better
management of pregnancy and childbirth would complete the decimation of
disasters.
Well
you would be right. In fact, the World Health Organisation agrees with you.
What’s more, the whole planet agrees with you, and said so nearly four decades
ago in the Declaration of Alma Ata:
What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. This
did:
Instead
of going to school, she did jobs. If she grows up, she will not know anything
about Alma Ata. Immunisation and antenatal care and condoms and antibiotics and
micro-nutrition will be part of a tapestry of irrational aversions in her
culturally-attuned mind.
Despite
many heartening successes, and steadily improving averages, simple health care
messages cannot be ‘done’ to a village or its people. Sustainable progress is
based on understanding and self-determination. And that in turn depends on
female education. Without the mothers themselves understanding what is needed,
and without women chivvying for it, nothing much progresses in the villages of
rural Africa.
That
is why EMBRACE-Tushikamane seeks first to empower women to understand and
prioritise their problems, before helping them to respond.
The type of response which may result has already been fine-tuned in the Berega area by the American charity ‘Hands4Africa’:
The type of response which may result has already been fine-tuned in the Berega area by the American charity ‘Hands4Africa’:
Brad
Logan, its founder, is an OB GYN by profession, but on finding the deep-rooted
problems of rural Morogoro province, his response was prescient and practical.
It is summed up by H4A’s Mission Statement:
Hands4Africa is committed
to improving the lives of
mothers, children and families
through sustainable
solutions
to reduce poverty, provide
education, and improve healthcare.
Because
of the work of H4A, the very isolated village of Mnafu now
has a place where the next generation of mothers can learn how to change their
world.
Mnafu
School before Hands4Africa …
…
and afterwards:
To
be a girl.
If
you want to know what it means to be a girl in Mnafu, you’ll have to ask one.
Within
this generation you might be able to do so in a much more meaningful way, and
get a response, for the first time in history, full of hope for the community.
