28. Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry and Louis

Where is your life going?

Three years ago, the answer to this for Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry and Louis seemed to be: “Nowhere”. The singers were headed out of the glamour of the ‘X-Factor’ talent show, and back into the anonymous twilight of open mike nights and high-rise hair competitions.

But then they were thrown a life-line: They could re-enter the X-Factor: but only if they joined together to become a Boy Band, and only if they called it ‘One Direction’. They did; and they did. And they did very well. In fact, if you are a pre-pubescent girl, the chances are that you sip your cocoa from a One Direction mug; that you seek comfort in their music when your dad is being SO unfair; and that your sleep-over is under the watchful vigilance of five guardian-angels smiling down from the wall.

Fairy-tale success. But then Stephen Covey could have taught Simon Cowell a thing or two about ‘One Direction’. The ‘One Direction’ concept is one of the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. Stephen Covey’s seminal book has sold 15 million copies in more tongues than there are mouths, and it articulates the secrets of success of human endeavour.

His First of the seven Habits is to suggest that the readers gets off their butts and get moving. Immediately thereafter, Stephen adds the Second Habit: that they should know where they are going. One Direction. The rest, by comparison, is easy.

(By the way, even if Stephen Covey thought of the idea of ‘One Direction’ first, and so maybe had a right to that poster wall-space, I have to agree with Simon that Niall and the lads have greater merchandising potential. Stephen may be a super-legend, but to a teenage girl weeping into her cocoa, he looks like everyone’s dad.)

“Hi girls!! Don’t be sad!!! Let’s party!!!”

“You are going to be an accountant, and that’s that”. “You’ll understand one day, Mariah”.

Anyway, the point is this: five directions, five failures. One Direction; one Massive Success.

The reason for stepping out onto this philosophical path, in the reawakening of the Lost Blog, is that last week I had to explain EMBRACE-Tushikamane to a willing but perspicacious male-only audience*:

·         that we were intending to tackle the awful death rates of mothers and children in rural Tanzania;

·         that the roots were deep and complex;

·         that shipping in foreign aid to prop up the situation, only seemed to produce a temporary benefit; and

·         that the evidence was emerging that setting up women’s groups, and allowing them to set the agenda, seemed to produce a lasting benefit, and an ever up-surging thirst for progress.

At first, I had no problem with this. Empowerment of women in the world would redirect our attention from war and waste to the things that matter. That will save lives.

But then a thought hit me: Men also want water. And sanitation. And a clinic. And transport. And healthy children. Am I saying that when men express the need for a well, or a toilet, or an ambulance, that things go wrong? That it needs women to spell it out before will work?

Nevertheless, it is so clear that empowerment of women through women’s groups is the way ahead, that the World Health Organisation has now issued official guidance on the importance of this methodology in reducing death in rural Africa:

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/127939/1/9789241507271_eng.pdf?ua=1

So we have a puzzle: why are women’s voices more magical, more effective? What is it about enlivening the animation of an uneducated rural African mum, that lights the fuse of an explosion of development?

I had to think long and hard. I have known many rural African women, but as an urban European male, I think differently. What’s wrong with my way of thinking? What’s wrong with men? (My wife, looking over my shoulder, says “How much time have you got?”)

And then it hit me. In sub-Saharan African villages, men often represent Authority and Institution. Tradition. The way things are. And in these breathless days of the twenty-first century, Institutions are in many cases crumbling, precisely because of being what they are – instead of what they might be.

Institutions are in danger of not getting those first two of Stephen Covey’s most important prompts: Get moving. And know where you are going. Together, on the same journey.

Women talk. They listen to other women talking. (My wife, looking over my shoulder, says “It’s not that hard.”) Rural Tanzanian women fetch the water. They find something to cook. They work. They raise their children and look after them when they are sick. Too often, they die young. They want a better world, and they are willing to work hard, for years, to reach that goal.

Given just a hint of a chance, they will have One Direction.

When they start the journey, we will be there to help.

(By the way, one generous man at this talk, inspired by the empowerment of women, gave £1,000 to help with transport solutions, when the women articulate this need. Thank you very much, A. That is lives saved.)