34. New Year's Resolution

January 2015

Oh, dear. So much for my New Year’s Resolution.

I had resolved, for the sake of posterity as well as for you three readers of this blog, to make an entry every couple of weeks. Sadly, more than a month later, I am facing up to the possibility of losing even your hard-won loyalty. (Although you seem to be reading this…)

I have no excuses. I am retired after all, which means that I can resolve to do what I like, as long as it is legal, wise, and doesn’t start before 9.30 am.

Yes, 9.30. For six decades, I have submitted to the tyranny of sunrise, and to its autocratic preoccupation with startling us deep-sleepers from our slumber. What’s more, Sunrise’s Little Helpers draw perverse pleasure from following up on their Mistress’s whim. I have been elbowed in the ribs. I have had the covers yanked from the jelly that will later be myself. I have been taunted from across the room by the smug optimism of the radio-alarm. I have begged for just five more minutes to finish a tantalising dream in which I invent an amazing ... (well of course I can't tell you what it was, because I was woken before the end.)  In every case, until I retired, Sunrise won.

Now, however, in a Snoozers’ Spring that brings hope around the world to those oppressed by Alectrona’s despotic grip on the eiderdown, I have broken the yoke.

(Alectrona, by the way, was the Greek goddess of getting up in the morning:

Presumably she was in the loo when Zeus was giving out jobs: ‘god of the oceans’, ‘king of the planets’, ‘god without portfolio’, and the like.

“Sorry I’m late, Zeus. Whatcha got?”

“Oh Alectrona! I forgot about you! I was going to give you ‘goddess of silent transport’, but it’s gone. Didn’t even hear it go.”

“Never mind, Zeus. I’m easy. What’s left in the bag?”

“Umm… well actually only … ‘goddess of getting up in the morning’, ‘goddess of toothache’, and ‘goddess of flat-packed furniture’ …”

“You’ve got to be kidding!!” etc)

Anyway, you get the point that for some of us on the planet, getting up needs to be an altogether more measured process than being unceremoniously decanted into reality, an hour before your metabolism.

Being aware of my surroundings from 9.30 onwards, however, still gives me plenty of time to write a blog.

Assuming that I don’t hit Writer’s Bloc …

February 2015

Ah yes. The blog. Right, here goes:

A few nights ago I spoke about EMBRACE-Tushikamane to a group of Coventry women belonging to a society called ‘The Soroptimists’. It sounded like it should be a society of post-Nostradamus Alchemists seeking The Lost Scroll of Soropto, so, before I did the talk, I checked out whom these people might be. In fact, the word means ‘Sisters of excellence’ or ‘The best for Sisters’. Their web site describes their work:

‘Soroptimist International is a global volunteer movement working together to transform the lives of women and girls. Our network of around 80,000 club members in 130 countries and territories works at local, national and international level to educate, empower, and enable opportunities for women and girls’.

So. I was coming to tell the people who already know, that the solution to the awful inadequacies of rural Africa is empowerment of women and girls. Hmm. It seems that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Soroptimists began in 1921 in California, ten years after women got the vote in that State, and one year after women’s suffrage was finally won for all women in the USA, after a long and bitter battle.

In those days, universal suffrage was felt to be a matter of human rights, but rather impractical. It was going to take some considerable effort and expense to make it happen – like building a house or a school or a road. It transpired, over the next three generations, that this road, far from being impractical, was actually the only road leading from war and intolerance and privation and poverty; to safety, freedom, abundance and justice.  Giving a voice to the un-empowered, the disenfranchised and the oppressed, turned out to be a rich investment for society.

Such richness is not just societal: a country’s actual wealth and life expectancy are directly proportional to the rate of female emancipation. I have mused before in this blog, as to why this counter-intuitive ingredient of civilisation’s recipe should be so vital. The yang of assertion and seeming-strength, has traditionally seemed more worthy of pursuit than the yin of vulnerability and seeming-weakness. But of course, both yin and yang are needed in any sustainable solution. 

Some Chinese already understood this balance nearly three millennia ago. In many rural areas of sub-Saharan African countries, however, the balance of equal gender-opportunity is conspicuous by its absence.  In most of these countries, for instance, less than half the girls even finish primary school. Poverty, or domestic duties, or conflict, or betrothal, or even predation, separate girls from their potential before even the innocence of their girlhood is over. In the process, the country ironically loses the solutions to the precise problems which tie it to under-development.

Let me give a real example: Jenipher Namutosi. Jenipher lives in a remote village in Uganda, where for three decades she has fulfilled the traditional role demanded of her. Recently, she had her fifth child, and, as often happens with women after their fourth pregnancy, she began to bleed after delivery. This is the commonest cause of maternal death in the world, and one such death happens about every 10 minutes, somewhere on the planet. Jenipher was saved by the recent introduction of motor-bike ambulances by a Welsh charity. (See the wonderful video on: http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2014-10-07/catch-up-wheels-of-life-from-the-valleys-to-uganda/)

Stop and ask yourself, however, how it was that the ambulance, in a country riddled with corruption and inefficiency, was actually available, maintained, fuelled, and ready – and how the birth attendant knew when to call for help and what to do, and how the driver was able to deal with what he found. The answer of course is that community development in rural Africa simply cannot be unidimensional. You cannot air-drop solutions, then fly off again. Progress has to occur within a matrix of self-determination and community participation – and women’s voices are a vital component. Or as the Soroptimists so neatly put it: ‘Working together to transform lives’…

It goes without saying that of course by including women in the dialogue, a new perspective will take shape. For instance, it will cease to be lost on the community decision-makers that when you could only have afforded to feed, keep healthy and educate two children, then dying as you give birth to your fifth one might be counter-productive.

EMBRACE-Tushikamane is getting closer – in a painfully slow process – to working alongside a Tanzanian Health and Community Development Institute, to begin establishing women’s voices within hamlet and village-based self-determination. Its mission is to set up women’s groups in rural Morogoro, beginning in Tunguli.

We in the privileged world need to be there for the villages as they aspire to something better for the future of their communities. As hamlets in rural Tanzania begin to articulate their needs, we need to support organisations such as Mission Morogoro, (http://www.missionmorogoro.org.uk/), who are getting ready to support some of the ways in which the community will move into the twenty-first century.

A shameful loss of mothers and their children continues in rural Africa. 
We must resolve to help.
And help to resolve.

A New Year’s Resolution?