Msichana

The reason I had my heart set on going back to Mwanza this year was to see Sabina, an incredibly bright and vivacious little girl I taught last year at Hisani. She was one of the community children that came every day for lessons, though I'm sure she taught me far more than I managed to impart to her. During one of the weeks I was teaching, I switched from doing mornings to afternoons so I could fit in some interviews for my research project and Sabina stopped coming to school because I wasn't there. I can assure you I didn't miss teaching any morning classes after that!

I went back this year to see how she was doing and find a way to pay for her school fees once she got to secondary school. Only primary school is free in Tanzania, though uniforms and supplies are compulsory and must be supplied by the students. Many can't afford to buy them and therefore can't attend school. Only about 10% of the population completes primary school and go on to secondary school. Sabina was really smart and a quick learner, I wanted to help her achieve as much as possible.


Sabina and me, June 2005

It was too late. Though I tried to find her in the small village the family had moved away. I heard from former neighbours Sabina had stopped going to school to stay home and help the family.

At both of the orphanages I've been to, boys far out number girls. It's much harder for girls to leave a bad home; no matter how bad the home life, the situation on the streets can be much tougher. Joseph told me that when a girl is on the streets she may be a "good girl" for a night or two, but eventually she will have to turn to prostitution to support herself.

The few girls I've come across are much shyer, much more timid. I talked to a friend of mine yesterday who's just come back from a couple of months in Mexico. We agreed that we found it really frustrating how difficult it was to interact with women and girls in the places we've been travelling to. My friend commented that it's so easy to forget how effective conditioning is: when you grow up thinking you are worth less you start to believe it.

All over the developing world, girls drop out of school to stay home and help the family at higher rates than boys. Their chances of working their way out of poverty, of gaining independence, are over before they begin. With education comes empowerment, knowledge and choices. The more educated a girl is, the less likely she is to contract HIV.

...a recent Post article quotes Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, as coming out strongly against the descrimination of women at the Global AIDS conference in Toronto last week:

Lewis...said another undeniable fact in the battle against AIDS is the inequality of women and how that puts them at high risk of becoming infected.

Women account for nearly half of all HIV-infected adults worldwide and for 59 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

"It is the one area of HIV and AIDS which leads me feeling most helpless and most enraged," he said. "It's a ghastly, deadly business, this untrammeled oppression of women in so many countries on the planet."

Reflections

Although my post isn't about the film, I thought the following quote from today's Post was quite apt:

[Heading South] doesn't make the mistake that so many Westerners-in-World-3 make, where they concentrate so fully on the horror of the posh observers, they pass on the horror of the exploited. What happens is horrible, and perhaps its biggest horror is how helpful it is to Westerners. It's a metaphor for the ways we look but don't feel a whole lot about what happens in the world's gutters.

Almost a month on, I'm still processing all that I saw and felt in East Africa. I'm trying to reconcile my experiences with those of of the people I came into contact with. I always feel a deep sense of shame; shame that I am so afluent, shame that I am so impotent. I can't help but cringe when I see other muzungos interact with 'locals' in a condescending, patronising way and then I think - I must be like that too. For the most part, 'we' (Westerners) are 1) ridiculously afraid of being in Africa and 2) completely blind to most of what's going on around us.

It is so easy to come away and have selective memory. To remember the bad things and not the overwhelming generosity. Do you remember the guy that pulled you to the side at the border crossing and tried to scam you, or the one that came up to you quietly and warned you the first one was a scammer? Do you remember the man that grabbed your throat and tried to rob you, or the mob that stuck up for you and chased after him?

There are streetkids in every city I've been to in Africa, there are probably streetkids in most cities in the world, but with such huge numbers of orphans and enormous poverty it seems to be far more overwhelming in the places I've been to in Africa. Even though I've lived and worked with muzungus who care about children, the streetkids seem invisible to most. I think the problem is so overwhelming most people can't think about it. How can you justify having a 6 year old sleep on the streets and beg for food? How do you justify walking by a 6 year old kid that has no food or home? You say to yourself they'll sniff glue if I give them anything and keep walking.

One day I was in Nairobi walking down the street and a little boy came up to me and said (all this was in Swahili) how are you, where are you from, I'm hungry. I asked him how old he was (he said 9 but looked about 4 or 5), what his name was and where his parents were, and chatted to him for a bit as we walked down the street. The other people I'd been walking with hadn't seen him when he walked up to us. I bought the little boy some food and watched him walk off smiling with a bag almost as big as he was, thinking how futile it was. Someone would probably snatch it from him but even if he kept it, how long would it last? Then I remembered walking by a homeless man in Bristol and giving him some change, he thanked me saying "sometimes I think I don't exist anymore, people walk by me without seeing me every day." At least the little boy had been seen.

I know this post seems a bit all over the place, but it does have a message - please see the people around you are just that: people.

This homeless guy asked me for money the other day.
I was about to give it to him and then I thought he was going to use it on drugs or alcohol.
And then I thought, that's what I'm going to use it on.
Why am I judging this poor bastard.
People love to judge homeless guys.
Like if you give them money they're just going to waste it.
Well, he lives in a box, what do you want him to do?
Save it up and buy a wall unit?
Take a little run to the store for a throw rug and a CD rack?
He's homeless.
I walked behind this guy the other day.
A homeless guy asked him for money.
He looks right at the homeless guy and says why don't you go get a job you bum.
People always say that to homeless guys like it is so easy.
This homeless guy was wearing his underwear outside his pants.
Outside his pants.
I'm guessing his resume isn't all up to date.
I'm predicting some problems during the interview process.
I'm pretty sure even McDonalds has a "underwear goes inside the pants" policy.
Not that they enforce it really strictly, but technically I'm sure it is on the books.

-Lazyboy