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Girl-Child Education
 The Women's Empowerment Programme at ICODEI - similar to the Girl-Child Education initiative at Mama na Dada has recently started up again. I went along to one of the seminars, and was both bemused and totally shocked by the group's beliefs and assumptions, and am very much looking forward to ensuring this type of program becomes a concrete and stable initiative, within the CBOs we are working with, and also in other communities in the area.
The topic was 'Family Planning', and we were very pleased to note that both the contraceptive pill and condoms were freely available from local health clinics in the area. However, when the women began to open up about how practical these methods were, we discovered that they all held the belief that contraceptive injections and pills would lead to deformed 'creatures' being born!! One woman told of her sister's case, whereby after taking birth-control pills, her sister gave birth to a baby who had all the pills attached to its head! Another story involved the demonic antics of the contraceptive injection, which led to her sister-in-law giving birth to a baby with 3 legs and 4 arms...! Those myths, combined with group's insistence that none of their men would EVER wear a condom, has resulted in some very dubious methods of contraception being practiced, including one method involving a sponge soaked in lemon-juice and salt, and inserted before intercourse.....very 'safe' indeed! We taught them the impossibility of these myths (although I think it may take a bit more repetition to see them completely convinced) and also about some healthy natural methods, such as the 'cycle beads' method that helps them very easily to understand when they are most fertile, and got them to actually make the beads themselves. Although natural methods may help curb the rate of unwanted pregnancies, they still do not prevent the spread of HIV, which has the highest global concentration - 1 in 16 - in this area of western Kenya.
Many activists, humanitarians and global-change facilitators agree that the first step in alleviating poverty is the education of women. If more women in under-developed nations receive even a basic level of education, they will have a greater ability to assert a level of control over their lives, as well as the amount of children they have and hence aid in curbing uncontrolled population growth. Additionally, educated women are more likely to rear healthier,
educated families who can actually positively contribute to communities.
In a recent radio interview, acclaimed journalist, activist and author of 'New News out of Africa", Charlayne Hunter-Gault responded to the question, "One of the issues that you did focus on was this issue of educating women; That this is seen as key to beginning to solve some of these problems. First of all, why is it so key?", by saying, "Well, you know, there's a saying in Africa that if you educate a man, you educate an individual. If you educate a woman, you educate a nation, and that I saw to be the case because educated women see to it that their children are educated. And when their children are educated, they become contributing members of the society. They're much more aware. They're much more likely to advocate for things, including their own human rights, which are still being abridged broadly throughout the continent when it comes to girls.
So its women, educated women just have much more to contribute to the country that they are in, as well as the continent. So that's why it's so important. And they've been suppressed for so long, because in many countries, even today, women are seen almost as commodities. I mean young girls are being married off so that the family can have cows. You know, they're traded for cows or sold for, you know, to the highest bidder for all kinds of reasons.
But the problem is that girls get through elementary school, which is free, and that's helped to raise the level of girls going to school on a par with boys. But they look at high school, where they have to pay to go. They have to pay for uniforms. They have to pay school fees, etcetera. They don't have the money. They're poor. And so, at about 5th or 6th grade, at which point they really are getting interested in education and really having dreams like every girl in the world, they suddenly don't see any possibility of fulfilling their dreams because they can't pay to go to high school. So they drop out."
That is certainly the case in this area of western Kenya, where some girls even turn to prostitution to pay their high-school fees.
We also visited a local high-school and had a very candid chat with the principal. He said that one girl kept bringing him 200-300 shillings on a sporadic basis. When he pushed some of her friends to investigate where the money was coming from, they told him what was going on.
Also, he told us the story of another male student he had that would frequently be absent. His further investigations led him to a house where the boy was living with his wife and her two children from different fathers. The principal also learned that the boy's wife was paying for the upkeep of the family through
prostitution.
Education, Education, Education.......... |
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