Africa Team in Mozambique
October 20, 2004
Muadi Mukenge
Hi Everyone,
It's been a whirlwind 2 weeks! Our schedule has been packed with site visits. Last week we had 4 all-day site visits. We went to a town 2 hours south of Addis Ababa where our grantee Progynist has built schools and a health center with GFW funding. The landscape in that area is just beautiful but families engage in subsistence agriculture that's insufficient to alleviate the deep levels of poverty. In both Kenya and Ethiopia women's groups indicated that they are overwhelmed with the need to take care of orphans. One of the schools we visited in Ethiopia includes a small daycare for orphans. In fact, increasingly many of the proposals we receive include a component on orphan care.
An interesting find in Ethiopia was our meeting with the Network of
Ethiopian Women's Associations. They have received a very large 3-yr
grant from CIDA to do grantmaking to women's groups in Ethiopia! We're
linking them up to AWDF and we'll be communicating regularly both on
the grantmaking and their networking activities. I've also made great
contacts for groups working on fistula.
Our grantee meeting in Nairobi went really well, with 8 groups that
were meeting each other for the first time. After the meeting we went
to visit a boarding school for girls where grantee Project Baobab
conducts life skills and entrepreneurial training. Their business
proposals are quite innovative, and the top 5 receive a grant to launch
a business. It was great talking to the girls about EVERYTHING,
aspirations, culture, life in US, what age they want to marry, etc. We
started out with a presentation but things became much warmer and
comfortable when we broke up into groups. The next day I met a group of
widows that have come together to manage a tailoring business and
provide legal support for accessing land that is denied to them under
customary law. Those who are HIV positive receive ARVs from MSF. All
reside in the slums, it's an extremely overcrowded and poverty-stricken
neighborhood.
Then for Kisumu, in Western Kenya, we had two full days. The first with
Groups of Women in Water and Agriculture (GWAKO), a grantee that will
have a renewal proposal in the November docket. They are working in
very remote areas supplying wells to communities where women walk 4-6
hours to find water. GWAKO is a consortium and we visited 4 of their
member groups. Each group showed us their income-generating and
educational activities, talked about the impact of the well, and shared
other challenges faced by women. We were making these visits via pickup
truck; we were sitting in the back going over rough terrain. We even
went to a group whose members live on a peninsula. We had to cross from
the mainland to the peninsula by foot over this very thin foot bridge,
but the bridge stopped before reaching the other side and we had to
wade in this murky water). It was quite an experience -- but this is
how the women living there had to manage before the well was built! At
another site a girls club put on a skit for us addressing issues such
as relationships girls seek in order to get school fees, early
marriage, unplanned pregnancy, abortion and HIV. Others recited poetry
very eloquently, on the right to education, the need to value girl
children as much as boys, the experience of getting a period when you
don't have sanitary supplies -- it was quite poignant. We returned
exhausted at 8 pm.
The next day it was the Ikolomani Junior Widows Group, who organized a
formal program outside in the shade. About 80 members attended the
program and we listened to testimonies on how widows had to restart
their lives from zero since they were forced from their homes upon
their husband's death. Their priority needs are food and money to send
their children to school. Membership in the group has provided hope to
members, who can benefit from legal assistance to reinstate land
ownership. The coordinator is a delegate to the National Constitutional
Review where she is lobbying for reform to inheritance laws in order to
protect the rights of widows.
In all of these visits, we have been treated so graciously, we feel so
welcomed. We are fed so much and we've been dancing and singing with
the groups. It has truly been wonderful. We have learned a lot, met
women from all walks of life, and gotten energized for the work we do
in the office. Each site visit was an opportunity to share and listen
to the women talk about their work, and the challenges in changing the
realities for women. While the levels of poverty can be heart breaking,
these groups definitely deserve to be supported for the important work
that they do.
We've enjoyed these last 2 days in Mozambique -- Breathing the air from
the Indian Ocean is exhilarating and the beach is beautiful!
I'll keep some of our experience for our Brown Bag! Great video footage is promised!
Hugs,
Muadi
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