The View From Here: Teaching An Important Message-Educating Girls Changes Everything

The View From Here:  Teaching An Important Message-Educating Girls Changes Everything

By SARAH MACDONALD

(PHOTO: Ghanain Girls in Vancouver; CREDIT: Felice News) (Felice News, Vancouver, Canada, Originally Published Sunday, December 11, 2011)

VANCOUVER -- The journey from Northern Ghana to Canada was long for Beatrice, Faiza, Fayudatu and Gladys, having travelled close to 24 hrs on buses, two planes and a ferry. They had never been on a plane before, nor very far from the precincts of their village for that matter, so the journey brought many new and challenging experiences for them. 

They arrived in a completely different world, which necessitated a crash course in order to navigate. It was Shannen O’Brian, founder of Create Change, who shared with these girls that endearingly coveted first introduction. How to flush a toilet, how to use a faucet in an airplane bathroom, all the things we consider common knowledge.

Shannen recounts that it was to their great surprise and amazement that the sun was shining in this part of the world. This is of course reasonable thought process, as the seasons of snow and rain in the great North surely take romantic preeminence in global imaginations.   When I met the four girls for the first time, their smiles were warm, but the way they huddled into their down jackets, tuques and scarves, was telling of their unfamiliarity and slight displeasure with the chilly Canadian climate.

So how did these four Ghanaian girls end up in Vancouver on a speaking tour?

In 2007, Shannen O’Brian founded Create Change after years of working as a field worker for well established, non-profit organizations. She was often frustrated with the corruption and inefficiency she witnessed first-hand and simply wanted to effect change.  So this sharp-witted, driven young woman founded Create Change, a no-nonsense, grass-roots foundation solely dedicated to providing Northern Ghanaians with two of the most basic needs of life, water and education.  

O’Brian claims that ‘it’s not a lack of compassion’ which prevents people from contributing to foreign aid, ‘but a lack of connection’.  Thus, Create Change shares by means of video footage, the projects implemented in Ghana, so that we can directly see the impact of our contributions. Funds don’t disappear into the void of ‘charity’, we are shown exactly where they are allocated and stay current from implementation to completion. Video facilitates meaningful connections between donor and recipient and asks us to view humanitarian aid as a dialogue instead of a one way channel.

In 2007, she created the Ghana Girls Education Project which has enabled many girls, including Beatrice, Faiza, Fayudatu and Gladys, to attend school and acquire supplementary food supplies. Gender inequality in education is a big problem in many developing countries and directly impacts poverty levels.

According to UNESCO, “being born a girl carries with it a significant education disadvantage in many countries”. Girls often miss out on opportunities to learn or have to quit school when domestic needs and the absence of funding arise. When a family is struggling financially, they will most likely put their son in school before their daughter. Perhaps this is why out of the 67 million children out of school in Africa, more than 50 percent are girls.

Economically speaking, it makes sense to educate girls and give them equal opportunity.  According to the World Bank “the world’s most competitive economies are those where the opportunity gap between women and men is the narrowest”, with Economist headlines reading: “Forget China, India and the internet… economic growth is driven by women.” Due to the socio-economic disadvantages brought on by gender inequality, the UN has set a lofty goal of achieving gender parity in education by 2015.

With a parallel goal, these bright young women have embarked on a speaking tour called ‘For Our Daughters’ to spread this message of the importance of educating girls. They represent their sisters in Ghana and do so proudly, knowing that this tour will raise awareness and funds so that others will have the opportunity to progress in their education like them.

Having graduated from high school under sponsorship of Create Change, they are proof that educating girls changes everything and are poised to be leaders in their communities upon their return. They will continue speaking to communities and schools, inspiring Ghanaians to support female education. They will also be given an internship with Create Change to lead the implementation of a personal project they will have raised funds for during the speaking tour.

On the helm of the most recent Nobel Peace Prize winners, three powerful African female leaders, these girls are demonstrating the power of educating girls in their goals to be agents of change within their communities. In this instance I omit the word ‘hope’, because they are not just hoping, they are striving, doing, creating and realizing.

All coming from disadvantaged families, they have overcome great obstacles to be where they are today.  Beatrice intends to be a state agricultural officer in order to bring sustainable farming practices to rural communities. Faiza plans to attend University to become a girl child educator and to protect the rights of women and girls in Northern Ghana. Fayudatu, a natural born leader, will soon attend nursing college so that she can treat rural populations who lack access to healthcare. Gladys, elected as library prefect in her high school, has her eyes set on being a politician one day, to bring change to her community and protect the rights of widows and children.

The next month will be full for the girls as they grace a diverse selection of Vancouver audiences with their songs, stories and visions for the future. Their visit will surely help us understand the challenges faced by girls in developing nations, and hopefully raise enough funds to support and empower the next group of female leaders in Northern Ghana.

(Sarah McDonald is a reporter for Felice News.  Started in 2008, as Weekend News Today, Felice News is a Toronto, Canada based not-for-profit news organization, catering to the world’s citizens, who are tired of the negative news that the traditional press report.  All reporters are aged 12-25, in a mission to get more youth involved in world affairs, and occupy their time to ensure that they are not becoming involved with the wrong crowds.  Felice’s Founder, Max Jones is a mere 14 years old.  In Italian, the Word 'Felice' translates to 'Happy' in English. Find Felice at www.felicenews.com and on twitter @Felicenews) 

The View From Here: My husband has been cheating and has infected me with HIV

History will surely judge us harshly if we do not respond with all the energy and resources that we can bring to bear in the fight against HIV and Aids. Our attention to this issue cannot be distracted or diverted by problems that are apparently more pressing. – Nelson Mandela

In the battle against apartheid we scored a tremendous victory in the face of considerable evil. The solidarity of people from around the world strengthened us at some of our darkest moments. In the battle against HIV and Aids we need the same solidarity, the same passion, the same commitment and energy. – Desmond Tutu.

By Roxy Marosa

"Good morning Roxy. You probably don’t remember me, but I need to talk to you. My name is Melanie. I met you a few years ago at an event where you were a speaker talking about HIV.

A week ago I found out that I have HIV, and I don’t know how to deal with it. My husband has been cheating and has admitted to it, and he has infected me with HIV."

This is one of many calls I get almost on a daily basis, wives who are infected with HIV by their husbands. Many women find themselves in the dilemma of HIV infection in what is supposed to be, and society relates to as a union of trust and fidelity.

Sadly, HIV infection has become increasingly common in marriages, because partners take it for granted that the person they are married to will remain faithful to them, and in the case when they have not been faithful, they will protect them against getting infected with sexually transmitted infections like HIV. But this naivety is proving to put a partner’s health at risk.

Melanie is an executive, a mother of three children, and is married to a successful businessman.

I asked her how she found out about her positive HIV status. She says that her husband had gone for an HIV test due to a procedural requirement for the business. He did not believe the outcome of the test that read ‘REACTIVE’, meaning that he tested positive. Given that her husband tested positive she too opted for testing and came back with ‘REACTIVE’ to the HIV test.

The results were devastating to her husband, who was in disbelief of the outcome. He demanded to be re-tested. Considering herself as a realist, Melanie says she knew another test is a waste of time, emotion and hope for a result that will come out positive again. Being a realist, she says ‘most men cheat, and I have always had it in the back of my mind that my husband will cheat. With that in mind I have had conversations with him requesting him to use protection should he find himself in a compromising situation of not being able to control his sexual desire.’

This statement got my mind spinning. I asked Melanie what she thinks her husband was hearing from her requests. After some consideration she realises that her husband heard that she knows that he may have sexual relations with other women. She says her husband admits that culturally, young men are raised to believe that extra marital relationships are ok. Although it does not make it ok, this may encourage some women to get involved in casual relationships with married men.

Melanie was choked and deeply angry at her husband’s question of ‘but how does it happen?’ She says her reply to him was ‘so you have not been listening to me each time I talk to you about using protection when getting sexually involved with someone else?’ She says she knew if she was not going to get infected with HIV it would be another sexually transmitted infection, yet her husband seemed not to think about other possible infections.

Her devastation now was how to deal with living with the virus. She now had concern for her health, the future well-being of her children and informing her parents.

Another dilemma was telling her friends. She admits that although she has been the reasonable one amongst her friends, whenever they spoke about people living HIV, they had nasty things to say, and because she felt labelled as one of the HIV positive people they spoke about. Her concern for telling her parents was not as major because she is outspoken and her parents know her to be a brave woman who faces life challenges head on. However she could not guarantee what their actions would be at the news that she is now living with HIV. She trusts though that she will get support from them.

Melanie says she finds her husband’s action reckless and inconsiderate of himself, his family and his marriage, however she is willing to stand by him and support him in this difficult time. Melanie admits that her marriage life has been dedicated to her husband and children and little to herself. She considers this a wake-up call and says it is time she takes charge of her life and be responsible for her life.

I ask Melanie whether she expected her husband to be responsible for her life and she admits that she has been. She now realises and wants to teach people that each person is responsible for their own lives. I emphasise this point by telling her that at my workshops I tell people that to put your life in another person’s hands not knowing what goes through their minds, and not having control over what they do when you not around, is to turn your back on your life. Whatever happens with it, you only have yourself to blame.  

Melanie says she is stuck wanting to know the type of people her husband has been sleeping with. Her consideration is that they may be desperate students exploring their sexual life, or prostitutes. I asked her whether she is a student or a prostitute given that she now is positive. She then realises that there is no relevance to the type of person he slept with. This made it clear for me that people living with HIV were still labelled, and one of the labels included promiscuity. But although she had this realisation, she still wanted to know.

Many women deal with getting to compare themselves to the women their partners got or get involved with. It gives them a sense of competition, yet it can be self destructive when they start relating to those women as better than them, or equally less than them based on their looks and career. It may also put pressure on them to get to the ‘better’ level of the other women. This aggravates competitive anger, and it is in these moments that this behaviour also puts strain on the already compromised relationship with their partner. The strain then is like bicycle spokes, which ends dealing with the HIV positive status, trust, feelings of inadequacy, security in the relationship, vulnerability, fear of rejection, and the need to feel better than the other women.

I always advise people to know their CD4 cell count, so that they know if they need to go on treatment immediately. I also encourage them to ask their doctor whatever medical questions necessary, so that they can know exactly what is going on in their body, and what they can do to keep healthy.

Melanie called me two weeks after our initial talk and told me that her CD4 cell count is high. She sounded in a better spirits. I could hear people talking in the background while we discussed what is going on in her life now. She was expressive and made jokes. I had the sense that although she is on a journey of recovery for herself and her marriage, there is a lot to go through. I also realised that her life has taken a different turn from four weeks ago, and she says it makes her stomach turn, yet she feels that she is gearing herself up for a life greater than ever before.

In 2008, there were 33.4 million adults and children living with HIV, 22.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone. That same year there were 2.7 million new infections and about 2 million deaths, with the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa. Most new infections are in low to middle income countries.

In South Africa there were 5.7 million people living with HIV and Aids, representing about 17 percent of the global caseload. There are as many as 2,000 new infections every day.

Roxy Marosa is the program designer and facilitator of public workshops - Having Internal Victory against HIV, Presenter of Siyainqoba Beat it Health Literacy Series on HIV and Aids. She is also the brand owner of the Natural skin care range Roxy Marosa Total Skin Health Care – www.roxymarosaproducts.co.za, and founder of Philanthropic organisation Read Regularly for a Child. Read all about her on www.roxymarosa.com

The View from Here: Lagos - A Pilgrimage in Notations

By Chris Abani 

It begins like this.

In London, in a Turkish restaurant, peering into the thick sludge in the bottom of my coffee cup, nine years since I have been home, I say: I miss Lagos. The next day, my friend Safak Pavey sends me a poem she translated by Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanik. It is titled, I Am Listening To Istanbul. Here is the first stanza:

Lagos, Nigeria PHOTO CREDIT: Satanoid/FlickrI am listening to Istanbul with my eyes closed

First a breeze is blowing

And leaves swaying

Slowly on the trees;

Far, far away the bells of the

Water carriers ringing,

I am listening to Istanbul with my eyes closed.

Years later, in another restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, over dinner in Little Tokyo, Gaby Jauregui tells me how much the Lagos I write about in my novel GraceLand makes her yearn for her Mexico City. In that moment I realise how much cities are not just geographical locations but psychic spaces of existential melancholy and desire. That we are always listening to the city inside us: Lagos-London-Istanbul-Los Angeles- Mexico City. There is only one city in the world and I guess Italo Calvino is right: it is an invisible city.

And yet these invisible cities of the melancholic soul are geographical places of real joy, of concrete despair and of inventiveness that people who live away from the urban will never fully understand. This is Lagos.

My first memory of Lagos is one I cannot trust. I was four, maybe five years old and my family, my mother and my four siblings, had just returned from London where we had fled in 1968, as the war in Nigeria raged for its second year.

Ikeja airport in 1970 had few amenities to offer us, particularly since my mother had been a vocal pro-Biafra activist in England during, one of the many war wives who spoke up against the British government’s support of the Nigerian side. We were held for questioning in a hot tin-roofed hangar for hours. This is only what I remember.

Lagos "typical traffic" PHOTO CREDIT: BBCWorldServiceAn okra and palm oil stew that nearly burned my lips off is my second memory of Lagos.

It was 1980 and my mother, my sister and I were on our way to London. My first time since we had left after the Biafran war in 1970. Ten years.

We were on our way to Lagos by car because the flight we were supposed to take from Enugu to Lagos had been cancelled – and then rebooked at twice the price to other passengers. So my brother had accompanied us by road and after an eight-hour trip in a nauseously hot taxi, we had stopped in Shagamu, fifty miles outside Lagos, for a roadside café lunch. Even then, Lagos had sprawled out to Shagamu. 

My third memory of Lagos is about my Uncle William. I didn’t know I had an Uncle William until he died when I was fifteen. Two men appeared on our doorstep claiming to come from my Uncle William’s congregation. It turned out that having failed and left school in Germany and not returned to the village for my grandmother’s funeral, William was exiled not just from the family, but also from the memory of the family. And yet he haunted it, from his small Santeria-based church in the worst ghetto of the city, Maroko. 

It was in search of this uncle, this memory, this loss that I couldn’t even shape my tongue around that I went to Lagos for the first time as an adult: hitchhiking alternately by train and lorry; a stupid but exhilarating journey. It was in Maroko that I found the Lagos inside me.

Lagos, Nigeria PHOTO CREDIT: Satanoid/FlickrWhen we arrived in Lagos, by the tollgate out near Mile 12, the sign by the roadside simply said: This is Lagos.

Not welcome to, or enjoy your stay. I remember even then thinking it sounded like a warning. I may be lying, of course.

Somewhere in another Lagos slum, a child is peeping through a crack in the wooden wall of a shack built on stilts in a swamp. In the distance, a line of skyscrapers rise like the uneven heart of prayer.

There are more canals in this city than in Venice. Except here they are often unintentional.

Gutters that have become waterways and lagoons fenced in by stilt homes or full of logs for a timber industry most of us don’t know exists. All of it skated by canoes as slick as any dragonfly.

The two street children begging on the freeway take a break. Sitting in the middle meridian, they look like an old couple making do with a poor lunch as they wind down to death.

Okobaba, one of the slums in Lagos PHOTO CREDIT: TripadvisorChrist Church Cathedral rises from the slump of land between the freeway and the sea and Balogun market, like Monet’s study of Rouen Cathedral. In the shadow, in the motor park that hugs its façade is the best ‘mama-put’ food in Lagos. Its legend travels all the way across the country.

The seasoned Lagosian gastronomes can be heard chanting their orders, haggling with the madam – make sure you put plenty kpomo – or – no miss dat shaki. No, no, no. Dat other one. There can be no sweeter music, no better choir. In the distance, bus conductors call like Vikings from the prows of their ships, testing the fog of exhaust fumes – Obalande straight! Yaba no enter!

In the shadow of highrises, behind the international money of Broad Street, the real Lagos spreads out like a mat of rusting rooftops.

 In Ikoyi Bay, boats dot the sea, sails like lazy gulls catching the breeze. Across the bay, the millionaires’ village that was once Maroko sits in a slight mist. I think it is the ghost of that lost place haunting the rich to distraction so that even their twelve-foot high walls, barbed razor wire or broken glass crowning them, or the searchlights, or the armed guards, cannot make their peace with the moans of a woman crying for a child crushed by the wheels of bulldozers. Or maybe it is just the wind sighing through palm-fronds.

"Millionaires homes" Lagos, Nigeria PHOTO CREDIT: Satanoid/FlickrLike in any world city, there are so few original inhabitants that they wear their Eko badges like honour.

If Lagos is a body, and the oil pipelines crisscrossing it are veins, then the inhabitants are vampires. This vampirism is new. It started slowly. Someone somewhere bored a hole into the pipelines to steal some oil – a drum here and there. Then it began to grow and the people like hungry mosquitoes began to drill more and more holes, taking greater and greater risks.

The city bled thick sweet crude into containers that were sold and resold and then the city rebelled and the veins, tapped too much, too quickly, too dangerously began to explode. Like a victim reclaiming its body from a deadly virus, the city began to kill its parasites, its succubae.

This is not a fairy tale. Thousands of Lagosians die annually.

This city must go on.

Badagry unfolds lazily into the sea, a stretch of land so beautiful that when the local king traded it in a bad treaty with the English, his regret named it: bad agree. Badagry. This is true. Lagos is a land of myth. It never existed before the naming.

Beach, Nigeria PHOTO CREDIT: Zuorio/FlickrThere is nothing like Bar Beach on a Sunday afternoon. The sand is white, the diamondshaped all-glass Bank building across the street reflects the water and makes you think it is a wave frozen in time.

Children ride flea-infested horses, squealing with that childish delight that is a mix of fear and awe. Slow roasting lamb-suya blankets everything with desire. A cold Coca- Cola here tastes like everything the ads on TV promise – I shit you not.

In one corner, as though they stepped out of a Soyinka play, a gaggle of white-garbed members of the Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church dip themselves in the water, invoking the Virgin Mary and Yemeya in one breath.

Gleaming cars – BMWs, Lexus’s – line the waterfront, spilling out young people giddy with money and power and privilege and sunshine.

All of this belies the executions that used to happen here in the ’70s. Families gathered to cheer the firecracker-shots from the firing squads dispensing with convicted robbers.

The complex network of spaghetti-bridges that make up the Berger-built freeways limns Lagos like the cosmopolitan whore that it is. Driving at night across them, you end up on Third Mainland Bridge and the dazzle of lights on the water is more breathtaking than anything you can imagine.

Lagos never sleeps. Ever. It stays awake long after New York has faded in a long drawnout yawn, matched only by the vigil of Cairo. With a population of over 15 000 000 people, it is one the largest cities in the world. On the Internet, the tourist board promises:

There is something for everyone in Lagos. If your interest is sport,

we have it. Soccer (football), tennis, swimming, golf, sailing

– all within easy access. If you enjoy volunteer work, it’s here

– International Literacy Group, the Motherless Babies Home, the

Pacelli School for the Blind –- just to name a few opportunities.

Perhaps you are a collector. You’ll have plenty of chances to

search for artifacts of West Africa. Masks, trader beads, artwork,

woodcarving, drums, fabrics, walking sticks. You can find it all in

Lagos. Own your very own beach hut on one of the local beaches. We

have various clubs – both social and business – representing many

nationalities. Have you ever wanted to go on a safari? Lagos is

your gateway to East Africa. We offer culture in the MUSON (Musical

Society of Nigeria) Centre, the German-sponsored Goethe Institute,

and many other venues.

National Arts Theatre, Lagos The way a man sits smoking on the hood of his burned-out Mercedes Benz it is clear he wants you to know that this is all temporary. He will be rich again.

By his feet, a rat skulks for cover. In the street in front of him, dead rats thrown from houses litter the street like a fresh rash of dried leaves from fall.

In front of the National Theatre, shaped like an old Yoruba crown, the statue of Queen Amina of Zaria, on horseback, sword drawn, face pulled back in a snarl, reminds you that here women will not bow to men, I don’t care what the propaganda says.

In Victoria Island, there are houses that even the richest people in the USA cannot imagine owning. In Ikoyi, the money is quieter: the thing here is not the house, it is the land and the fescue lawn and the trees and the quiet swish of water against a boat docked at the end of the garden.

The poor go out of their way to drive past them.

Everyone can dream.

"Keep Lagos clean" - PHOTO CREDIT: Statanoid/FlickrUnderneath the government-sponsored billboard that says Keep Lagos Clean, a city of trash, like the work of a crazy artist, grows exponentially.

Even when under Abacha there were no stamps in the post office and almost no landlines, mobile phones and Blackberrys never stopped working, and online banking was never more than a click away.

This is the thing here. With or without the government, life goes on and goes on well. Maybe in spite of the government.

Lagos is no place to be poor, my brother.

Even though the rich don’t know it or see it from their helicopters and chauffeur-driven cars, for most of the poor, canoes and the waterways are perhaps the most popular means of travel. That and the rickety molue buses.

The sign over the entrance to the open-air market announces: Computer Mega City. This is no joke. There is everything here from a dot matrix printer and the house-sized Wang word processors of the ’80s to the smallest newest Sony VIAO. In Lagos it is not about what is available, only about what you can afford.

The Hotel Intercontinental looks like something out of the Jetsons. It would be more at home in Las Vegas. Inside here, you could be in any city in the world.

In Idumota, the muezzin at the Central Mosque has to compete with the relentless car and bus horns, the call of people haggling, the scream of metal against metal and the hum of millions of people trying to get through a city too small for them.

And yet, hanging tremulously in the heat, there it is, that call to prayer. And all around, in the heart of the crowd, as though unseen snipers are picking them off, the faithful fall to the ground and begin praying. As though it is the most normal thing in the world, people, buses and cars thread around them.

Really? There is a large fountain in Tinubu Square?

The Lagos Marina looks like the New York skyline. Don’t take my word for it. Check Google images.

Far away from where the heart of the city is now, you can still find the slave jetty and the slave market. Don’t be fooled. A lot of Lagosians got rich selling slaves. It was a trade, remember?

Today, in Los Angeles, on National Public Radio, I heard a programme that was expounding on the world-class gourmet restaurants of Lagos.

Later, as dusk falls over the city, listening to Fela Kuti on my iPod and drinking a soothing latte, I am listening to Lagos with my eyes closed.

I am listening to Lagos with my eyes closed.

- Originally published in the African Cities Reader