This lady was in the field doing baseline survey for a couple of days! A van would take us there everyday to and fro where on the way we could see beautiful scenery, greenish which is rare to find in hot regions, you know when I saw lots of banana trees I thought am in Kilimanjaro or Arusha!!, this brought me back home!! Now I asked myself a question, if people are growing banana why are they very expensive in the market?. To me it was so pleasurable and exciting field work as people were so welcoming and cheerful which made our five days look shorter!
Development in rural setting
I could not imagine the way people have built up a developmental will, sitting together, identifying their problems, and finding solutions using their limited resources and where necessary supplemented by development partners, of which we could see the outcomes like school buildings, water projects, and agricultural projects. This is encouraging as parents are so willing to send their children to school as well willing to participate in developmental projects. This is contrary to what many of us think, that people in rural areas do not value education. The major dilemma to them is limited resources and lack of skills to run small enterprises to assist in paying school fees.
With regard to cultural set up I was actually so excited with women turn up in the discussion in some of the villages as three quarter of participants women were. These women were from different groups where some of them have set up self financed micro credit institutions in Tanzania known as SACCOS, many of them have started small businesses as they can now access loans conveniently.
I other villages along the beach the experience was as different since women are not allowed to establish/run business. They are strictly forbidden by their husbands as they are afraid it will expose their women to other men, they can only go to shamba/farm but not in a place where customers are coming in and out. Women are lamenting on this as it is denying them countless opportunities. One of them said look, all the restaurants you see are run by women from mainland, our men think doing business is prostitution! While they have not been able to fully provide for the family and sending children to school. The world is changing, education and other social services have become expensive to the extent that the effort of both parties (women & men) is important.
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4 comments:
Hi Christina: A very interesting post. Can you speculate on why the situations for the rural women and coastal women who might wish to establish businesses are so different? Bob
This post is really interesting Christina, I wish I had accompanied you on more than just one trip to the field! It's terrible that women in some areas are still controlled by their husbands, as if they were children. I can only hope that these attitudes will change with time...
HI Christina
very perceptive comments about the critical nature of the status of women in development. A friend of our family runs a major micro-credit programme in the state of Tamil Nadhu in India, providing micro-loans almost exclusively to women. He has seen very encouraging signs of empowerment of women, and of betterment of living conditions for their families, from this approach. In a related matter, Stephen Lewis, the Canadian who is very active in agitating for more invovlement by developed countries regarding AIDS in AFrica (among other things) is convinced that the only way to get a handle on this epidemic is through the empowerment of women.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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