The Plight of Women

My thoughts lately have been swirling around the plight of women.

A friend just sent me the link to this article:  Saving the Lives of Moms published on Mother's Day.  If you have time, take a moment to read about this largely unheard of yet life devastating injury among women.

I remember the first time I heard of fistulas and, sadly, it wasn't until I was already in grad school.  The night I did find out about it was definitely a night that marked me.  Our professor, without any introduction, proceeded to show the documentary A Walk to Beautiful. At the end of the documentary, there wasn't one dry eye in the class...men and women alike were deeply moved.  The plight of women continues to pull at my deepest heartstrings. 

My eyes were first truly opened witnessing it first-hand day in and day out in my village in Burkina, from Female Genital Mutilation to domestic abuse, to rape, to hard labor morning until night.  Four year old girls carrying their one, even two-year old siblings on their backs.  Five and six year old girls already carrying heavy wood and water on their heads.  In my Burkinabe family, the family I lived and shared life with for two years, it was little 7 year old Lucee who got up at the crack of dawn already sweeping the courtyard, washing her younger cousin Beneditte, off to look for wood to cook breakfast, all while her brothers got ready to go to school, a luxury she probably would never have.  It was 17 year old Elise who was left to bring up her young baby while the father moved to the city after he found out she was pregnant.  Also never having the opportunity to go to school Elise confided in me that she'd always dreamed of writing her name on a paper or being able to decipher what all those lines written everywhere said.  If anything she did required being able to read, she was at the mercy of the educated men around her who didn't always have her best interests in mind.  The stories of the village male school teachers forcing sexual favors from their few young female students in exchange for advancement to higher levels, often causing unwanted pregnancies causing the girls to drop out anyway.  It was Honorine who hid her two baby girls from the village elders coming to perform genital mutilation on them, having suffered the consequences of the procedure herself from when it was done to her as a young girl, and now having to suffer the social consequences of protecting her own girls from it.

Ever since witnessing all this and more firsthand, my passion for seeing women empowered and given a voice only grows. 

Just the other week, I came across another article, Sold Into a Life of Despair, dealing with another huge issue mostly affecting women, human trafficking, with Burkina highlighted as having the worst trafficking problem in West Africa.

Finally, and perhaps most disheartening is the one article that has come up over and over in the past week and forwarded to me several times as people come across it and think of me in Niger:  Save the Children's latest State of the World's Mothers Report released last week puts Niger as the worst place to be a mother out of 165 ranked countries.  The study takes into account the well-being of mothers (healthcare, education and economic opportunity) as well as the health of their children.  When I first read it, and even since, I sit in incredulity that I 'happen' to be living in, in essence, the worst place to be a woman.  Granted, that's just the perspective of one organization and one research study but it's definitely made all the top headlines around the world.

Just last week I had the opportunity to see more of Niger and to visit our work in the villages.  We work in some of the most un-reached villages of Niger-those villages left alone by most other NGOs.  For one village, we off-roaded through the mostly desert terrain for 2 1/2 hours before arriving, nearly getting stuck several times in the seemingly endless sandpits.  After arriving and exploring the village a bit, meeting and talking to the people, 'food-crisis' doesn't adequately describe their situation.  Right before leaving, two ladies approached me, each with a baby in her arms.  One baby seemed 'normal' though small as is common around here...but the other one made my heart nearly stop.  Basically a skeleton of a baby with only hours to live, his eyes already filming over.  A month old little boy named Saadou.  The mother was too sick to bring Saadou and his twin brother Soude from the next village over so it was the aunts who now stood in front of me.  The headline wouldn't stop playing in my head 'worst place to be a mother...niger...worst place to be a mother..."

How to even help a situation like the one Niger is facing?  One of, if not the highest fertility rate in the world couple with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.  Women losing their babies as if it was a natural part of life yet knowing with their maternal instinct that it can't be natural.  And the issue of women not having a say in who or when they marry or even when or how often they'll have babies.  I don't want this to become a man-bashing blog post, yet I do believe that men must be a part of women's empowerment initiatives or we'll simply constantly be preaching to the choir.  I also must admit here that I was saddened by my own organization that went from village to village, white men mainly talking with the male elders/leaders of the village, even discussing issues such as wells and water when it's nearly 100% women who use those wells. 

But there is hope.  Good things are happening.  In fact, the first article and the documentary I discussed earlier are full of hope and restoration and healing.  A hospital is opening in Niger to help women with fistulas, organizations are helping trafficked women in Burkina, a hospital opened in Burkina to help reverse the female genital mutilation done to women so they can lead more full lives.  And if there's one thing I learned from living among the Burkinabe women in my village and meeting others since, it's that these very women who suffer the greatest are the most resilient, ingenious, beautiful creatures I have and will ever meet.  I learn from these women life lessons that are irreplaceable and can't be found elsewhere.  What better place to learn to be a good mother than the very place dubbed the worst place to be a mother because they are moving forward against all odds, surviving and living where it seems impossible.

I must admit, the past few days have been filled with a pain in my heart for some personal situations I've been facing, largely revolving around being a woman.  As soon as I start to feel sorry for myself, though, please remind me to come and read my own blog post on the plight of women around me to kick my sorry self out of the self pity and focus my energies on what's truly important in the world.