Community: Real Life

Education, education, education


Ivy

Ivy Maina was born and educated in Kenya. She is currently on ActionAid's 'Get on Board' epic bus journey from Johannesburg to Scotland. Collecting messages from African people to take to the G8 summit in Edinburgh in July, Ivy reports back to TheSite on her experiences along the way.
Entry: 2
Date: 03/05/2005

As Ivy makes her way through Malawi to Tanzania, the desperate need for better education in the region begins to tug at her heartstrings.

We've now been on the road for over three weeks and have travelled through South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi. I am feeling tired and am not use to sleeping in different places every night, but I'm managing and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now. I've been making use of the long journeys on the Get on Board bus to catch up on my sleep.

Malawi was beautiful, they call it ' the warm heart of Africa' and I can see why. The weather is gorgeous and the people lovely. Although being there made me feel a little uncomfortable. Many of the people are still suffering from the old regime under President Kamuzubanda. It was a very harsh regime with curfew hours and a similar system to apartheid dividing the rich and the poor. Many people in the towns seem to have a sense of fear and are still afraid to speak out, it reminds me of Kenya 10 years ago. Fortunately, the poorer people in rural areas are more forward; they know what they want and are eager to demand it!

Now we're in Tanzania and my tiredness vanishes the moment I step out of the bus and meet people to hear their stories and their message for the G8 leaders. I try to focus on the issues and not get emotionally caught up by the crying and the pain.

However, I can only use the words sad, powerful and dramatic to describe my encounter with the two phenomenal girls from Makambako, Tanzania. Both are wise beyond their years and share a thirst for education.

13 year-old Fatuma, who is lucky enough to be attending a private school in Makambako, recognizes that with secondary education she acquires life skills that make her better able to support herself and any future family. "If I have no education, my life will be difficult; so will my children's as poverty will continue to the next generation," she tells me.

"I can only use the words sad, powerful and dramatic to describe my encounter with the two phenomenal girls from Makambako, Tanzania. Both are wise beyond their years and share a thirst for education."

The message from Tanzania is clear.

But she is also savvy enough to realise that education also brings her an opportunity to challenge the cultural norms and practices that hold back the development of women in her community.

Women like 20 year-old Joyce, who was refused a secondary education on the grounds that she might get pregnant. Now married with a one year-old son called Yasmini, her biggest regret is that she was denied the right to finish her education. Life for her and her new family is a daily struggle, a constant reminder, if one was needed, that she would have had a better life if she had completed school.

"My father said he couldn't send me to secondary school because he has little money and anyway he does not send girls to school because they go and get pregnant," she explains. She tells me that to make ends meet she and her husband have to take on a laborious succession of odd jobs.

Joyce is a casualty of a set of beliefs and cultural norms that hinder the development of women throughout Africa. Shrouded in ignorance and perpetuated by poverty, the only real antitheses to these stifling local customs is education - a right that is taken for granted in the West, but which is a luxury for most people in Tanzania. This is something that 13 year-old Fatuma articulates so fluently.  It is a shame that children are not listened to more.

As our visit draws to an end, I ask her what message she would like us to take to the G8? It's simple, she says: "More money for education means more children in schools and more adults able to escape the viscous cycle of poverty."


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