Women

After whining in my last blog post about how hard it is to feed my family and how hot it is to cook in my kitchen, I need to add this post about the women in Niger. And I need to say this: I.AM.NEVER.ALLOWED.TO.COMPLAIN…EVER….

I have such esteem for the women in this country. Admittedly, I don’t even know HALF of what they do or face, but the little I have seen is enough to show me that the women here are strong, resilient, and deserve my utmost respect. 

For the most part, the women here are uneducated. The country itself has a low literacy rate (just over 25%) and a typical adult in 2000 had, on average, a single year of schooling. But due to the early marrying of girls (highest rate of child marriage in the world), and an overall belief that educating women is not as important as educating men, women are particularly uneducated.

women bathing their children and cooking under a tree

Niger also gets to claim the highest birth rate in the world: 7.6 babies per woman. I have only borne 2 babies, but that was enough. And they were both born in a developed country where the maternity wards are spectacularly clean and organized, and I got to have an epidural. Twice. I have been to the maternity hospital here in Niger (blog post about it August 13, 2014), and I don’t even know how to begin telling you how dirty, smelly and overall depressing this hospital is. Maybe it IS better to just deliver babies in the village…on the sand, in a dark hut with no running water or electricity…or maybe not.

"waiting room" of the maternity hospital

a semi private room at the hospital - BYOB (bring your own bedding) there is an A/C unit in the room but I don't think it worked

I digress. I want you to close your eyes (well, not literally, as you need to read this) and imagine being married at 18 (though 28% of girls are married by 15 here), having little to NO education (not being able to read, write, do math or think critically), and then imagine having not one, not two….but 7 or 8 children. To add insult to injury, your husband is not wealthy, you are actually dirt poor and can barely afford to feed all these mouths, let alone take them to the doctor when they are sick.

Speaking of feeding these children…what do you feed them? As a Fulani woman living outside the city limits, your staple is millet. Thankfully, it is the man’s job to grow and harvest the millet but once the millet is in the granary, it is the women’s job to prepare it to eat. Imagine “Little House on the Prairie” where they have to get their flour from wheat. Well, that is how you get your millet. You take the heads of millet shown in the picture below and then turn it into powder with a LOT of pounding. Thankfully, girls here have started pounding millet from the age of 10 so their hands are well calloused and their muscles are well formed. Women in Niger have amazing shoulder muscles and tremendous knobs on their thumbs from pounding millet. Once the millet is pound to a powder (did I mention there is a LOT of pounding in order for this to happen?!) it is boiled in water.

stalks of millet after harvest ready to be put into the granary

the girl pounding was 8 at the time the picture was taken 

women will often have a baby on their back in the heat of the day and do their work

my thumb after 30 seconds of pounding compared to the thumb of an experienced woman

Water. Another challenge and job for the women. A woman must go fetch water from the well. If you are lucky, there is a well within a few hundred meters of where you live. But in order to get this water, you need to fetch it.  There is a long, dirty rope and a leaky, flimsy pail (actually the bottom half of a plastic jug) at the end of this rope. Another shoulder workout. The water has to be lifted out of the well (it can be far! The one I tried was about 13 meters deep) and poured into a bigger bucket. It takes 4 refills for the bucket to be filled. FOUR TIMES of pulling this dirty rope THIRTEEN meters to fill a single bucket of water. But that single bucket is not enough for the family to use for cooking and cleaning for the day. The women usually fill 1-2 buckets five times a day.

the "pail" used to fill the bigger buckets

Again, not uncommon to have a baby on the back while doing this and these ladies can often carry these buckets without using hands to stabilize them!

And then there is me....they give me the small bucket (still heavy!) and I managed to soak my entire outfit with water!

Amuse me some more and now imagine a foreign lady prancing in on her white pick up truck. Imagine she comes out of her air conditioned truck and tells you to wash your hands and the hands of all your children with your precious water before you eat and before you cook. Then she tells you to BOIL this water before you feed it to your family to prevent diarrhea. Where will you get the wood to boil the water? She doesn’t say. She doesn’t know that you barely have enough wood to burn for the noon meal. This lady came so far to visit you, maybe you offer her some of your valuable millet. The millet that took hours to prepare. You make it extra special and add the sour milk that you were saving. She will be so honoured. Oh no. She’s making a face. She doesn’t like it. Darn. It’s the best you have….hope she doesn’t expect anything else.

fresh milk and sour milk hanging from the hut ceiling

This is why I believe the women here are so amazing.  Honestly, I don’t fully appreciate the millet mush that is offered to me when I go visiting in the village, but I try not to make a face.  I especially don’t like it when they add the sour milk.  I try really hard not to look at the goat poo on the floor next to the pounding stick that they used to pound the millet I am currently drinking. Instead, I try to think of how strong the women sitting in front of me are. I try to think of all that went into this precious bowl of millet that is given to me, which I do not deserve. I try not to look at the hopelessness around me and try not to focus on the oppressive heat as I sit dripping in the dark hut with my friends. Rather, I put all of my effort in showing them how much I care and how much Jesus loves them. I drink what is given me and I play with the dirty and sick babies put into my lap. And I pray that the next time I want to complain about my life, I won’t.

sources:

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/niger_statistics.html

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/profiles/Niger/Education

http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/niger