Women and the work we do

My week started well.

Monday, I was in the office kitchen making a cup of tea, when in walked, P, who is head of finance. We’ve had a rather tetchy relationship since I started (yes I know, I’ve only been here three weeks!), as one of her staff is supposed to be working 100% on my project, but isn’t, and I have said I will not pay 100% of his salary unless he does (this is a common stand off in our industry). We gave each other a strained smile, and then I glanced at her shoes. ‘Wow P, those look amazing,’ I said. They were about four inches high, black, with a Louboutin-style platform, and studded. ‘They look designer. But how do you walk in them?’ She grinned, and replied. ‘I was thinking the same thing … about your stomach. How is it so flat?’

On Tuesday, I bought a car. Save’s staff drivers poured over it, running the engine while poking about under the bonnet, taking it for a test drive three times, each time with someone else driving. ‘It needs new tyres, alignment and new ball joints,’ they announced. I had the expat woman selling it knock another $500 off the price.

On Wednesday, I looked at houses. As lovely as the hotel where I am staying is, with its pool and leafy green garden, I am getting a little tired of living out of a suitcase. Plus it’s on the other side of town from the office and that 25-minute commute each morning is killing me (will I ever be able to return to London-length commutes?). There are four main property companies here, and I have gone out with all of them except K’s. K is Indian, but has lived in Lilongwe for 25 years. My driver the other day told me that 10 years ago, the Indians used to run all the small shops, but now it’s the Chinese and the Indians have moved up to corner the housing market. K picked me up from my office in her Mercedes Benz, and we navigated the back roads of Area 9 to a see a three-bedroom, stand alone house. I had been told by a number of people – including one who runs a security company – that Area 9 was a bit sketchy, and has had several house break ins and car jackings (no casualties). K, however, insisted Area 9 was fine. She has lived there for 25 years. The house was massive: 3 bedrooms, each with their own en-suite, a lounge with fire place, a dining room and a weird porch like area that the previous tenant had used as a gym. There was a separate house for laundry, and another separate house for ‘your staff’. It was too big, and I would feel very isolated (plus, I really don’t want to live in Area 9).  So we see another house in Area 3, a more popular area with expats, and closer to the office. The garden is a jungle with a massive acacia tree stooping over the house, fruit trees, a vegetable garden and an army of bushes and flowers that cascade down on three levels. I love the garden, but the house is old, dated, run down and very dark. I don’ think it’s for me either.

Thursday, I drove out to Salima (one of our implementing districts, about 1.5hrs from Lilongwe) with two education advisers from DfiD, the UK government’s aid arm, and our donor for this project. Although I lead the project, DfiD is effectively the big boss, and they need to know if we are making good use of their money (well, your tax money, good UK people!).

Save’s Keeping Girls in School project has two main branches that together holistically address a multitude of barriers which keep girls from attending school, or staying there and learning. A cash transfer of £7/term per girl supports them to buy school items, exercise books, uniform, shoes etc. While school itself is nominally free (tuition is free, but there are exam fees and a ‘registration fee’), school items can sometimes be the reason that children don’t go to school. Uniforms get handed down from sibling to sibling until they are in tatters. For the little ones, this is not a problem. For a girl in adolescence, having to wear a uniform that barely covers her thighs or is ripped in the wrong places, can be enough to keep her at home. With no shoes, the walk to school (2km each way at least) can be painful and deter any child from going to school. Without exercise books, how will a child learn, or study?

The second branch addresses what happens to a girl at school and what support she gets from teachers, parents and the community. 

Up until about the fourth year of primary school, Malawi has achieved gender parity. In fact, there are often more girls in the first few years of primary than boys. But at 14/15, this is when we see the change. In Primary 4, for example, a school may have 135 girls. By primary 7, that has fallen to 30. In secondary school we are looking at a handful only.

Early pregnancy, early and forced marriage, additional domestic chores that cause a girl to miss school or slip behind with school work are all influencing factors. At school, as they see their peers drop away to get married and start families, it becomes harder and harder for a girl to retain motivation to stay on, especially if they aren’t doing well and even more so if school is a place of constant harassment, bullying and often mental, physical or sexual violence.

Being a girl is hard.

So one of our ‘interventions’ is to train female teachers to be role models and mentor and champion girls. It sounds common sense, that a woman who overcame obstacles to finish her education and gain a certificate as a teacher would mentor or support a girl to overcome those same challenges.

But apparently it’s not that obvious. After observing the first training, where a male facilitator is making the women memorise the characteristics of a good mentor, I ask if I can ask the women a question. Most urban/peri-urban people here speak English, and English is the medium of school instruction for kids over 14/15, so the trainings are all in English.

What is it, I ask the group of about 40 women (female teachers from all 16 schools in the zone), that makes you the perfect role model for girls? Each woman who answers, dressed in a glorious riot of colour and flounces, some with babies strapped to their backs, stands up to answer me. Some shyly, some with more force. “Because we are female teachers”; “Because we model good behaviour”; “Because we are close to the girls and they tell us their problems.”

All good points I say. But what, more than anything, makes you the best person to support, counsel and advise these girls when they come to you with a problem?” No one answers.

So I tell them: “Because you were once girls; you know these problems the girls face, you know how to overcome them, because look, here you are now!” A murmur goes round the group and everyone nods and I hear, ‘that’s right’.

Luckily, I had already highlighted to DfID my concerns about some of the facilitators; that they were teaching in abstracts; that there wasn’t enough of a link to what we wanted them to do. What we wanted was not to have female teachers memorise what a mentor does but to think about how they could support girls to achieve their educational and life aspirations.

This is a direct result of the education system, where learning does mean memorising what’s in a textbook. Repeating, repeating and repeating until you regurgitate word for word, without ever really understanding what you are learning. I have seen this in so many countries where I have worked; where I am constantly pushing people to tell me what their understanding of something is not just to repeat a line from a  textbook or manual (some of you might say I'm like that in my social life as well :-)). What we are asking is for people to be critical thinkers, to analyse something, to give it context rather than just repeat it. But this is  not something that we can change overnight.

We see two more trainings. The second is better than the first, more participatory, and the facilitator (another man) is very engaging, but still it’s about what it says in the manual, and when he talks about problems for girls, I feel there’s something missing.

At the third training, the female facilitator is brilliant. She has the women performing role plays; getting them to act out different scenarios where the girl is in trouble, and a female teacher mentors or supports her. She also has the women singing a Keeping Girls in School song (there isn’t one, but she made it up), clapping and dancing (‘who wants to come to school and listen to lectures all day long; women/girls they want to dance’). The conversations around girls' problems and how to help them is vibrant, and there’s a, dare I say it, powerful sense of sisterhood. When we leave, the three of us (me, and my two female DfID colleagues) literally skip out of the room, beaming. One of the DFID advisers leans over to me and says, ‘I guess this confirms every gender bias we have’.

On Friday, I find a house I like.