Women in developing nations, such as Niger, confront hardship with dignity, resilience
Before I moved to Niger last year as the director of the United Nations World Food Programme to the nation, I had never been to West Africa, although I worked for many years in East Africa.
After six months of trudging around the country, sitting under trees, walking across barren fields, visiting health centres for malnourished women and children, and enduring the 40-degree heat beating down on my head, here is what I have learned about the women who live there.
Nigerien women and men give thanks for every meal they eat; there is no taking for granted having food on the table three times a day. Right now, given the dramatic cereal deficit following the last harvest, and the increasing cost of food on the market, Nigerien families are skipping meals, sometimes eating wild food such as leaves, and borrowing food to ensure that children are getting something to eat at least once a day.
Men have begun leaving the villages and moving to urban areas and neighbouring countries looking for work. But times are tough in the region and money hasn’t yet started to reach the women who wait back in those remote villages for something from their husbands. Some of them have picked up their babies and come into the cities, looking for a caring hand.
Nevertheless, recurrent drought, an unforgiving landscape and backbreaking work in the fields planting, harvesting and milling the cereals on which the whole family relies has not managed to erase these
There’s no complaining, no whining about the hand that has been dealt to them
women’s unbelievable strength and ability to look after themselves and their children, no matter how excruciatingly difficult their day-today life is.
In late February, I listened to a woman who had walked for several hours to bring her twin baby girls and three-year-old son to the health centre where the World Food Programme and UNICEF work jointly with the government to treat malnourished children. Other than the children, she was alone; her husband having left for a neighbouring country.
“No,” she said, she hadn’t heard from him in a while, but she was hopeful. In the meantime, the remains of their small harvest had run out, and the village didn’t have much left to share, so she had walked several hours to the health centre with her three little ones. She sat staring straight ahead; a baby feeding from each breast. She calmly explained that her options for feeding her children had run out, and if she wasn’t eating, then there wasn’t much left for the hungry babies at her breasts. She had gone through every possible option available to her before coming to the centre to ask for help.
I have had the opportunity to visit many remote rural villages, typically situated at the end of dirt tracks with no electricity and the only source of water being a community well. The sight that usually greets me as I drive into the village is of groups of women huddled around the well, pumping out the water, and chatting away; here is where the women meet and share their stories.
I listen fascinated to them: the daily gathering of water, grinding the millet, tending to any livestock they may have, chasing after the children, all under a scorching sun and dust storms several months of the year that burn the eyes and throat. And, most often, all done in the absence of men.
It’s a daily routine of what we would consider hardship that strips one of any degree of comfort, at least as we in the western world know it. But there’s no complaining, no whining about the hand that has been dealt to them. I hear only about their plans and what they would like to be able to do for their children. These women know how to improve their lives with small investments in livestock or creating their own little market. These steps would help cushion them against the next inevitable drought.
When I met Fatuma in Ouallam, west of the capital, she thanked me for the assistance the World Food Programme provides and then outlined her plans for the future. What Fatuma needs is what we all need: a chance to work and save enough to invest in her future.
So today, International Women’s Day, as we think about the women we know, maybe we can spend some time thinking about the women we don’t know and imagine what their lives are like.
Women in developing countries like Niger are all too often portrayed as fragile, dependent victims. On the one day of the year when we can celebrate their lives, let’s think of them differently, as resilient, dignified and knowledgeable women building a better life for themselves and their children.