Girls

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In addition to our individual work in La Merced, I have been tasked with a research project of my own interest.  I have chosen to investigate the resources available to women in rural Colombia, using La Merced as an example.  I want to find out more about what kind of access girl’s have to education, economic opportunities that are available to them, as well as their access to and knowledge of reproductive health.  I had a few interviews this week with women from government agencies that conduct aid programs here, as well as with some women from Daniela’s foundation.  It has been interesting to hear about the challenges they face and compare it to the experiences I have had with women and girls in Tanzania.  Based on what I have heard so far, it seems like the level of education here is a bit higher; instead of finishing primary school in Tanzania,  there are more girls in elementary and high school here.  However, extreme poverty persists.  Two of the women I talked to said that they stopped going to school after fifth grade.  When I asked them why, the first woman told me that her father died when she was two years old.  Being one of four children, she was forced to leave school and start working to supplement the income they had lost when her father passed away.  The other woman said that her family could only afford to buy her one pair of shoes, which she had worn through.  Her shoes were beat up and broken, and she couldn’t afford new ones.  She was too embarrassed to continue going to school with her old shoes, so she simply stopped going.  These stories were difficult to hear, and I’m sure there are many more like them.  Unfortunately, stories like these were commonplace in Tanzania too.

With regard to reproductive health, there are more resources available to girls here than there were in my village in Tanzania.  If a 14-year-old girl in La Merced has an ID, she can go to the hospital and receive birth control pills or the contraceptive shot for free.  There are also a number of extension agencies here that are offering information about STDs and pregnancy, and they even offer sexual education courses at the school here, although I have yet to speak with a staff member to discover what that entails.  From what I can tell, there are a plethora of resources available to girls here that would be inconceivable in a place like rural Tanzania…not to mention women can even wear pants and show their knees off here!  If only it were this easy to get birth control in the US….so why are there still so many unplanned teen pregnancies and lack of STD testing?

Red Unidos is a government agency that works to eradicate extreme poverty.   They have assorted goals, including literacy, nutrition, and education.  They also help women open their own bank accounts, and offer counseling.  On Wednesday, I spoke with Adriana, a woman from Red Unidos, who told me that the highest incidence of domestic violence and sexual abuse to women occurs in the rural areas of this region due to the extreme isolation of these families.  She sees a lot of 14-year-old girls and even a couple 12-year-old girls who have been pregnant.  Adriana said that the high rate of teen pregnancy is not due to a lack of sexual education or available resources; but rather because most girls know that if they make a trip to the hospital for contraception, gossip will ensue throughout the community.  In other cases, it happens that the men don’t want the women to be seen going to the hospital for testing.  Since women generally are not financially independent of their husbands, it is difficult for women to break ties or call the authorities if abuse does occur.

As I talk to people about the challenges women face here, I am constantly thinking back to the girls and women I know from my village.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend, Mwanahawa, who was 16 when I met her in Nanjota.  She got pregnant, and had her baby during my second year there.  Meanwhile I was 25, childless, and as far as the men in Nanjota were concerned, a complete failure in life.  They couldn’t understand why I was so old without a kid, and were relentlessly insistent that I couldn’t return to the US without a beautiful little “mixed one.” 

Although I am so far away from Mwanahawa and the other friends I made in Nanjota, they still share the same obstacles and injustices as the girls I have met here.  The problems are so overwhelming and complicated that it is difficult to imagine a feasible and lasting solution.  In Tanzania, the problem was largely based on a lack of education and resources.  There was a strong culture of silence surrounding sex.  In addition to the lack of knowledge, the patriarchal culture of households served to further disempower women and young girls.  Meanwhile, the gender gap here in Colombia is thoroughly narrowed and nobody has questioned my lack of offspring thus far.  But the gap still very much exists.  The difference here in Colombia is that although there is a surplus of resources - government-funded counseling, support for abuse victims, free birth control and STD testing - they are not being taken advantage of by a majority of the girls who need them.  In both cases, the shared “law of silence” that seems to govern girls and women still needs to be overcome…