"One more, and this the last. So sweet was ne'er so fatal."
Shakespeare: Othello: Act 5, Scene 2.
Shakespeare: Sonnet 30
Remembrance of things past is right I'm afraid. Long gone!
But it was a sweet thought from a sweet son.
Mothers are primary educators whether or not they are so recognized, and whether or not they live in a literate or an oral society, or in something in between. If we truly desire to build a peaceful society, women as primary educators of young children are in the best position to begin the nurturing of peaceful people. But to be effective as teachers of peace they must be respected as women, and have access to education themselves.From a recent article in The Lancet. Registration is required to read the article but it is free. It is also well worth while reading the longer account of how the self-help group started.
Another condom advertisement, this time the product is from Holland I think, but the advertising agency is in Belgium.
It is apparently so effective that in the first week, traffic to the site increased by 77% and nearly 3000 online orders were placed.
Dr Pierre Foldès, although probably the most well know, is not the only surgeon in France to perform reconstructive surgery for women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM): in Angers there is Dr Sébastien Madzou.
He had originally read an article about Dr Foldès in a women’s magazine. Although Dr Madzou originally comes from the Congo, where FGM is not practised, he frequently comes across circumcised women in his gynaecology clinics so he got in touch to find out more. Dr Foldès asked if he would like to be trained in the technique and now Dr Madzou himself trains others.
The first surgeon he trained was a colleague, Dr Ouedraogo, with whom he had studied in Tours. Dr Ouedraogo suggested Dr Madzou go with him to Burkina Faso where he has now trained about 25 surgeons in the technique. Of these, 6 or 7 are women, though there appears not to be any concern amongst patients over having a male surgeon.
In an article by Habibou Bangré on Afrik.com (in French), Dr Madzou tells of his time in Burkina Faso. His patients of all ages came from all levels of society, having heard about the operation by word of mouth. Although he worked without charging fees, there nevertheless was a cost to the patients, however it was obviously considerably less that travelling to France. He even had one patient from Belgium who travelled specifically for the operation, and another from the USA who happened to be visiting relatives when she heard about it.
In France he works at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire d'Angers, 4, rue Larrey 49933 Angers. His own contact details.
Locusts are a type of grasshopper which can breed very rapidly. Swarms of adults or bands of nymphs can travel extremely fast up to 130km a day and the swarm itself can measure from one to several hundred kilometres in length, posing a serious threat to agriculture.
According to the FAO, locusts regularly cross the Red Sea (a distance of 300km). A swarm can hold up to 80 million locust adults in each square kilometre, and is capable of destroying a crop field in seconds. A small swarm can eat as much food in a day as 2,500 people.
This year’s desert locust problem has proven particularly bad after heavy rains around the Horn of Africa and the interior of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, providing suitable conditions for the locusts to breed.
As long ago as March of this year the FAO warned that there was a locust infestation developing in the Horn of Africa, which could cause a serious problem in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. It was the result of breeding from an outbreak in December in Eritrea.
In April the Yemen government was concerned but specialists said the locusts didn't pose an immediate threat, but that the next generation could.
By 8 May there was a further warning for Eritrea followed by one for Yemen where they had been seen laying eggs.
By 16 May locust invasions in Tajikistan had destroyed crops and cotton plantations over an area of almost 45,000 hectares. It is thought that this year’s locust invasion is related to the drought that has affected the area over the past two years. The locusts usually concentrate on mountain pastures and forests but when there is no grass as a result of drought they migrate to feed on agricultural crops.
In June Kyrgyzstan managed to combat the worst of a locust infestation in the south of the country they but remain as a threat in other regions. Locusts are a major current threat to Kyrgyzstan’s agriculture sector, which accounts for about one third of the country’s gross domestic product and 50 per cent of employment.
Also in June Yemen’s Desert Locusts Control Centre asked the government to increase its budget after the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said Yemen was facing its worst locust infestation in nearly 15 years. In collaboration with the Yemeni government, it is to launch a major eradication effort against desert locusts in eastern Yemen.
Today it was reported that a swarm of locusts had infested parts of Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in the northeast, destroying crops and other vegetation, "There are millions of them and they are spreading to most of the region's farmland," said Muse Gelle, governor of Bari region. "There had been reports of locusts for about a week but the main body appeared three days ago and is eating anything that is green."
As the UN Special Humanitarian Envoy to the Horn of Africa said, that area has suffered some of the most severe food shortages, which are increasing in intensity and frequency as a result of climate and environmental change as well as political conflicts and other factors.
Some of the figures from the various reports are almost unimaginable, so the devastation must be more so. As if those parts of the world don’t have enough on their plates already.
Photo from Nicholas Reader/IRIN
So then we decided to barbecue the sardines we had bought. Excellent, and the cat enjoyed the one that dropped on the ground as a suitable reward for protecting us from wild lizards.
Then suddenly it was 6:00 pm and people were coming round for drinks, and then suddenly it was 9:00 pm and we were admiring the sunset.
I spotted the nest not the most tidy (in fact it resembles the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), in a ventilation duct when I was investigating why a bird was being so noisy.
You can just about spot two mouths ready to accept any offerings. There may be others but I don't want to disturb anyone.
And this is the father, rather grumpy. He keeps saying tck, tck, tck.
I believe they are black redstarts but I am happy to be corrected if anyone knows better. Unfortunately they refused to pose for good portraits.
We won't be able to leave the nest where it is, but of course we'll wait until the babies have flown before we do anything.
Mutilée hasn't been translated into English so here is a brief outline.
It's the true story of Khady Koita who was born and brought up in Senegal. At seven years old she suffered circumcision, along with quite a number of the girl children in her extended family. The pain is described fairly graphically. She goes on to describe her life as a child, how she was sent to school, unusually for a girl, but at 15 is married off to a cousin twenty years her senior and who lived in Paris.
The bulk of the book is taken up with this marriage which wasn't really forced but which she couldn't see any option to oppose. Within less than a year she had her first child although she was hardly more than a child herself. The marriage was not a happy one. She went on to have five children, four girls and three of them she allowed to be circumcised out of sheer passivity.
Ultimately her marriage degenerated still further, especially after her husband took on a second wife, as was the custom. In the end, after much hesitation, she did leave him and took her children with her, although her husband attempted to kidnap them.
Through working as an interpreter for Senegalese immigrants, she made contacts which led her to become more and more active in GAMS, a women’s group for the abolition of female genital mutilation and other harmful practices affecting the health of women and children. This is covered in only the last 20 pages.
I'm sorry to say I didn't especially enjoy the book although it has been widely discussed. Because my French is far from fluent, it surprises me that I can detect that it isn't terribly well written. Papillon's blog reads far better by quite a long way. Mutilée seems disjointed and in places contradictory.
Additionally, in spite of the title, it spends considerably more time describing her unhappy and violent marriage than about female genital mutilation. I can't help feeling the title was chosen for dramatic effect to attract attention to a currently fashionable subject than anything else. I daresay a great many book titles are chosen for the same reason, but you could hope to have more substance behind the title than was the case here.
Nevertheless, one or two passages do stay in my mind, this being one of them:
In a corner of my mind, I'm still sitting under the mango tree at my grandparents' house, there where I was happy and physically intact. Ready to become a teenager, then a woman, ready to love because I really wanted to..... I was forbidden.
A great African film maker, Ousmane Sembène, died recently. He was born in Senegal, in Casamance, which coincidentally is where Papillon's family originated, and he was a great advocate of women's liberation as the key to the development of African society.
His last film "Moolaadé" in 2004 tells the story of African women fighting against female genital mutilation.
Although that was three years ago, his efforts nevertheless continue. The first telefilm to be produced by AFRICAphonie is Nkuma, telling the story of Bessem, a woman who finds that she is infertile as the result of female genital mutilation. Directed by George Ngwame in Cameroon, its aim is to raise awareness and sensitise people to the issues, as well as condemning female genital mutilation.
As a review of the film says, it illustrates the difficulties in trying to promote behavioural change within communities and puts forward alternative and innovative methods to resolve their conflicts.
Coincidentally, I'm reading a book by Khady Koita, Mutilée, which tells her own story of FGM. I haven't yet finished it but early on I was struck by a passage which described the way a woman from another area reacted. She laughed as if to make it a joke, but said "You aren't still doing that are you? Have you not yet wakened?". That could possibly have more effect than many efforts currently being made by "outsiders".
In an interview, George Ngwame says that the film industry is in a perfect position for communication, education, and information. Film/television followed up by word of mouth has to be some of the most powerful ways to spread ideas.
Some of these sites date from thousands of years ago. The cultural past of Africa is often forgotten, and indeed the natural history too. According to Unesco, the importance of endemic fish species in Lake Malawi for the study of evolution is comparable to that of finch species in the Galapagos Islands. Today was the first time I found mention of that even though it was 1984 when Lake Malawi was added.
The list of new sites added in 2006 can be found on the Unesco site, as can the full list of sites.
PS I'm reliably informed that the henna painting brings good luck.
