Thursday, October 10, 2013

Like a man

In each project there is a component of gender.
Of course also for the water project.
Women are the one (and child also), fetching water, managing it at home, using it. For cooking, washing, cleaning, take care of babies and all.
A full time job.
So our duty is to stress the communities to bring the attention to the great value women have in the family economy and try to involve them in the decision making for the project activities.
At the end, they are the one fetching water, isn't it normal they discuss where the pipeline should actually pass by?
Isn't it one of the most important achievement to bring equity for all those women and girls not allowed to go to school, married as a child to old men, sold as prostitutes by fathers, killed while still in mother's belly because considered inferiors?

As I told you already, we were living in a camp in the savanna with a Masai community.
The chairman of the village was also the manager of the camp, Isaac a pure Masai. He was helped to go to school, to send his children to school, his community has benefited from all the projects on the NGO: water, renewable energy, agriculture and so on. They were our neighbors, we were living together, we shared food, water, space, drought and floods, elephant incursions, sad and happy moments.
There was also a volunteer in the camp, a girl, Beatrix.
One day she stumble on a root and felt down badly, injuring her ankle. So I gave her my super arnica liniment and she recovered in a blink of an aye.
Few days later, also the Isaac felt down, badly, and because he was wearing the Masai dress, a blanket passed over a shoulder and tied with a belt, he got all the haunch injured.
I wanted to offer him the same liniment and so I addressed him: "Hey Isaac! I want to give you something. Remember when Beatrix felt down the other day..."
Suddenly, offended, he stopped me: "Hey! She felt like a woman. I felt like a MAN".

After five years of gender oriented project.
the camp. 

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