by Andrea Levin
Don’t be a cotton-headed ninny muggins! All donations are matched through the end of the year, so it’s the perfect time to spread a little cheer. www.wellsbringhope.org/donate
Son of a Nutcracker!
Empowered Women: A Force for Political Progress in Niger
by Kris Coulston
Education is the gateway for women to climb to positions of power and influence in the world. As Malala Yuusafzai has said, “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.” Education for women is crucial for progress and change in the world, and Malala’s words could not be truer. Education is powerful. Educated women are powerful. Educated and empowered women are the catalyst for progress – success is not possible without them.
Around the globe, educated women have been at the forefront of economic and political success. Many women have made positive strides in the areas of economics and politics. Angela Merkel ascended to the highest political position in Germany, making her one of the most powerful woman in the free world. Hillary Clinton shattered the glass ceiling when she became her party’s presidential nominee, inspiring women and girls everywhere. Christine Lagarde became the first female director of the International Monetary Fund. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president of Libera in 2005, making her the first female head of state in Africa. Many more educated and empowered women continue to make strides in the economic and political spheres worldwide. Yet, even with the many notable contributions women have made, gender inequality continues to be a problem.
Niger is one country where gender inequality persists. For example, only 2.5% of women have received any form of secondary education, and many of them are subject to gender-restrictive religious and cultural practices. While it is illegal to discriminate against women in Niger, gender disparity is still widespread. The progress of the entire country of Niger will remain hampered if women’s education continues to be limited or non-existent. With empowered and educated women in politics, Niger could more effectively tackle some of the largest problems they’re facing.
There is no doubt that Niger is a resilient nation and a country that has overcome many difficulties. Niger was able to gain independence, overcome a constitutional crisis, and lead the way in conjunction with other countries in combatting Boko Haram in southern Niger. Now, it is time for Niger to lead the way in gender parity and female empowerment. Doing so will help the country conquer the many other crises it faces.
Barriers include a poor state of public health, lack of educational opportunities, high illiteracy rates and extreme food and water shortage. Nigerien women should not be limited to domestic duties such as searching for and collecting water, but should be free to use their voices to contribute to the economy and influence political change.
In Niger’s current political state, women are largely unrepresented, broadening the gender divide and hurting the quality of life. If Nigerien women continue to be hindered from ascending to government ranks, many important issues will go unaddressed, such as healthcare, family planning, education, and access to clean water.
Ready access to clean water is essential for empowering Nigerien women. If they have ready access to clean water, they can devote their time to education. Education would allow them to contribute to the economy and be part of the decision-making process in their homes and communities. They would be able to set the tone for the next generation of Nigerien women. The possibilities would be endless if they had ready access to clean water.
Change won’t happen overnight, but there must be a starting point, and ready access to clean water is the starting point in Niger. As President Barack Obama once said, “If you are walking down the right path and you are willing to keep walking, eventually you will make progress.” If we begin with clean water and continue along that path, real and positive change for the women of Niger is possible.
Read more about the effects of educated women and economic growth here.
Girl Power: Courting In Niger & The Annual Gerewol Festival
by Shayna Watson
Gorgeously colored gowns, perfect face paint and enough gold to outshine the West African sun. All the trappings of a typical beauty pageant, except the women in the village are dressed in all black and standing in line waiting for the event to begin. Many cultures around the world follow the heteronormative “rules” of courtship and relationships that we see in dating, marriage and traditional gender roles . Not the nomadic tribes in Niger, or neighboring Chad and Nigeria. These tribes take time once a year to participate in the tradition of Gerewol – or Guérewol, meaning “to line up” in Fula – a language spoken across 20 countries in Central and West Africa. This annual courting competition is a seven-day event where men do the dolling up and women admire and judge according to looks and talents. In a culture where some tribes practice multiple marriages and freedom of sexuality amongst women before marriage, this flirtation festival gives women of the tribe the opportunity to pick their next potential mate, and rate the available men in their proximity. Some men are competing for wives, others just the satisfaction of knowing that they are desired. There are also, of course, the bragging rights that come with winning the battle of sexual supremacy.
Following reporting by western documentarians and publications such as National Geographic & Conde Nast Travel, the courting festival has become a well-attended tourist attraction. A quick internet search will give you pages and pages of photos of men with multi-colored painted faces, vertical lines sharpening the nose, wearing elaborate headdresses and gold jewelry galore. Images of the women at the festival show their astonishingly gorgeous, make-up free faces peeking out from dark-colored hoods. They come to the festival to judge the hard work (and marriage potential) of men from far and wide, often times outside of their own nomadic tribe.
Music accompanies the festival. Open frame drums and end-blown flutes open the events and signal the start of choral performances, choreographed dancing, and camel races. The competing men have had little to eat and drink in preparation for the the festival; They want to be in top physical and visual performance for the rigorous event. An interested woman can follow her object of affection into the bush where he must continue to woo her with poetry and riddles. The woman then decides if she would like to spend more time and test their compatibility before moving forward to meet the family and plan for marriage. From the festival to the final dowry agreement with the potential bride-to-be’s family, the pace and process of courtship is governed by the women of the tribe.
A piece written by the Daily Mail characterizes the annual events as a “wife-stealing” festival. Many of the women witnessing and judging the competition are currently married and looking to find another male to begin courting them. In my opinion, the “wife-stealing” monicker makes the men (both husbands and potential prospects) the focus of Gerewol when the amazing aspect of the ceremony is just how much power and authority is held by the women of the tribe. How fist-raising feminist it is for men to spend hours getting dressed and made-up for the sole purpose of catching the eye of available women! This has been the premise of western cultures beauty pageants and feminine beauty expectations for centuries. The role reversal seen at Gerewol should be recognized and celebrated. Women wait and watch, and hold the decision on their next potential partner. Let’s give it up for girl power!
Improving Health with Clean Water
by Michelle Wolf
There are 700,000 people in need of adequate healthcare in Diffa, including over 302,000 refugees living in refugee camps and displacement villages. Sixty-eight percent of the people in Diffa do not have access to healthcare. There are only 51 healthcare facilities in Diffa. Four of these facilities have been temporarily closed and 15 are staffed by only one healthcare professional. Patients can be seen by a qualified doctor in just six healthcare facilities. With the access to adequate healthcare so limited how can the increasing population of Diffa maintain a healthy community and reduce the risk of epidemic?
Healthcare facilities offer so much more than basic medical care. They also provide programs that educate communities on the importance of good personal hygiene practices, which directly help prevent spread of disease and reduce instances of epidemics. Introducing WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) programs in areas with limited healthcare access is essential to prevent the spread of disease before it becomes an epidemic.
When Wells Bring Hope begins to work with a village, the first step is always to assist the villagers with the construction of latrines. Latrines separate human waste product from coming into contact with people. This alone reduces the instances of contracting diarrhea, Hepatitis C, and other fecal-borne diseases. The latrines also help to prevent human waste from contaminating groundwater that villages use to clean, cook, and drink from.
After drilling the well that brings in clean, safe water, Wells Bring Hope teaches well maintenance and good personal hygiene practices. A key strategy for infection control is to increase emphasis on washing hands with soap and keeping cooking utensils clean. With the clean water provided by the well, parents can clean their children faces to eliminate the risk of trachoma, an eye disease that caused blindness and vision impairment. The risk of children succumbing to diarrhea is virtually eliminated because children are drinking and washing in clean, safe water.
Wells Bring Hope does so much more than drill wells. We educate communities on practices that will keep them healthy and provide monthly support for up to 15 years to ensure that those practices are implemented. This continued support ensures communities have developed healthy daily habits that reduces the risk of diseases and illness that require access to adequate healthcare facilities that are scarce for those living in Diffa. By focusing on improving community conditions, health conditions improve.
This holiday season please consider giving to Wells Bring Hope. Your contribution helps communities and children prosper and prevents the spread of disease, stopping epidemics before they start.
Read more about food security & livelihood here!
Sanitation and Water Quality
by Isabella Schmitt
I’m a new blogger Wells Bring Hope, so in deciding my first blog topic, I figured I’d start by looking first into Niger – its size, its water resources to see what rabbit hole I fell into from there. I have a background in science and am keenly interested in public health, so naturally I was drawn to the health aspects, particularly waterborne diseases. So, I thought I’d start off my barrage of blogs by doing a mini series on waterborne diseases and sanitation. So, first, let’s start with some basic information on Niger, water sources, sanitation, and a bit about waterborne diseases.
Niger is a country in West Africa that spans 489,076 square miles, only 116 of which contain water. To put this in perspective, the size of the land mass is almost twice that of Texas, with the amount of water one tenth of the size of Rhode Island. It’s a landlocked country, with a mostly dry, desert climate and recurring droughts. Water scarcity is a severe problem, causing women to walk hours each day to find water that is often not from a protected source.
The good news is that as of 2015, the country had 100% of its urban population using improved drinking water sources. This means their water was coming from a piped water connection, a dug well, a protected spring, or a form of rainwater collection, and as such, was safe from outside contamination. The bad news is that 41.8% of its rural population remains on unimproved drinking water sources, which run the risk of rampant contamination.
Improved water sources are one way to reduce water contamination; improved sanitation is another. Improved sanitation means there is a piped sewer system, a septic tank, flushable toilets, or a pit latrine with a slab. The main goal of sanitation facilities is to separate human excrement from human contact. As of 2015, 89.1% of Niger’s population was without improved sanitation sources.
For areas suffering with lack of improved water sources, lack of improved sanitation sources, or lack of both, the likelihood of contracting a waterborne disease is exceptionally high.
Waterborne diseases cause high levels of morbidity and mortality in developing countries, with diarrheal disease being one of the most lethal enemies. This tends to run especially high in children younger than five years of age, and in areas where water scarcity is a problem.
The good news is that organizations like Wells Bring Hope are working to improve drinking water and sanitation. Whenever WBH drills a well, the villagers must also construct pit latrines and receive training on proper hygiene. The combination of safe water, effective sanitation, and improved nutrition results in a 70% reduction in child morality. By simply drilling a well, we can come together to save millions of people from the pain, suffering, and in many cases, death, caused by waterborne illnesses.
As the World Health Organization says, “No other humanitarian intervention produces a more dramatic effect on life than access to safe water and sanitation.”
Tourism Potential in Niger
by Jennifer Dees
Picture a place rich in natural beauty with sunny, clear days and brilliant stars lighting the night sky over desert cities. High sand dunes glow golden; beneath them, dinosaur bones have rested for millions of years. Think of herds of giraffes and elephants, and lions prowling in the savanaa. Imagine millennia-old engravings in sandstone mountains, and ancient mud-brick villages with artistic, Sudano-Sahelian architecture. This is Niger, and this is a place that, someday, many will be able to experience.
Agadez Grand Mosque, Niger
At this time, due to threats from extremist and terrorist organizations, foreigners are urged not to travel to Niger unless accompanied by armed guard. But Niger has the potential for tourism once it becomes more stable, and that is possible. Several countries have risen from poverty to economic stability and become popular holiday destinations. Namibia, for example, dealt with guerilla wars in the late 1900s, and now over a million people a year visit to discover its wildlife. Just 40 years ago, Cambodia was fraught with civil war and genocide; now foreigners visit its temples and immerse themselves in its culture.
Once a country becomes more stable, tourism starts small, usually through volunteering programs. Tours are created to target poverty in villages. Towns develop as local entrepreneurs gain the opportunity to grow their businesses. More jobs become available thanks to the influx of tourists. Eventually, enough cash flow invigorates national parks and museums. The same can happen in Niger.
Niger offers beautiful scenery and experiences. Hippos bathe in the Niger River, which passes through mangrove trees and other lush vegetation. Park W, a UNESCO World Heritage site, protects rare species of elephants, hyenas, lions, oryx, and more. West Africa’s last remaining herd of giraffes lives in the Kouré Giraffe Reserve, and is quite friendly with the locals. Tourism can also have positive environmental impacts by helping to fund security.
Niger’s ancient culture is preserved through engravings and paintings in the northern Aïr Mountains among ancient volcanic craters. In Iwellene, animal engravings over 8,000 years old are spread over 10 acres, including two life-sized giraffes, one of the greatest works of prehistoric art.
In Niger’s capital, Niamey, tourists could haggle for handwoven blankets, intricately imprinted leather boxes, and colored straw mats, and snack on ginger-spiced sourdough pancakes and moringa leaf cous-cous. The adventurous could climb the minaret of the Grande Mosque and admire the colorfully patterned buildings. Visitors from around the world could experience cultural festivals throughout Niger and meet friendly people with a lively, resilient spirit.
Niamey market
One day, I hope that Niger will be known around the world for these experiences. We cannot expect change to come at gallop, although Wells Bring Hope helps provide a little more stability, one village a time. Niger is a country with great potential, naturally and culturally, and I’m hopeful that someday the rest of the world will experience it too.
Education in Niger
by Mehreen Quadri
According to a UNICEF report from 2013, 23.2% of women in Niger are literate. Factors such as culture, family and societal pressures, and the fact that Niger’s economy relies heavily on agriculture, perpetuate some of the highest rates of illiteracy and the lowest rates of formal education in Africa.
Most families in Niger would rather have their daughters contributing to the household than attending school. Throughout West Africa, the burden of supplying water for the household falls to the women and girls. If there is no well in the village, this chore can occupy much of the day as the closest water source may be miles away.
A woman’s lack of education affects the country’s economy, her perceived self-worth, and the future of her own family. According to Dollar & Gotti 1991, a woman’s education can lead to a .3% increase in GDP. SAFE Schools, Mercy Corps. and other NGO’s in Niger have built schools that bring in an average range of 20 to 30 students to the more rural areas where the nearest school is inaccessible. This serves as a great advantage for these girls, but the retention rate is still low. In an agrarian society, families feel that a formal education cannot help with the work required by an agricultural lifestyle nor with their household duties as wife and mother. Furthermore, when girls are sent to a high school, families report that they’re different when they return home. They no longer want to fulfill the traditional roles, bearing the duties of wife, mother, and maintainer of the household. What families might not realize is that education can give a woman more economic power. According to Amete & Amusa 2010, the more formal education a woman has, the more decision making she has in the farms, which is also correlated to how much farm land she has. In a predominantly agrarian society, this would be highly beneficial.
A group of girls taking part in one of Mercy Corps’ Safe Spaces programs in the village of Baura, Maradi region, Niger, February 2014. In the center is Badariya, the girl whose eagerness for an education inspired the SAFE Schools initiative to help get girls back up to speed so they can enter or re-enter Niger’s schooling system. [Sean Sheridan for Mercy Corps]
For most women, security really is dependent on marriage. Besides marriage being a cultural norm and expectation, it can also be a necessity. If a family is suffering from poverty, they may either pressure their daughter to marry someone rich if that is an option, or they may sell her as a ‘wahaya.’ Wahaya is what they call being a fifth wife. In Niger, a man is legally allowed to have four wives. If a man decides to have a fifth wife or ‘wahaya’, he has chosen to take a woman into his household without marrying her. Thus, she will not have any legal or societal rights. She is essentially a modern day slave. The wahaya will perform all the household work without any pay, be used sexually, and beaten if anything goes wrong. Young girls are either usually sold before the age of fifteen to older men as wahaya because of poverty or they are daughters of women who are also wahaya. This problem is more prevalent in towns where men have a higher economic status and have the ability to provide for a larger household.
Regardless of the reason, the fact is that education is out of reach for the majority of girls in Niger, and the lack of schooling makes them even more vulnerable to the challenges they face. It takes more than just building schools in rural areas (essential as that is) to increase literacy and education. We have to ensure that girls have access to that school. There are many factors that affect access, but one of the most easily addressed is water. If a girl’s village has a well, her water-collecting chores can easily be accomplished before and after school, freeing her from that educational barrier. The societal norms are more intransigent and will take much longer to address, but the first step must be freeing girls from the burden of walking for water.
Perspective
by Andrea Levin
Food Security and Livelihood
by Michelle Wolf
At the end of every month, my husband and I go over our budget for the month ahead. We allocate an agreed upon amount of money for groceries and attempt to keep track of how much we use in electricity and gas. Every other week, we withdrawal money from our bank account to pay for groceries, which we tend to buy in bulk, at a nearby Costco. It’s easy for us to justify spending hundreds of dollars on groceries every month because we have reliable jobs at stable companies where we are paid a generous income. We can confidently rely on our employers to pay us on time and in full. We can pay for the gas that powers our cars and house. We don’t carry an ax with us to chop down wood in preparation for this year’s upcoming Minnesota winter. Our home will be warm and our kitchen will be stocked with food.
In Niger, more than 1.5 million people do not have enough to eat and 50% of households do not have a source of income. In Diffa, food and income are astonishingly difficult to maintain. Turmoil from Boko Haram, stresses from the influx of refugees and internally displaced persons, security, trade and crop restrictions, and lack of clean water impede access to food and economic growth.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and RRRP Partners have set up programs at refugee camps to help aid in food assistance and introduce gas as the main source of household energy.
Gas energy is needed in areas where reliance on wood energy and excessive cutting of wood is further deteriorating the environment. All new households in refugee camps will be supported with gas energy, and 5,000 existing households, outside of the camps, will be provided with gas stoves and cash transfers for the purchase of gas.
Humanitarian agencies like UNHCR and Wells Bring Hope, help provide an environment that allows Nigerien communities to prosper. Taking steps to assist in obtaining basic human needs creates a sort of snowball effect. Once basic, physiological needs are met, communities can direct their resources to satisfying higher-level needs. As Maslow outlined, before individuals can fulfill their highest potential, basic needs like water, food, and shelter must be satisfied. With these stepping stones in place Nigeriens can begin to feel safe in their environment and begin to work toward building lives that allow them to pursue their dreams.
Investing in Clean Water Still Matters
by Stephanie Coles
I’m a new addition to the Wells Bring Hope team. As I was learning more about the organization, I spent time reading and watching videos from the field. One story in particular stuck with me. A mother living in Zinder, Niger tells of her life before a well for safe water came to her village. She said, “Before the new well, I lost five of my children because I had to leave them alone all day when I went to get water and they had nothing to eat or drink all day long.” The cruelty of being forced to choose whether or not to leave her children in order to get the ultimate necessity, water, is devastating. It is an incomprehensible choice to the vast majority of us who will, thankfully, never have to experience anything like it.
I write for Wells Bring Hope because I believe in the cause. In a world where tragedy is commonplace on the news each night, I want to help draw attention to what isn’t often talked about: people are still struggling to get the basic necessities that most of us take for granted.
In order to help understand the true story of Niger, I thought it would be helpful to quantify their struggle. Using data provided by the World Bank Group, a worldwide organization working to fight poverty, I was able to view their situation through an analytical lens.
(Note: Scroll down in frame to change date of data)
In 1990, the average life expectancy of a child born in Niger was only 43.5 years. At that time, only 33.7 percent of people had regular access to safe water. Through investments in improving access to clean water, a child born in 2015 can expect to live more than 16 years longer than a child born in 1990. That is a massive improvement to quality of life in only 25 years.
However, Niger is still lagging behind more than 90 percent of the world’s average life expectancy at birth. In fact, there is not a single country outside of Africa that is worse off.
The good news is we can all help! While regular access to safe water is only one of many indicators that can affect life expectancy, there is a powerful correlation. Donating to Wells Bring Hope helps provide clean water access where it is desperately needed. Once the need to walk miles for water is gone, time is freed up and possibilities are opened. At Wells Bring Hope, we engage with communities for 15 years after the wells are drilled to teach basic hygiene, drip farming, and provide microfinance training. Staying involved ensures communities are equipped for long term success. Although having access to safe water is just the first step in transforming lives, it is something we can all support to encourage further change for the people of Niger.
