From Tallaght to Tanzania
by Aoife Cooke

One generalisation I could make about the inspiring and fantastic women we met in Tanzania, if I may be permitted, is that they never stopped moving, chatting, laughing and working tirelessly for the emancipation of themselves and their fellow women. On our first evening in the capital of Dar-Es-Salaam, one of our hosts, Mary Rusimbi, rushed off to take part in a live televised panel debate, defending the rights of young pregnant women to remain in education. 'The government has changed the law and they want to educate every child,' she told us, 'but religious and 'cultural' leaders are opposed.' During our trip, the need to repeal and abolish repressive laws, such inheritance laws and to protect young girls by setting a lower age for marriage, were repeated by the women we met.

Aoife with members of the Kisarawe Women's Network, Dar es Salaam.

We were shown the city by Gloria, a young intern with the Tanzanian Gender Networking Programme, our host organisation. She was one of the few women we met wearing Western Dress and tidy false nails. The purchasing power of Tanzanians is so low that few and advertisements fill the streets. That ubiquitous muddy brown soft drink, two mobile phone companies, a brand of cigarettes dangling from the mouth of a suave businessman in a power suit and a young couple with twinkles in their eyes promoting flavoured condoms were the few billboards screaming out from the neatly scripted hand painted signs and shop-fronts stretching from the Dar-Es-Salaam airport into the city centre.

Our first stop on this two-week exchange was the 2007 Gender Festival, organised by TGNP. Each speech of the conference was interspersed with a Tanzanian-style energiser activity. The music was pumped up and slowly, hundreds of swinging hips and tapping feet joined together in a circle dance in the large communal space in the centre of the conference area. Breaking into large groups on issues that ranged from water rights, to HIV/Aids to African Feminist Herstories, primary school age children, adolescents and adults discussed and debated together in workshops that ran over three days. The younger children took part in a children's parliament, talking about and voting on the issues that affected them.

Aoife browsing at the Gender Festival

Participants were here to listen, learn and exchange ideas. In the workshop I attended on feminist movement building, the difficulty of speaking out against oppression was something to which all of us could relate. An elderly woman from a rural community spoke in quiet tones to the group, 'my mother told me that to talk in front of man is to be naked, and against god. And so I stayed quiet my whole life. This is the first time I have ever talked in such a group.' The congratulatory cheers and hugs that responded was, I think, the encouragement she may have needed to speak again.

At the Gender Festival

Economic empowerment projects were the most fundamental issues tackled by the majority of the women's groups we met. With no control over the family budget, many women, we were told, were often forced to feed the men at the expense of their own food or the children's. Husbands are educated to be allies in this, and to allow the earnings remain in the hands of the women. As well as raising extra money for the family, we were told, financial empowerment involves the need to tackle prejudice
and create acceptance of women as earners.



One energetic and inspiring woman we met showed us the small chicken farm she keeps at the side of her house. She had come with a simple business plan and a request for a loan to the Mwanza Women's Development Organisation. The money she earned was to supplement, not replace the family income, and so she was saving to send her children to school with her profits. We investigated the mechanics of the new steam incubator that she had recently purchased with her loan from a local market. The incubator keeps her hundreds of eggs cosy until they are ready to hatch. She was realising it is more profitable to both breed chickens as well as sell them as food, and her furry squawking flock is made up of chickens of different ages and with different futures before them! We were then brought to see the next development of her business, five large pregnant pigs and the young men she employed to care for them. Her friend, who was visiting that day to learn the skills she had developed, will soon apply for such a credit loan for herself.

We were not visiting donors, a fact which came as a surprise to many of the women's groups we met, whose only personal experiences of white women were those working with international aid organisations and religious charities. Though some expressed disappointment that we could not give desperately needed funding, we also saw that many were pleased with an opportunity for exchange and expressions of mutual solidarity. There was, at first, scepticism that Irish women could in any way experience disadvantage, but the opportunities we had to share our experiences of community work in Ireland was helpful for us all to clarify the gender-based problems unfortunately still relevant for us all, north and south of the equator.

A strong sense of solidarity between women was evident in the groups we met on our trip. My own work is around integration and anti-racism. In Tanzania I was impressed by the women's groups we met uniting different religions and ethnicities. During lunch with the Kisawere Women's Network we sat and shared with Christians, women with Catholic crosses who blessed themselves before the meal, and women in headscarves fasting for Ramadan who sat but did not eat with us. I was excited and enthused by such joyous women, uplifted by their harmonious singing welcoming us, as a musical accompaniment as we walked through the village, again on the bus to their centre and as a great goodbye. We, though slightly less spirited and possibly out of tune, sang about Grania Mhaol, the 16th Century female queen and pirate from the west of Ireland. A resounding cheer of laughter accompanied the ballad where the dynamic pirate-queen demands return of her dowry from her wayward husband.

The Kisawere network describes itself as a collective movement for activism comprised of 30 women's organisations from areas surrounding the capital. The first phase of their work concentrates on health issues, women's rights including reproductive rights and supporting women in leadership positions. At the more strategic level, this collective works to empower traditional midwives and groups fighting female genital mutilation. They also provide feedback on research around women with HIV/Aids and those experiencing gender-based violence.

On the last afternoon of our trip, we had a lunch meeting with the team from the Irish Embassy based in Dar-Es-Salaam. We reported back what we had seen and heard from the grassroots groups we had met, to forward their ideas on how the Irish Government can further their good work. This was, I hope, one piece of our work.