Debating Child Marriage

Back up to date again - here are today’s antics.

We’re getting used to ‘Zambian time’ now, and since we had only arranged a very vague time to meet with the SAPEP people, we decided to have a wander in the Monze market this morning.

As we walked down the road, we were greeted and smiled at by nearly everyone we passed – it’s true that the Zambians are a very friendly nation. A small boy playing with his friends shrieked and pointed at us when we went passed, grinning; it is a little disconcerting to automatically be the centre of everyone’s attention. To us, the weather was exceptionally hot – not a cloud in the sky – but there were many of the locals going about their business in woollens (it’s their cold season). All relative I suppose.

Monze market

There was a wide variety of stalls in the market – everything from phone chargers to clothing to food. And the food was, by our standards, rather unusual: the little fish from last night (the sight of which made me feel slightly nauseous), larger hunks of dried fish, and dried caterpillars, to name just a few. 

caterpillars!

We also came across Eva’s idea of hell – cages and cages packed with chickens. Amongst the other livestock were cows being herded into trucks, along with goats and pigs packed in side by side. It has to be said, I felt sorry for the pigs – they were being unceremoniously hauled into the trucks by one person on their ears and another on their tail, and were squealing desperately. 

Wandering into the fruit area of the market, a woman called us over and gave us each a little hard seed case, telling us to ‘Try it, try it!’ Eva and I looked down at the pebble-like object in our hands, looked at each other, and then back at her, utterly baffled. By this point, her children had gathered round and were giggling at us. ‘Look,’ said a teenage girl, sensing our confusion. She seized on of the fruit, bit the top off it and split it open. I attempted to copy and was embarrassingly defeated by the annoyingly hard outer. She smiled and offered me a segment of one she had managed to open. It was an odd-looking think – you would think too dry to bother eating, except for a slightly slimy middle. ‘Eat,’ she said – ‘Chew like bubble-gum,’ interjected her mother. Not to be put off from one bad experience of native food (last night’s fish with eyes), Eva and I did as we were told, and the results were surprisingly nice! Sweet, and slightly woody, with a disconcerting but not-unpleasant slimy texture.

The men around the market were especially friendly - we’d been warned by Oliver of this, as many of the men see marriage to a white woman as a chance for financial security and higher social standing. On the other hand, their advances were refreshingly non-creepy compared to the wooing techniques sometimes experienced by myself or friends back home – the best line to Eva was, ‘You, me – you could be my wife!’ (oh, how romantic); equally amusing was the man who said to me, ‘I love you too much!’

When we had fully explored the town, we went back to our guest house where Wilson soon picked us up. We collected the BBC and ZCSD people, and then drove (or rather, hurtled with much dust and bumping) to another small village which was hosting a public radio debate on child marriage and child sexual abuse, two issues which are worryingly prominent in several rural communities. We had arrived slightly early and were shown how to eat sugar cane – they’re like massive bamboo canes, the outer of which you have to strip off with your teeth to reveal the middle, which drips with sugary water. You then bite that off and chew it – it tastes like very sweet celery, although it is a lot more woody so you’re left with an indigestible pulp in your mouth to spit out (not the most dignified of snacks).

sugar canes out in the sun

As we had a fairly sizeable amount of time before the debate began, Wilson took Eva and myself on a walk to meet some of the villagers, away from the centre of the village. 

Wilson and me

After walking for about twenty minutes, we came across a patch with three little mud huts resting on it, and several chickens wandering around. Wilson knew the woman who lived there from previous SAPEP work – he explained that her husband had died last year from AIDS, and she herself had built this little family settlement for herself, her youngest son, her oldest daughter and the daughter’s child (the child’s father had left). She apologised that she couldn’t speak directly to us, as she had never been to school, but said she would be willing to speak through Wilson as a translator. When we began to probe into how her life had been since the death of her husband, it emerged that she was living in horribly desperate circumstances. For all her calm, gentle demeanour, her livelihood was ruined: she farmed maize to make money, but due to the bad weather this year she had no crop. She had no money, and no way to make money: she also said that she in fact had seven children, but the others she had been forced to send away to live with other people as there was no money to feed them. She could remarry, but for her this was not an option because of the risk that the man might mistreat her children, and as she had already been married the likelihood is he would only want her for food and sex, rather than to help her; she would just be wasting food on another mouth.

Her whole story was desperately sad, not lessened by the quiet acceptance with which she bore her situation. But it is so hard to know what to do for her.

After thanking her for talking to us, we left and made our way back to the debate – I found it incredibly hard leaving her and knowing what she would have to live with for the next several days. There were several high-profile speakers attending the debate, including the District Commissioner and a high-ranking officer from the police, but it was unlike any debate I have seen before. It was held outside under the shade of a large tree, and crowds of people from the nearby villages had arrived to take part. Seeing so many people attend to have their say made me realise the value of democratic forums such as these, and I found myself slightly irritated by the passive attitude which many people in our own country assume towards politics, whatever their political affiliation. These people really cared about their community, and were willing to put in the effort to get what was best for them. It seems to me that in comparison, too many people in England complain at the outcomes of politics, but have never really taken any action to convey their displeasure.

However the debate also made me realise the difficulties facing the issue of child marriage and sexual abuse. Although this is technically illegal in Zambia, a girl’s family will sell the girl for marriage, getting a substantial amount of livestock or land in return – these are girls under the age of sixteen, being forced to become mothers and housekeepers. Equally, if a child is sexually abused and becomes pregnant, the family will often prefer to try and marry her off to the abuser rather than report the crime to the police. At the end of the day, for a family living in poverty, food and money is more useful than a criminal conviction and an extra mouth to feed when the baby is born.

The whole experience of the day was somewhat confusing. Westeners, myself included previously, seem to think: there are measures in our country to deal with such incidents, how hard can it be to implement these elsewhere? But the way things work here is just so different that a justice system such as ours becomes redundant. It is too hard to police the enforcement of the laws in this environment and, quite frankly, people simply have more important things to consider. There seems to be no single solution - all that can be done is to take small steps like SAPEP is doing – at least the debate today, publicly airing issues which have previously been taboo, might have reinforced in the community that any such abuse is fundamentally wrong, and perhaps any potential abuser would be discouraged.

On a more trivial note, we were given Zambian food again – to my relief, it was chicken tonight, not fish. Still had to pull the meat off the bones (they don’t like to make it easy), but definitely preferable to eating fishy bones, eyeballs, and goodness knows what else.

Off to sleep now – the days are surprisingly tiring and we’re going to a school tomorrow! Love from us to everyone back home.