Just as I began writing, the power went out. We’ve had ten minutes of candlelight, ten minutes of rather flickery electricity as they got the generator working (very noisily, right outside our window), and I think the power has just come back on for real now. Oh, the joys of small-town Zambia.
As the title may suggest, not much has happened today. Apologies to sound boring (but then, compared to the last post, it might be a nice break).
We started off at LADA this morning with Blandina and Lenah, writing more on the proposal for their Human Rights Programme (extracting the plan from them was rather hard work but I think at least we got somewhere) and then they took us to see some of the organisations they work with. First we visited the District Women’s Association, a group run by women for women which empowers them to know their rights and teaches them about agriculture, promoting a woman’s independence from her husband. It sounds like brilliant work, but unfortunately we didn’t get to meet any of the women who had taken part in the group’s activities and the woman we spoke to didn’t sound like the most proactive person I’ve ever met – hopefully this was a misconception and the programme yields results which live up to expectations.
Next we walked to the Land Alliance to ask them about the measures they are taking to prevent property grabbing: when a man dies in a rural community, his family will often eject his wife and children from the land in order to take it for themselves. This shouldn’t happen, but in order to prevent this, they are encouraging villagers to have their land registered so no-one can claim a better right to it. However the system of claiming title seems somewhat flawed: because the land traditionally belongs to the tribal chief, it is the village headman’s responsibility when someone tries to obtain a certificate for their land to investigate the boundaries and make sure the land really should belong to the person claiming it. I asked whether the headman was ever corrupted or bribed into giving a title certificate to someone who didn’t own the land – someone who perhaps was effectively stealing the land from its current inhabitants – and the woman conceded that this did happen. ‘But we’re working in the communities to make sure people know their rights to their land,’ she added. Having met the village communities who are at risk in such situations and having seen their reluctance to report such problems – perhaps because they are being threatened or simply cannot reach the nearest advice office – her words made me a little dubious.
The final people we met were the Health Help International, funded by the UK, and after a few minutes of being there I could tell that the work they did was really helpful to the people affected. They mainly work with the disabled in communities, supplying them with equipment donated from the UK (such as hearing aids, mobility aids, crutches) and also give classes to the disabled to educate them and give them a chance of having a fulfilling life (there is still a huge amount of prejudice towards such people). They also help disabled people find representation in court, as they are often blamed or taken advantage of because they are so vulnerable in society, but here the head of the charity who we were speaking to became very passionate. Apparently the courts are completely corrupt, and will often also lay the blame on the more vulnerable party, despite any evidence to the contrary. We didn’t have the facts of any cases in front of us, so we weren’t able to an unbiased judgement, but it was hard to doubt the unrestrained conviction with which he proclaimed this. He begged us to help sort out their legal system when we graduated.
Ending the day on that note left me on a bit of a low – if the legal system is so corrupt that the courts will almost invariably side with the more socially or economically strong party, what’s the point in educating the vulnerable about their rights when their rights are effectively meaningless? But, thinking about it, if the people do not know their rights then they will be unaware of when they are wronged, and without this sense of injustice they may never be inspired to make a change. The more I see of the country, the more I believe that change is going to take an extremely long time, but surely some help is better than none.
We didn’t get any photos today seeing as there weren’t many exciting scenes, but I did forget this one yesterday: five-year-old Blessing carting around a live chicken which probably weighs about the same as her…
Goodnight everyone. Thanks for all the support we’re getting – it really is appreciated.
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