Whose fault?

It’s been a fairly relaxed day today. We woke up latish, ready to be collected at 11 by Wilson to accompany him to the bush. It was just as well we got a lie-in – the guest house was full of some extremely noisy children last night who I’m pretty sure never went to bed (a toy truck being driven up and down the corridor past your door at 5am is not what you want to hear).

a shop we happened to pass in town - Eva's new calling

The aim of the day was to take a radio out to a remote area of the bush for a group of villagers whom SAPEP had been working with, so they could listen to the radio debate on child marriage which we attended on Thursday (it was only broadcast today). Then Wilson was to record their feedback and direct a debate regarding the show, using the information to compile a report for research purposes so that the charity knows what to address. 

When the car pulled over to the side of the track in the middle of the bush, I wondered why we had stopped – there was no obvious sign of habitation around. But as Wilson threw open the doors of the truck and put the radio on full blast, men and women began to appear through the long grass to sit in a group around us.

 A lovely girl from the village about our own age translated for us – and it was intriguing to hear the feedback. Several of the men, and even the women, agreed with the point raised on the radio that girls were dressing too provocatively: that their skirts were too short or too tight, and therefore they were asking for sex. However a few disagreed: one woman pointed out that in the past, women used to wear skirts which had no sides and therefore showed more flesh, but there was never such a problem with underage pregnancy. There was a widely held opinion that girls these days were too headstrong, disregarding tradition and their parents’ advice and experimenting in sexual activities as they wished. And yet another view was that all too often it was the fault of the parents in conjunction with extreme poverty: the parents wanted their daughters to be defiled so that they could claim payment from the abuser – although abuse should technically be brought to the police, it is more useful for a starving family to settle the matter in their own way. The women also reported of worrying cases where a girl’s mother will tell her to go out and bring home some food – they know she has no money to buy it, but the unspoken assumption is that she will ‘use her devices’.

being translated to

All of this focus on the girl, especially the idea that unwanted pregnancy is somehow always the girl’s fault, was hard for me to reconcile with the idea of justice I hold. In the UK, having sex with a child under thirteen will automatically make the man guilty of rape. For a child between thirteen and sixteen, he must have had reasonable belief that the child was over sixteen years of age, otherwise he will be guilty of sexual activity with a child (provided the child has given valid consent – if not, he will be guilty of rape). And yet this was not even a consideration which had appeared in any of the discussions: everyone was completely focussed on the girl’s wrongdoing, and vary rarely on the man’s. Wilson invited us to comment on the debate, and so I raised this point; I hope that just maybe it may surface in a future debate. 

the kids loved having their photos taken...

... and even started posing

One possible solution for at least some of the problems, for example the high rate of pregnancy leading to the ongoing cycle of poverty, is the use of contraception. Many methods are impractical for the environment in which these people live: there are no health centres nearby, so anything involving regular check-ups is a non-starter. Condoms would be the most useful method, but even these present problems. One of the older women gave us an anecdote of a time when they were given female condoms once before, but without the vital information concerning how to use them. The women were baffled by the devices, and so cut the middle and wore the rings as bracelets – this of course did nothing to protect them from conceiving. 

When the discussion had drawn to a close, we headed back to town and Eva and I dropped in to the market to buy some more fruit. We happened to get out of the car right next to a group of football fans who were getting their faces painted. We were cajoled into it, receiving a flag on our cheeks with the words ‘GO ZAMBIA GO’ in paint which smelt suspiciously like decorating emulsion (this did nothing to draw attention away from ourselves – everywhere we went after that people grinned, parroting the words and hi-fiving us).

Tonight’s dinner, made by our on fair hands, consisted of a bizarre combination of potato salad, tomatoes, cabbage and carrots – cooking facilities and ingredients are in many ways somewhat limited around here. At least it wasn't nshima. Already dreaming of the restaurants they might have in the larger town of Mazabuka, where we’re going in a couple of weeks.

Hope everyone’s having a brilliant weekend. Much love and goodnight.