women who inspire

Over the last weeks I’ve had the chance to meet really great women who have become part of my source of inspiration and also my joy. They are beautiful, intelligent, hardworking, compassionate, strong, caring and able. I am convinced that change should and will happen because of women like them. I realize that the following short stories might jump a little here and there - but then again that is what I've been doing too so bear with me please!

Sister Pat in her store

Sister Pat was kind of like my mother for the three days I was in Assin Praso. A single mother of two, she owns a store where she sells rice, soap, canned tomato paste and other provisions. Like other women in the market, she spends the first hours of her work day taking things out of boxes and putting them into nice looking stacks and sweeping the garbage around the store so the place looks clean and organized. With her hard work she has been able to put her two kids into a good school and make a home for herself in the one room that she shares with them. She is a business woman all around and I have no doubt that her charisma will bring her great success. I admire her hard work and her total commitment to her children’s education and happiness. [And as a side note, I also admire her sense of style…]

Eunice, Patience and Victoria

These three ladies are community health nurses at the district’s only hospital in Donkokrom. Their work is to visit the surrounding communities and do a bunch of preventive health care like awareness on AIDS and pre-natal treatment for soon to be mothers. They travel in the back of motorbikes (and sometimes a boat!) with a box of vaccinations and outreach materials to help those who are too far away from the hospital or other clinics. When I asked them about what health was like in the communities, I noticed a certain frustration in their eyes. Malaria and poor nutrition continue to be the number one problem and although the health insurance scheme is making it easier for people to get the health care they need, sometimes it is too late. But they keep focused on the slow improvements and get energy from each other and the people in the communities who bring them mangoes or a pineapple every once in a while as a way to say thanks.

Women making gari

Last week I had the awesome opportunity to visit one of the communities that KITE/SEND has worked with in installing a multifunctional platform, a diesel engine that can be used to process different things including cassava. When cassava is grinded, dried and made into a flour-like product called gari, it can be stored for longer and used later in the year when food is less available and the chances of hunger are higher. Some women also sell other processed grains in the market and make more profit than if they were to sell it without any processing. Because of the platform and the support from the farmer group they belong to, the women in the community can process the cassava close to their homes instead of walking to the next town with these big plates on their heads every day during the harvest season.

Madame Cynthia outside of her kitchen

Madame Cynthia is the wife of the chief of this community, a mother of four and an admirable multitasker. Apart from doing the washing, cleaning, cooking and fetching of water from the borehole, she does grain banking which means she buys produce from other farmers and stores it in one of the four rooms of the house and then sells it in the market when the price is high. Every morning her two seamstress students come by to pick up the material and sewing machines to open up the small sewing business that she runs at the side of the road. Sometime in between her farming and all of this, she also found time to learn how to use soybeans, a crop that was recently introduced in the area, in her stew to increase the nutritional content of her dishes. Madame Cynthia also makes the most tasty yam porridge ever!

Little Hanna eating breakfast

Hanna is the smallest daughter in the chief’s house. My favorite things about Hanna are the way she looks at things full of curiosity and how she quietly takes care of other small children around her. My hope for her is that she will be able to finish school, that she will be able to defeat the drought and hunger that have threatened her parents and provide for herself and her children. In fact, my hope is that every girl her age will be able to do that too.