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Stephen Mpofu
It is early in the morning in Malawi.
“Maria (not her real name), bring the baby to breastfeed, I’m getting late for school,” says a teenage mother, seated on a chair and decked out in her school uniform.
“Yes, mum, we’re coming,” responds the baby’s nurse.
The characters and the dialogue may be probable, but they are a mirror-image of a girl child empowerment initiative now underway in Malawi and about which big mileage similar to the one concerning dogs sniffing out ivory contraband in smugglers’ baggage at airports in East Africa has recently been given by the international press.
Apparently concerned at the plight of girls getting married below the legal age of 18 years, a conscientious liberator of the girl child, herself married at the age of 12 and now a mother of two reportedly took it upon herself to mobilise young mothers to return to school to resume a journey into a brave new future for themselves and their children.
Education being the single most effective empowerment tool, a return to classrooms that the single mothers were forced to abandon upon getting married or becoming pregnant, will potentially equalise their rights with those of the boy child in the Malawian society while at the same time preparing a brighter future for their children.
Our own country faces a challenge whereby marriage at an early age becomes an option for girls dropping out of school for lack of financial support, or when forced by parents into marrying even much older men for money or other material rewards to alleviate family poverty.
African tradition also abets rather than abate marriage of young girls to young men of even the same age as their fathers with the result that some of these poor young mothers, especially in the rural areas live miserable lives while urban based activists speak themselves hoarse or fill space in newspapers with screaming headlines about the political empowerment of women.
These publicity-seekers and others like them elsewhere in Africa might therefore wish to emulate the bold example of women’s empowerment in Malawi so that women’s liberation does not end up merely as a talk show.
The slaughter by poachers of elephants for ivory which is then smuggled to a waiting huge and hungry market in Asia is no doubt a challenge similar to child marriages in Malawi, Zimbabwe and other African countries.
As such a strong case exists for countries faced with a dwindling elephant population to learn from Kenya by deploying sniffer-dogs specially trained to expose ivory being smuggled out of the country by air or by sea.
With such coordinated efforts the jumbos may live to trumpet another bright day for their tusks to be sold in accordance with the CITES international convention to benefit indigenous populations.
It has been reported that trained ivory- sniffer dogs would also be sent to Uganda and Mozambique to help in the fight against ivory poachers and smugglers.
Zimbabwe and South Africa and other countries in the region whose elephant populations are under serious threat by poachers might do well to learn from Kenya how to combat the ivory smugglers.
Also, albinos in this country and elsewhere in the Sadc region may face possible extinction with witch doctors in their hot pursuit for body parts used as medicinal potions reportedly to enhance luck.
These medicinal men first struck terror in Tanzania where they were hounded out and then proceeded to Malawi where they have since been banned by the government there for abducting and killing many albinos.
Many children suffering from albinism are reportedly staying away from school for their safety, with a priest of a similar condition abandoning his flock in fear for his life as the witch doctors stalk the albinos in the same way as hunters stalk game in the wild, those satanic practitioners may now be on the move elsewhere and so it appears that only coordinated and concerted efforts by countries experiencing the threat posed to albinos by the heartless medicinal devils will yield desirable results.
Online Reporter