The Darkest Shadow on a Girl’s Future: Almost Impossible Education
It is the survival of the fittest. In a rural area with high poverty levels and few schools lives a young girl by the name of Inonge Mazonga. Inonge is eight years old and lives with her single mother, Jane. She is in grade four at a community school made of grass in the Mabili Ward of the Limulunga District in the Western Province of Zambia.
Western Province is one of Zambia’s least developed provinces. The geography of the province is dominated by the Barotse floodplain of the Zambezi River, extending from the confluence of the Zambezi with the Lungwebungu and Kabompo Rivers at the northern border of the province, to a point below Senanga and above the Ngonye Falls in the south. This floodplain is inundated from December to June and is fed by other rivers with their own floodplains.
I met Inonge during my first field visit at my placement organization during my time as a Global Health Corps fellow. Inonge is a peer leader for one of the girl clubs under the Female Youth Livelihood and Nutrition Enhancement Project (FYNEP), which I worked on as a Nutrition Capacity Development Officer. Living and working in rural communities during my time as a fellow exposed me to the harsh realities of life that people go through, some of which I had never imagined before.
During the flooding season from December to June, Mabili is flooded and cut off from the main town. This often means school activities almost halt completely for school going children. Only a few, and mostly boys, attend classes, using canoes as a mode of transportation. For girls like Inonge this is a struggle. She does not know how to paddle a canoe. Generally, this mode of transportation is not safe for school-attending children, as anything can happen, such as the boat capsizing. As young as Inonge is, she has no other option but to work as a fisher-girl for close to six months during the floods.
After the floods subside, Inonge’s determination to receive an education and support from her mother enable her to walk the stretch of 35 kilometers every day to attend classes daily during the dry season. Unfortunately Inonge’s mother cannot afford provide her with three meals a day, so she lacks energy. By the time she gets to school, she is so tired and hungry she cannot concentrate in class. After school, she arrives home exhausted with no time or energy to study. At most, she scans through her books but does so with barely any concentration. Inonge has many questions about her future. Will she manage to overcome all these challenges and forge ahead in her path of education? Or will she be unable to continue her education, casting dark shadows on her future?
Inonge’s situation is unfortunate because education, especially for women, is a ladder to success and one of the only ways to end intergenerational poverty. Educated women have a greater chance of escaping poverty, leading healthier and more productive lives, and raising the standard of living for their children, families, and communities. These are just some of the reasons we should all support education for girls.
Educated women have a greater chance of escaping poverty, leading healthier and more productive lives, and raising the standard of living for their children, families, and communities.
Additionally, educating a girl child contributes to ending child marriage. Child marriage, in some cases involving girls as young as six , almost always results in the end of a girl’s schooling. The result is illiterate or barely literate young mothers who lack the adequate tools to build healthy, educated families. On average, for every year that a girl stays in school past fifth grade, her marriage is delayed by a year. Educated girls typically marry later, when they are better able to bear children and care for them.
Many girls are experiencing similar situations around the world. In turn, governments, non-governmental organizations, and other concerned institutions are working to overcome many obstacles to educating girl children, including a lack of resources and a lack of proper educational policies to enhance girls’ primary education.
One African proverb claims that “If we educate a boy, we educate one person, but if we educate a girl, we educate a family and a whole nation.” By sending a girl to school, she is far more likely to ensure that her children also receive an education. As many claim, investing in a girl’s education is investing in a nation. Inonge’s story should encourage us to treasure the educational opportunities we’ve had and also remind us of the huge obligation we have to pay it forward by improving other people’s lives.
Women make up a majority of the world’s poor: seventy percent of the one billion poorest people are women. The World’s Women 2015 study found that nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women, a proportion that has remained unchanged for the past twenty years. Of the 781 million adults estimated to be illiterate and over the age of fifteen, 496 million were women.
In Zambia, girls experience high rates of exclusion from education because of extreme poverty, most prevalent in the rural areas of the Western, Luapula, Muchinga and Northern provinces. These provinces fare much worse than others with respect to government assessments of income levels, education and health. Zambia is ranked thirteenth out of fifteen countries for literacy and numeracy by the Southern African Consortium for Measuring Education Quality.
As Camfed Zambia highlights: “Girls are far more likely to drop out of school, with the biggest disparities measured in rural communities: 27% of females in rural areas have no education compared to 18% of males. Pregnancy, early marriage and poverty are intrinsically linked and are the main challenges Zambian girls face in staying in school, particularly in rural schools.”
If we want to improve health outcomes and spark development, we need more funding for the education sector.
By investing in women’s literacy skills, society as a whole benefits because women typically reinvest 90 percent of their income back into their families. This means better nutritional and health outcomes for their families and reduced risks of child malnutrition and food insecurity. Literate women are likely to be healthier and better able to make decisions that can help their families escape poverty. Promoting education is thus directly linked to achieving broader health and development goals.
If we want to improve health outcomes and spark development, we need more funding for the education sector. At a local level, as government institutions and non-governmental organizations come on board to improve education for girls, there is a need for parental and community involvement too. Families and communities must be prioritized as partners with schools in developing curriculum and managing education, even when faced with challenges such as Inonge’s. The government and other stakeholders must ensure schools are built close to homes and well-staffed and equipped. Collaboration, innovation, and commitment will help us overcome these challenges in our communities.
Stories like Inonge’s should set a wave of change and urge all of us take up the mantle of improving girls’ education. Education is not only a human right, but it is also an essential tool for individuals to break the cycle of poverty and poor health and to build the human capital of nations. I know that we have what it takes to educate girls, and we must take action now!
Madalitso Martin Phiri was a 2016–2017 Global Health Corps fellow at Concern Worldwide in Zambia.
