International women

Have been enjoying local and I tern atonal media coverage of some truly amazing African women to mark international women's day. Check out: http://www.nation.co.ke/Features/Living/Portrait+of+determination+/-/1218/1360600/-/cj76dgz/-/index.html for one such woman. Gender is clearly an issue in the region, more so in some places than others, but it's far too early for me to begin to understand how it plays out in urban Nairobi let alone Kenya. There are very few MPs or high profile female role models in the press and most of the stories I read or hear about women involve widows or divorcees battling for access to their hisbans' assets - although that may of course mean that I've stumbled on Kenya's equivalent of the daily mail rather than be a true reflection of society here. Ad whilst here is SMS focus on some completely remarkable women who do amazing things I suspect it's the every day challenges faced by women and girls here where the true story lies - limited acces to education, the pressures of bringing up family and growing up in poverty, high unemployment and limited state infrastructure. I'm very aware that I'm in no position to comment and run the risk of sounding naive or patronising or just missing the point But it's a issue I hope to better understand through our time here. Anyway, to mark the day I thought I would share the story of a woman who I met today. She is a 29 year old from rural Kenya, the eldest of 12 children with a mentally ill mother and a father who left home when she was 13. She graduated from high school and came to Nairobi looking for work - college fees were prohibitively high so that wasn't an option for her. She now has a secure job that she enjoys in the relatively affluent centre of Nairobi, a place on her own to live (3 busses and a 2+ hourly commute each way to work) and she sends most of her monthly earnings ome to support her mum. She's very happy with her life and I was very impressed and paused to think about all the other women around the world with stories like this. In my own current very small world I've already come across some truly international women, albeit the relatively privileged ones Ive met in the school playground and in my daily life buying groceries, starting to set up our life and enjoying an occasional coffee. Like London, whilst there are of course dads and male careers at the school picks up and men working in the shops and plenty of blokes drinking coffee, this aspect of life in Nairobi is predominantly a female world.