I find it tough enough looking after my three kids and that's with a very hands on dad, a good income, lots of help and a strong (if distant just now) family network. But our nanny looks after our kids in the day so she can support her own four kids through school and college.
She's also the person her sisters and mum turn to when they need her - she has just taken a 6 hour bus journey to see her mum and find out exactly how she hurt herself in a fall and what treatment she needs because she can't get this over the phone as there is no one who can really understand what the doctor is saying and she needs to speak to them face to face. And she will almost certainly look after her nephews and nieces if anything happens to their parents. That is a very real possibility given the levels of HIV here, very high road traffic mortality, the poor medical coverage beyond Nairobi (and its prohibitive costs) and the lack of basic public health information - I recently gave toothbrushes and paste to a young mum I know who had no idea sugar damaged teeth and had just taken her 5 year old to have a rotten tooth pulled.
The ability to support an extended family in this way relies on having and being able work. And that is very fragile. I heard yesterday from a friend about a young woman who is currently having cancer treatment. She is unmarried but looks after 2 of her nephews and nieces whose parents are dead. Without my friend's support (intervening with doctors and helping with the bills) the cancer treatment would not have started till September, her chances of recovery would have been much reduced and there would be no one else to take on the orphaned children. Of course it isn't just healthcare that
threatens the reliance of so many on one worker. Our imminent departure is hugely stressful for those we employ, particularly the women who will be competing in an already crowded market for domestic staff to find new work. We are doing all we can to help but there are no guarantees. The demographics here, with 70% of people under 40 means that a million new jobs are needed every year to keep unemployment levels static. At the moment the figure for new jobs is only a tenth of that. And I suspect women are not the winners - I hope it isn't as bad for them here as the reports suggest it is in the UK, where the latest House of Commons library research suggests women have been hit four times harder than men by tax and benefit changes.
As I suspected when I blogged on IWD last year, I haven't done very much to support women here. A short email exchange at work highlighted that for me. A friend pinged round her plans for yesterday and the weekend in support of IWD to challenge and inspire others about what they could do. She was attending an event to encourage women in policing, only working on issues to do with women and girls on Friday, doing a walk to support a scheme that promotes strong female role models,
talking to all the women she mentors etc. I'd bought a scarf made by a Somali woman to raise money
for a women's refuge, contributed a lemon cake to a bake sale for the same cause and donated a bag of clothes. And I had lunch plans with two of my favourite women here. I'm not often a lady who lunches but this was in part a goodbye so we made an exception and lunched with giraffe.
Anne
