Report on my immersion experience in Northern Nigerian

By Fionnuala Murphy, AA International HIV and AIDS Campaigner

On July 9, I caught a night flight to Abuja, Nigeria’s humid administrative capital. The flight was packed with well-healed Nigerians; women with Mulberry bags and diamante flip-flops, men in expensive suits. As we drove through the morning mists on the main road into Abuja, I saw jeeps and BMWs, western-style petrol stations, fancy new apartment blocks, and even a football stadium. None of it hinted at the abject poverty of the people I was soon to meet.

Thursday – travelling to Kano
After snatching just a few hours sleep my colleagues arrived to pick me up. Lanre who I had spoken with before my flight appeared first with a smiling face and open arms. Next Tunde, ActionAid Nigeria’s confident Communications Officer introduced himself. Finally there was Daniel, a well-built man who drives ActionAid staff on long distance journeys and hopes to be promoted to a field work position in the future. Together, we set out on the road to Kano.

We drove through the hot afternoon past all things African: at first mini bus taxis and loaded market stalls. Then further from the city small children dotted the roadsides, selling produce from their parents’ farms - eggs, red onions and potatoes. We passed sun drenched fields planted with rows of ripening corn, and later stopped to buy it freshly roasted – what my new Nigerian friends call a mouth organ – from a street vendor. We dodged herds of hairy brown goats, braved the huge potholes African roads are famous for, and finally found ourselves back in the city, this time Kano, just in time for rush hour!

The first thing that caught my eye in Kano were the veils. These weren’t the black veils of the Middle East, but the pinks and greens and bright blues of the African continent, teamed with boldly printed skirts and chunky jewellery. But they were still veils, and I couldn’t help wonder how the women could bear wearing something so heavy in the stifling heat.

I was also struck by the sheer number of street hawkers selling their wares. Teenage boys were milling between cars, risking injury to tap windows in the hope of selling a can of Fanta, a phone card or a bag of banana chips. Smaller children were taking advantage of the traffic jams, washing dusty car windscreens for a pittance. There were red apples piled high and rows of leather sandals for sale on every bit of empty footpath, and elderly men trudged along the roadsides weighed down by bundles of everything from toilet brushes to thermos flasks, hoping to make a sale. So many people literally fighting for survival is a sight to behold, and a world away from the organic grocers and Italian delis of North London.

We spent the evening getting some basic supplies for our trip to the village the following day: kerosene lanterns, plastic bowls and cups, straw mats to sleep on and some bottled water, and then had an early night.

Friday – the immersion begins
The following day we set off just before Friday prayers, and Kano’s streets were packed with thousands of men and boys making their way to the mosques. Some travelled in cars but the majority went on foot or bicycle, sometimes three to a vehicle. The prophet Mohammed’s calls all Muslims to dress well for prayer, and even the poorest of these men were elegantly dressed in a full length cotton smock over matching trousers, their heads covered by a traditional Islamic cap. There wasn’t a woman to be seen. While in Kano women can be seen working and trading goods on the street, they do not pray in the mosque with men.

By the time we finally got out of the city, we were late to meet our colleagues from DFID. But We finally caught up with them about an hour outside Kano on the roadside. I was first introduced to Emma, a smiling woman in Nigerian costume, who works for DFID in Abuja and speaks some Hausa, the local language. While English is Nigeria’s official language, the country actually has over 500 languages and dialects, with Hausa being one of the most common in Northern Nigeria.

Next, the car door opened and out climbed Gillian Merron, the Under Secretary of State for International Development. We’d been told she was coming on the immersion, but until now it had never been 100% certain. We were delighted. We were then joined by three more colleagues, this time from ActionAid’s local partner organisation Sustainable Development Initiative Centre (SUDIC); Fatima, a tall and dignified woman who would act as my interpreter, Hasima and Abdul.

We took a right turn off the main road, and things suddenly got a lot bumpier. Abdul’s small car couldn’t handle the road so we rearranged seats. As we chugged and bounced along the track, I joked with Gillian and Emma about needing a sports bra. After a while, we pulled up to a crowd of people gathered in the shade of the trees around a group of huts. The village had come out to welcome us. Gillian, Emma and I struggled into our hijabs, knee length veils made of heavy blue cotton with a small hole for the face.

There were lots of men lined up to greet the visitors, and an enormous gaggle of children, both boys and girls, all very thin. But once again there were no women. We were invited into a sturdy building with a rounded roof, made entirely of mud, where we would meet the chief. We left our shoes outside and as women, sat quietly in our hijabs as the room filled up with men. In a country with a life expectancy of 47, you don’t see many elderly people. The chief was a tiny, wizened old man with a softly spoken voice. We were introduced and he extended a series of welcomes to us, translated by Abdul.

Soon we were back out into the crowds of children and then making our way across the fields, towards our hosts in the next hamlet. The earth was pale and dusty like sand, and I could hardly imagine how the rows of crops and tall trees with bushy green tops thrived. We climbed in and out of ditches and over hillocks, tree roots and rocks, past a small pond filled with bright green lily pads, and finally arrived at a small gathering of mud compounds where we would spend the night.

People had come out into the centre of the village to say “Sanu”, which means hello as we walked along in the shade. Again the women were missing. Then Fatima and I were taken to meet our host Elijah, a tall slim man dressed in a navy kaftan and trousers. He smiled in a friendly way and seemed like a shy, gentle man. Soon his brother, who looked uncannily like him, appeared. We were led into their mud walled compound, down a laneway to our bedroom, a small room, again made entirely of mud, with a rectangular hole for a doorway and a small square window at the top of the wall. The only furniture was the two straw mats and the gas lantern which had been dropped off earlier in the day by the ActionAid Nigeria staff. There was also a mosquito net which Fatima and I assumed belonged to our hosts. Later when Fatima asked it turned out that the family we were staying with didn’t use nets, the first sign of how limited health knowledge was in this community.

After a quick drink of water and a few minutes to cool down, we went to meet the compound’s women. I must admit I was nervous, but Fatima helped to reassure me.

The women were already busy building a fire and and bluish grey smoke stung my eyes as they smiled and called out Sanu. There were five senior women – Elijah and his brother had two wives each, both in their late 30s, and between them they have 32 children. The widow of their older brother, a lively grey haired woman, also lived in their compound. On top of these there were several young women in their early 20s and teens, all of them breastfeeding babies who they carried in slings on their backs. They explained they were the wives of Elijah and his brother’s sons.

The women suggested Fatima and I rest for a while and we returned to the cool of our room. While it was pleasant to sit there in the shade without the hijab, rest was not on the agenda. No sooner had we sat down than a group of men turned up, explaining that they were from the local government and had come to greet us. Next Elijah joined us and talked about the problems in the community. The main thing, he said, was the lack of school. The nearest one was too far away, so most people in the village had no education and no prospect of doing anything other than farming. ‘We want someone to build us a school’, he said.

I asked if he had spoken to the people from the local government about this, and he said yes, that they had promised to do something, and even measured up a site, but then did nothing. Fatima asked whether they had followed up on this, and he said that they had gone to their offices once and made their case, but still nothing had happened. Fatima said that a sustained effort was needed. It wasn’t enough to go once. Someone should set up a group, involving the women, that could go again and again, putting pressure on the government until they provide the school. But Elijah, looking at the ground, said there was no one to do it.

‘What about you?’ We both asked. ‘Why don’t you be the one?’ But we just got a shrug of the shoulders. Thinking about it after, I realised that a large part of the problem was poverty. Because they live hand to mouth, poverty prevents people like Elijah from leaving their farms for even a day. It means they can’t afford to travel to the cities where the people in power live. Poverty is what kept them out of education in the first place, so they’ve never gained the confidence or skills to demand their rights from their government. And it’s precisely because they’re poor that their government can turn a blind eye to them and the situation they live in. The human rights-based approach, which to me is about people like Elijah and his family claiming their rights from their governments, is not without its challenges in a setting like this.

After Elijah left, groups of women began to call at the door and say Sanu to us. One group veiled in brilliant colours would leave and the next would come, their curious faces framed in bright purple and pea green. Groups of children also came and giggled from the doorway. Some came back several times, bringing different friends on each visit. One face which kept reappearing, that of a plump, light skinned teenager with a pretty feline face. She lived in the room next to ours and strutted around confidently. She wore a fantastic costume in beige, blue and red, decorated with a head scarf and a pair of dangly earrings. I watched her untie her baby from her back and sit down to feed him, chatting to the younger girls all the while. Seeing her laugh with the nine and 10 year olds, I saw that she was just a kid herself.

Fatima explains that in this community, girls get married when they are twelve or thirteen. Most quickly become pregnant and birth complications are a major problem, as many of these girls are not physically developed enough to give birth naturally. High levels of maternal mortality, and long term complications like fistula, are the result.

We try to ask the girl about her child, but she refuses to tell us anything. In her culture, she explains, it is bad luck to talk about your first born son, even to give his name or to say when he was born. Many women will not even call the son by his name.

Afterwards Fatima tells me a story she heard on the radio earlier that week. A man wanted sex with his wife, and she had refused. In response, he forced sex so violently on her that she died. The man handed himself into the police, and the show was discussing whether the man was guilty of murder. The wife’s mother took part in the show, and talked about her loss and how she would never forgive the man. Others called in saying that he could not be held accountable for murder since this was not his intention; it was merely to have sex with his wife. At no point was it contended that he had actually committed rape, in many countries an offence considered as grave as murder. In Nigeria, there is no such thing as marital rape.

It was dark when we returned to the communal area of the compound. The women had lit fires among two clusters of rocks and had saucepans bubbling on top. In one was boiling water to which they added a large bowl of maize flour (after I had sieved it and everyone had had a good laugh). When gradually heated and stirred this mixture forms a thick porridge which is fluffy like mashed potato in texture. In the other pan they were making a stew from dried okra and palm oil. While the food was cooking, a huge hoard of children gathered round, giggling and looking expectantly at me. Some of them said that Gillian and Emma were taking pictures in their house, but with such a poor flash on my camera I knew there was no point in doing this. So I asked one of the bolder children for his hand, and began to recite the rhyme ‘round and round the garden like a teddy bear’ while tracing circles on it. There was complete silence, but when it came to the part where the teddy bear rushes up his arm and tickles him, the crowd of children literally erupted. Even the mums were amused. I spent the next 20 minutes tending to a queue of children, hands held out, who all wanted to play.

After the food was cooked, Fatima and I were told to return to our room where food would be brought to us. By this stage it was completely dark. We took our mats outside and sat on the ground eating by the faint light of our kerosene lamp. While bland the maize porridge was very filling and the okra sauce and dried chilli pepper which Nigerians seem to eat with everything were delicious. Our portion was quite big and Fatima and I left quite a lot, which was promptly carried away, I’m sure to be served up as someone else’s dinner.

After dinner a group of women gathered around us, their day’s work finally done. Fatima asked if I wanted to have a discussion with them and she could interpret. I was delighted at the opportunity. It was completely dark now and difficult to make out the women’s faces, although I could sense from their voices how strongly felt what they were saying was.

Like Elijah their primary concern was education. They wanted a school built. Fatima and I both raised the issue about teachers’ salaries and other recurrent costs; while they could build the school themselves did they think the government would cover these costs? The women seemed annoyed by this. “The government never does anything for us”, they said, “they don’t care about us – no one does - and that is why we hope that you will do something to help us get a school”. At that point, I realised that the community had not really been briefed on what ActionAid does and what our visit was all about. It suddenly struck me how ridiculous it would be to tell these women that while ActionAid could not build them a school and hire them a teacher, we could give them a workshop to help them claim their rights to education, or could fund them to set up an advocacy group. This isn’t to say I lost my belief in the rights based approach, rather I was reminded of how long a process the RBA actually is. On top of this, I remembered that the RBA can only really work when the government is genuinely willing to listen to its citizens and act in their interest. Here this didn’t seem to be the case.

The nearest school is quite far away, about 8km from what I could gather, and only boys go to it. ‘Why can only boys go?’ Fatima and I asked. ‘It is too far’, we were told. Before I pointed out that my brother and I can walk the same distance, Fatima raised this point herself, but there was a resoluteness to the response we got. Girls are needed for household tasks. In the mornings they clean and sweep, fetch and boil water and tend to animals. In the afternoons they gather firewood and sell or trade crops and other goods. There are not enough hours in the day for girls to walk all the way to and from the school and still do their chores. I ask if things could be done differently or if the tasks could be shared out, but get a resounding no. If the school were in the village, there would be time for the girls to do all these chores and still get an education. But as it stands, the girls must stay at home.

I find the refusal to think of any other way of doing things frustrating. When we go inside, Fatima tells me about an initiative in a rural community where men were constantly abusing their wives, complaining that they were lazy and did not do anything. This was because while the men were on the farms all day, which they perceived as ‘real work’, they didn’t recognise their wives’ and daughters’ daily labour (preparing food, fetching water, collecting firewood, tending to children, looking after animals, etc) as work because there was no obvious income from it. Through a series of facilitated discussions, Fatima helped the women to persuade their husbands to recognise the value of their work. As a result, tasks in that community are now shared out more evenly between women and men.

The women begin to disburse and Fatima and I get ready for bed. The air has cooled down with the night coming in, and with our discussions still swirling round in my head I lie down on my straw mat with the hard floor beneath me. I can hear a chorus of crickets singing on the roof, and the occasional baby’s cry or burst of chatter from the women. I imagine that while the plus side of living in the compound is that there is always company, the down side must be the lack of privacy. Every argument, every cry of joy or pain, is heard by everyone else. I wonder if the women mind, or if it’s simply what they’re used to.

Later in the night, I wake up and brush away what feels like a bead of sweat rolling down my shoulder. I suddenly feel a stinging pain, and then another. I’ve been bitten by one of the fat red ants I saw crawling around on the floor earlier. Lying in the dark, the pain seems worse than it is and I tell myself I’m lucky it wasn’t a spider or a snake. If someone here was bitten by a poisonous spider or snake, their chances of getting to a hospital on time are pretty slim.

Saturday
I wake early the next morning, with the sun’s first rays spilling into the room. I toss and turn for a while before dressing and going outside. It’s a bright morning and the air is heating up already. The women are already at work. Two of them are pounding maize in a huge wooden basin, using a big stick that’s been smoothed down at one end. Elsewhere the fire is being lit and water fetched. Some goats are nibbling at weeds and grass, and the children are eager for their breakfast too. Now that it’s bright, they ask me again about the camera.

For the first picture about 20 children crowd in to be photographed. When I show them the image on the digital screen, they leap and squeal with joy. The women are excited too, when they see all the tiny faces. Over the next half hour, most of the children in the compound queue up to have their picture taken in the soft morning light. The pleasure that each one takes simply in seeing their own image – most of them for the first time – is overwhelming.

While I’m taking pictures, there is one boy who sits on the ground and only moves when picked up by the other children. Fatima asks what is wrong with him and is told he is a cripple, he had polio. I ask about vaccinations and Fatima translates the answer – the women have heard that injections cause AIDS and so they do not get their children vaccinated. Even basic information about health is so much lower than any other community I have visited.

While I’m taking pictures, Fatima and the women are cooking again. This time it’s pap, a liquidy mix of flour and water, along with little balls of mashed beans deep fried in palm oil until golden brown. The bean cakes are delicious, especially when dipped into dried chilli pepper. People here only eat meat very rarely so beans are an important source of protein. Again, what we don’t eat is carried away to be eaten by someone else.

We are then invited to wash, as the women have boiled water on the fire for us. One of them carries a bucket for me, and I am surprised to see she is taking it to the place where I peed the night before. I keep my shoes on and add disinfectant to the water.

After washing, Fatima and I are taken by the children to see the local area. We walk through the fields neighbouring their compound and meet some men who are tilling the dry soil with wooden clubs before planting new crops. It’s almost time to leave, but first we will have a discussion with the local women. Before doing so, we have to meet the men. The others are already there and a lot of thanking is being done on both sides. We ask if the men have any questions but they only want to know when we will be coming back. Then they say they will go and give their women permission to join us. This is when I realise why we have never seen women anywhere – they have to be given permission to leave their compounds. Gillian tells me that they are normally only allowed out on feast days, and I realise what a big occasion our visit must be.

We sit down in the shade behind some huts and the women crowd in, most with babies in slings, while children surround us. There is chatter everywhere. A beautiful young woman with a curly haired infant sits next to me and smiles, her pretty face framed by a pink veil. Gillian tells me that this woman is her host’s wife.

Fatima and Hasima greet the women in Hausa and ask if they have any questions for us, or any issues that they would like to raise. Maternal health comes up as a big concern. The nearest hospital is 20km away and most women give birth at home, attended by the local traditional birth attendant (TBA), a woman from the community who took part in the discussion. When problems come up, the woman needs to be carried for half an hour over rocky terrain to the road, and then taken on the back of a motorbike to hospital. This costs 300 Naira, about £1.30. At the hospital, they pay between 3000 and 6000 naira depending on how complicated things are, and more if they need a transfusion (up to £40). While that doesn’t sound like much, these women live off what they grow and have virtually no income. If a woman needs to go to hospital, the whole community will pitch in what they have, but this may not always be enough to cover costs and the likelihood of losing the mother, the baby, or both, is high. Furthermore, sometimes the woman will get to the hospital too late.

Fatima has explained to me that while the TBA plays an important role in helping women through uncomplicated labours, most of them have no formal training. Often they are not able to deal with, or even recognise, potentially fatal situations such as high blood pressure or prolonged labour. Fatima tells the women about a project that is being rolled out in this area, where TBAs are given training to supplement their existing knowledge, including how to spot warning signs (e.g. swollen feet, severe headache, signs that the baby has not turned etc) and ensure the woman gets to hospital on time. In some towns, TBAs also play a more active role in pregnancy, helping women to be aware of the dangers and to plan for how they would get to hospital and pay for care in the event of an emergency. Unfortunately this programme hasn’t yet been rolled out here, but it is due to be. Fatima tells the women about it and they agree that it would be a good thing. Everyone recognises that the current situation, with high numbers of women dying of pregnancy related causes, should not continue.

One of the causes of maternal mortality is the low age at which girls begin having babies. Girls get married as soon as their periods start, normally at 12 or 13. Once married, if a young girl refuses sex, her husband will beat her up and even rape her. Most become pregnant quickly, before they are fully developed, and this can lead to problematic labours.

Gillian asks the women why their daughters marry so early, and they explain that it comes back to education. If they were better educated, they say, they could do something other than getting married and would not have to start having children so early. But because the girls are illiterate and have very little earning potential, their families do not see them as having any value. For this reason, and in order to ensure they are still virgins when they get married, they are married off quickly. Most soon become pregnant and will continue to have children throughout their teens and 20s. To be a mother of 10 is not unusual in Angwa Doshe.

Gillian then raises the issue of contraception and asks whether the women are interested in child spacing. They say that if there were a way to ensure space between each child that would be a good thing, but most do not have access to family planning services. We ask if their husbands would be in favour of it, and the women say they would if they knew it would ensure their wives were healthier.

The discussion ends and we say our goodbyes to the women. As we are making our way back to the compound, a woman approaches me and shows me some small pieces of paper. They are receipts from the hospital 20km away, where she goes to receive an injection of Depo Provera, a hormonal contraceptive. Someone explains that the woman is ill and has been advised not to have any more children, so she journeys the 20km to the hospital every three months. The injection costs 80 Naira (30p) each time, and the journey 300 (£1.30).

After eating some rice with Gillian, Emma and Hasima, Fatima and I go back to the compound to collect our things and say goodbye to our hosts. I say ‘ngodi’ – thank you – to the women who have welcomed me so warmly and Fatima and I begin making our way back across the rocky land, leaving them standing in the sunlight.

Learnings

1. Contact with women in the community
By sleeping in the community, Gillian and I had much more contact with its women than on a standard field visit. We gained their trust and could therefore have honest conversations which really got to the heart of some of their problems. I heard from the women on topics like access to education, illiteracy, livelihoods, early marriage, domestic violence, marital rape, pregnancy, maternal and child mortality and contraception. This helped me to gain a practical understanding of their real lives and to think about what can be done to support them. Going forward I hope this will inform my work as a campaigner.

2. Bringing the decision maker to the people
Normally, if we want a decision maker to hear from people in the field, we select someone who speaks English and is not afraid to travel, and bring them to the UK where we have a pre-prepared agenda for them. While the point is to enable people to speak for themselves, we also brief them to ensure what they say fits in with our policy messages.
The excellent thing about taking someone like Gillian Merron on an immersion is that it enables poor women to voice their concerns directly. Instead of having to fit with ActionAid’s agenda, they can speak to a decision maker, on their own turf and in their own language. This really alters the power dynamic.
It’s also a hard hitting form of lobbying. The week after the immersion, I saw Gillian Merron at an event on DFID’s new AIDS strategy. She spoke passionately about her experiences and about women’s rights and education for girls. We now hope we can capitalise on this enthusiasm and persuade her to implement policy changes to the benefit of women and girls in Angwa Doshe and other communities.

3. Limitations of the Rights Based Approach
In terms of public services, the people of Angwa Doshe have been failed by their government. There is no provision for their most basic health and education needs, and as a result the community is stuck in a rut of poverty and ill health.
Ibrahim my host told me that the only time they saw anyone from the government in Angwa Doshe was at election time. Promises would then be made and quickly forgotten. The people of Angwa Doshe have no faith whatsoever in their government’s ability to help them. Instead they see wealthy NGOs like ActionAid as their only hope. It’s then difficult to explain that our approach means that we cannot provide the services they need directly, although can support them to demand those services from their government. In a context like Angwa Doshe, this is possibly even a bit patronising.
Bringing people fully on board with the RBA requires three things. Firstly, we need to accept that unless their basic needs are met, most people do not have the time or capacity to become campaigners and advocates. Secondly, the proponent of the RBA (in this case ActionAid) needs to spend time building awareness of the RBA and enabling the community to see how it applies to them.

4. Importance of briefing the community
My previous point links in to the importance of briefing the community correctly on why we are visiting and what the likely outcomes of our visit will be. This is particularly important when people from the north are coming, because of perceptions of us as wealthy and possible experiences of northern aid agency staff.
I had the impression that people in Angwa Doshe thought we had come to assess the level of need in the community, and that if they flagged the lack of education facilities then ActionAid would come in and build them a school. The fact that these expectations don’t then translate into benefits for the community could lead to disappointment or even resentment.
I feel that adequate briefing is all the more important in communities like Angwa Doshe which does not have any existing relationship with ActionAid. It’s also important that the ActionAid country programme has a follow-up strategy for how it will work with the community after the immersion is over.

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