Sarah Pfaffernoschke – Pike & Hurricane

Exploited, Abandoned, Banished – Pregnant but Unmarried in Burkina Faso

Sarah Pfaffernoschke — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 13:00:46 +0000

If one walks the dirty and muddy paths of the small town of Dédougou, Western Burkina Faso, it might happen that one stumbles upon a new-born lying in the trash at the roadside where pigs and emaciated dogs are grubbing. The mother crouched down next to it, empty gaze, not older than 15, the tattered remains of her clothes maybe even still covered in blood from the delivery.

What sounds like a scene from a horror movie is the result of widely practiced traditional superstition in uneducated Western African tribes according to which an unmarried woman who gets pregnant will bring calamity over the entire village. As a consequence, these young girls, mostly uninformed about the process of insemination and the ease of conceiving a child, are being chased away from their families, relatives and friends and end up in the street, often in prostitution. Not only does this tradition traumatise the woman, it also severely affects the relationship between mother and child. In many cases, the mother, herself still a child, is unable to love her new-born, as she holds the child responsible for her misery.

I met Zénabo when I started volunteering in a little institution, named Haus Yorosin. It is a place where these banished girls can give birth to their babies, get shelter, food and a basic education so that they can sustain themselves eventually. Zénabo never went to school and did not know how old she was – nobody cared about a birth certificate for her when she was born – , but she did love her son Claude deeply when she delivered him, despite the past weeks and months she spent begging and pleading for food in the dusty streets. However, the permanent malnutrition during the pregnancy had left its mark on Claude and severely weakened his immune system. He did not even survive his first week on earth.

Another horror story is that of Marcéline. She was a happy woman, married to a man she loved and with whom she had three little children. One day, however, her husband died unexpectedly and instead of solacing Marcéline, her family blamed her for his death. Believing that her presence would cause further deaths, the villagers chased her away and took her two oldest children, two and three years old, from her. Sylvestre, still a baby at that time, was dependent on his mother and could thus stay with her. After months of begging in the street, a priest brought her to Haus Yorosin where she recovered from sickness, malnutrition and mental breakdown. Now, three years later, she has a job in an orphanage which allows her to support herself and her three year old son. She will never be able to return to her family or her village since she is afraid that they would also take Sylvestre from her.

Many girls across Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and the surrounding sub-Saharan states share a similar fate. Most of them come from the poorest groups of society and never went to school, are illiterate and do not know about how to get pregnant or even the dangers of unprotected sex. Their families are living far below the official poverty line of 1.25 USD per day. Education for the numerous children cannot be afforded. Instead, they are expected to work on the fields in order to help provide for enough food to survive. In this situation, these young girls are easy victims for wealthier men who promise them a proper meal in exchange for sex. Not knowing when they will get some food the next time, many girls desperately agree.

A lot of girls at Haus Yorosin I took care of never learned to read or write. They did not know that the Earth was round, where Africa was situated on this planet and that the same sun also shines in Europe. Most of them had never heard of ‘pizza’ or ‘ice-cream’ and when I showed them pictures of European animals such as squirrels, they wanted to know about every single one whether this was food. And they have dreams: Dreams of a self-sustained life in a little shop in Dédougou, where they could follow their profession as weaver, tailor or hairdresser. Dreams of a family and a loving husband. Dreams of seeing the capital city Ouagadougou. After all they have been through their entire life, they still believe in their future and fight for it.

It took Zénabo a while to recover from the loss of her child. She stayed at Haus Yorosin and continued her education as a weaver which she successfully finished this year. Constant communication and reconciliation attempts with her family were fruitful at last, and now Zénabo has been reintegrated into her family. Probably however, a major facilitating factor was that Claude was not alive anymore. Yet, the fact that she is now able to sustain herself brought her a lot of respect from her father who now is openly proud of his formerly ‘lost’ daughter.

Meanwhile, young women across the region continue to suffer tremendously due to this unhuman tradition. The greatest problem thereby lies in the lack of education of the large number of very poor people who truly believe this barbaric punishment will keep misfortune away from their homes. Many new-born fatherless children still die every year because nobody cares for them.
In the dirty streets of Dédougou, the sight of a blood-covered young mother has become scarce. Yet, the problem continues to be urgent in many rural areas across sub-Saharan Africa as the dusty roads are still home for countless despaired women who are deprived of dignity and humanity.

By Sarah Pfaffernoschke

Image credit:

Picture 1, 2: Eric Montfort, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Transforming our World

Sarah Pfaffernoschke — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 17:15:40 +0000

The weekend of September 25, 2015 was historic: not only did Pope Francis give a speech to the US Congress for the first time in papal history, 136 heads of state, 30 ministers, and 9000 delegates gathered in New York City at the United Nations Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. It was a most historic weekend as all 193 UN member states turned in their written agreement to a document officially called ‘Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.
In this document, the world speaks with one voice to promise a more just, healthful, and peaceable global whole. What can we expect from this optimistic agenda? Will the world be a better place in 15 years?

The so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an ambitious set of 17 goals and 169 targets with the objective of making the world more equal and sustainable so that future generations will be able to live on our planet in a fairer and hopefully more peaceful way. Although their adoption is an encouraging sign of good-will, the agreement over the global indicators for measuring success and implementation, due by March 2016, will either
reinforce or dampen hopes for the agenda.
These goals, however, are nothing innovative or ground-breaking. In 2000, the world had made its first set of promises to the poorest and most disadvantaged of the worlds populous.
For an overview of the achievement of the MDGs see an analysis in The Guardian.
Those Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at, amongst other points, lifting everyone out of extreme poverty while eradicating hunger, diseases, and illiteracy.
The goals sought to increase access to health care and clean water for everyone.
In essence, these benchmarks have barely been fulfilled. To concede, most goals achieved a trend in the right

direction, however. Most significantly, extreme poverty reduced dramatically: almost half of the worlds population in 1990 lived in extreme poverty and the figure has dropped to 14% of the total population in 2015. With regards to primary education for children around the globe, clear progress was made. Currently, 91% of all
children are enrolled in school.
Nevertheless, despite the positive trends, progress has been uneven as the poorest are still living in the periphery where they are vulnerable to starvation, disease, sexual violence, illiteracy, displacement, and other travesties. It is well known that large gaps persist between the worlds wealthiest and poorest. In the end, a lot of work remains to be done.
Hunger and poverty persist as well as the lack of basic services.

The SDGs, which will be enacted for the next 15 years until the end of 2030, can thus be seen as ‘only’ a follow-up to those Millennium Development Goals expiring at the end of this year. However, the SDGs are more than just an updated version of the MDGs. They are designed to be more inclusive and universal, addressing the developing as well as the developed world in an effort to integrate every nation in this process of transforming our world for the better. The adoption of the SDGs comes at a time when international collective action is urgently needed. We see new conflicts arising through the Middle East and Africa more frequently than wars being settled. The number of refugees is as high as during World War II. The international community does not seem to be able or willing to devote enough energy and time to discuss issues in a diplomatic way and somehow seem to drift apart as they choose
sides and fund conflicts and even wars. Although it is a well-worn cliché, the United Nations needs to remember that the SDGs are at the mercy of individual states who predominantly focus on their own interests and monetary awards. And beyond that, the seemingly-intractable challenges of poverty, hunger, spread of disease, access to clean water, gender inequality, environmental degradation, lack of education, child mortality and so on and so
forth are still far from being resolved.

In line with this dilemma, we have to ask ourselves: What are the SDGs actually worth? Are they mere empty sentiments only speaking to a far-reaching desire for global peace and prosperity? How much persistent effort and funding can we actually expect from the United Nations member states? And, will all 193 members seriously devote themselves to the achievement and implementation of these ambitious goals?
It is probably naïve and utopian to believe in the absolute fulfilmentof the goals by 2030.
The adoption of the SDGs is just the first step in a series of more difficult achievements. International devotion to the implementation of the goals coupled with the willingness of each government to make national laws cohesive with goals is as indispensable as an ambition to see global and private sectors contributing their part to the achievement. There must be a refocusing of priorities and a transformation in the ways of conducting business.
In laymans terms, we must reinvent the wheel. Some sceptics have argued that the fulfilment of the agenda is an 18th goal in itself, implying that it is nearly impossible to achieve success in 2030-because escalating factors work against the agenda. What naysayers ignore, however, is the fact that almost all countries of the world made a considerable effort to produce a document in which they commit themselves to cooperation in order to jointly
work on the positive and sustainable transformation of the world, which alone is a significant success.

The unanimous adoption by the UN’s 193 member states is a first step, but indeed a major one. The second step will be the UN member states agreement over the set of global indicators for the measurement, monitoring, and review of the
implementation of the SDGs, which is due by March 2016. The third, is in the hands of the policy makers, private
businesses, and the civil society and will continuously demand and encourage national leaders to work on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It remains to be seen whether this historic weekend last month will once be remembered as the weekend where the world at the UN Summit adopted these Sustainable Development Goals whole-heartedly, setting an agenda which did transform the world into a better place, or whether it was just an empty promise to those who are still living in extreme poverty, without access to health care, education and clean water.

By Sarah Pfaffernoschke

Image Credit:

Picture 1: Sarah Pfaffernoschke

Picture 2: United Nations Photo licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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