Life-changing bikes

In 2010, two donors – Liberty Wines and a private family – bought 40 bikes for a group of vulnerable women in Patongo, northern Uganda.  These relatively inexpensive bikes are nevertheless tickets to greater freedom and better lives for the women, who work together in income-generating activities.  In particular, the bikes have drastically helped women transport firewood; without the bikes, the women have to walk between 5-8 miles to collect wood.

Other important uses for the bikes include:

• Quicker transportation to the hospital, especially important in emergences.
• Increased efficiency and productivity in their fields.
• Help with small businesses, as women can travel far to collect produce for selling.
• Reduced time spent fetching water.

Here is what some of the women told me about how the bikes have changed their lives.

Julia: The bike has given me a great deal of help in my life. It saved my life. I live in a polygamous marriage and my husband abandoned me a few months ago, leaving me with nothing at all, no wealth or possessions and three children to feed and educate. I use my bike to collect firewood from far away, and then sell it in the market.

Kissa: I used my bike to fetch firewood and transport it back to Patongo to sell. It paid for my son's transport to go back to school. My son also uses my bike to go to school.

Sara: The bike saved my child's life. My baby had malaria and was sick. The health centre in Patongo had no treatment and so I had to cycle with my baby on my back to Kalongo hospital 22 miles away. It saved his life.

Elise: The bike saved my child's life. She needed treatment at hospital, and we used bike for transport. She is well now. I also use my bike to collect firewood to earn a living.

Margaret: I am thankful for the bike as I manage to collect building material from far away for my new house.

Jane: I used to have to walk to fetch water. I could only do this once a day because I have difficulty with chest pain, and the walk caused my chest to hurt too much. Now I can cycle more than one trip and collect more water. My health has also improved.

Abbo: I have been able to get to the market far away to buy food to eat for my family and also sell the rest at the local market.

news from Sophie in Northern Uganda

Greetings from Patongo, in the north east corner of Uganda. Ninety degrees and rather sticky. However, no complaints from this end because the Network for Africa team is really seeing the results of our efforts. We started work here in 2008, and this week we are completing our fifth visit by our team of 2 wonderful volunteer psychologists. They have now trained over 300 local people, including elders community leaders, former child soldiers, and vulnerable young people, in basic trauma counselling skills allowing people to learn to cope with the widespread trauma they have experienced.

Our psychologists have also trained a smaller group of smart, motivated local community members to be volunteer outreach counsellors (VOCs). We have trained the VOCs to help survivors of the brutal war identify their trauma, understand it and then manage it.

Thanks to the Warham family in London, the VOCs have bikes so they can provide counselling to ten communities in outlying rural villages - and their fame has spread. Now we've had requests for the VOCs to offer psychosocial help to people living with HIV.

Twenty three years of a vicious and devastating war left huge scars on this remote area of Uganda - emotional, economic and social scars - but we are encouraged to see such immediate progress. We thinl the main reason for our success is that we asked local people what they thought their biggest challenges were, and what their priorities are. And we keep asking them.

Here is what our partners say is most important:

1) The need to get people farming efficiently, especially the returning abducted child soldiers who need to provide for themselves. That means we need agricultural tools and training.

2) Health care. There are very few drugs avalaible, and two nurses struggle to see 100 patients a day.

3) Family planning. Unfortunately there is stigma attached, and we are working with local groups to provide education to younger people and to distribute condoms to more obscure areas.

4) Counselling services and health kits for people living with HIV. The rate of HIV here is almost three times the Ugandan average because of systematic rape during the conflict. For about £35 or $56 per kit we want to be able to provide condoms, a blanket, medicated soap, a jerry can, etc, for the very poor people living with HIV.

More from me soon. The VOCs say thank you to all who have so generously helped Network for Africa's work in their community.

Sophie McCann.

a very basic right

How to battle against the spread of HIV? Sadly it turns out that just teaching people about how HIV spreads is not enough. Why? Because it assumes that the women involved in any relationship have the power to say 'no.' Here is an example of how HIV spreads: a wife may be aware that her husband is infected, yet she will agree to dangerous sex with him because she fears he will deny her access to her own children. This happens all the time because in many societies a mother does not have the right to her own offspring. As soon as she gives birth, her child 'belongs' to her husband and his family. If she wants to keep seeing and being with her child, she is effectively at the mercy of the child's father. She has almost no power with which to negotiate. Hence the futility of telling people to abstain, when the woman has almost no rights whatsoever. There is a very fundamental problem underlying the social symptoms of powerlessness such as HIV and domestic abuse, etc. Women's status is very low, even in countries that pay lip service to women's rights, and where the government has enshrined women's rights within its constitution. The reality at village level among uneducated people is that women are unaware of their rights. Yet another reason to bring women one of the greatest gifts - literacy. That's why we are so proud of the partners with whom we work in Africa. They are providing women with the building blocks to realise their own potential and to take control of their lives.

a sobering thought at Christmas

Most of us think of Christmas meals as a time when we give in to temptation and eat too much. But spare a thought for too many people in Africa for whom Christmas is the one day of the year when they splash out and eat meat. The rest of the year they consume cheap, tasteless, starchy foods lacking in protein. They fill their stomachs, but there isn't much more to be said in their favour/favor. That is why we are keen to give chickens to the Rwandan women in our projects. Not only can the women sell the eggs produced and use the income to feed and educate their children; but they can also feed their chidlren eggs, improving their chances of developing into strong, bright teenagers. A chicken costs about £5 or $8, and it transforms a family's life chances.

statistics that matter

Save the Children, describing their work in South Sudan, report that a girl there has more chance of dying in childbirth than finishing primary/elementary school. They also conclude that only a quarter of people have access to healthcare, which no doubt contributes to the incredibly high rate of death in childbirth.

Looking at the rate at which young women die in pregnancy and childbirth is much more useful than using the UN's 'life expectancy' rates. They give only a national average, rather than an accurate picture of when the greatest risks occur. If a child makes it to 10 years of age, they'll probably make it to old age. Those first years are when malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare and malaria take the greatest toll. The chance of surviving childhood is also massively influenced by how much education the mother has had. All the more reason to be focusing on educating girls and young women.

Good news about landmines

In 2009, fewer than 4,000 people were killed or injured by landmines and other unexploded war weapons, like submunitions or grenades – a drastic drop compared with the estimated 26,000 annual deaths in the 1990s. This is according to a report by Human Rights Watch and other members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

Here is proof that campaigns to try to pressure the military-industrial complex (as President Eisenhower called it) are worth the effort. Anyone working in the developing world, or as we do, wth survivors of genocide and war, can be forgiven for having their low moments. The progress made on landmines and more recently cluster bombs is a reminder that positive change is possible. Soemtimes the good guys do win.

Women are the answer

At the annual United Nations summit in New York delegates are discussing the eight millenium development goals, set ten years ago. There will be a lot of hot air about putting women at the centre of attaining these goals.

It is undoubtedly true: none of the goals can be achieved without the involvement of women in the developing world, because women generally do most fo the work and raise the children.

However, many of the nations swapping platitudes about improving the position of women remain fundamentally opposed to genuine and meaningful female empowerment. In their societies, where men take the decisions and women labour in the fields, women continue to have very low status. They are denied the right to the money they earn in agriculture, they cannot own or inherit land, and they do not even have the right to the chidlren they have brought into the world.

Human Rights Watch found that one of the reasons HIV spreads in some countries is that infected husbands threaten to torture their own children unless their wives will have sex with them. Their wives have to stay within such abusive relationships because they have no legal rights to their own children. If they want to escape from their husbands, they have to also leave their children behind. As long as this situation persists in so many develooping countries, lip service to women's rights is hypocritical nonsense.