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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Tears for the Mozambican Women...

Today Mozambique celebrates 38 years of  Independence from Portugal. The country is partying... However Mozambican Women do not have  yet much to celebrate...

It is well known that maternal conditions are the leading causes of death and disability among women. 99% of these deaths occurs in low resource countries especially Sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly all maternal deaths are preventable through availability of contraception,  timely prenatal and postnatal care, skilled birth attendance and ways to reach  emergency care to deal with complications.  To obtain all these improvements women have to fight poverty and inequality.

 Most of the pictures were not mine but taken from the Internet:

 We must help them have a better future.

 Women in Mozambique  work the land, but tradition strips their rights of ownership and inheritance

 Women have the right to contraception to empower them, to decrease death by septic abortions, maternal hemorrhages.  



Mozambican women must unify and fight for their rights.

According to the International Fact-Finding Mission document Mozambique is a patriarchal society where the men dominates and put women in a position of inferiority.  Domestic violence has a social legitimacy since men is the head of the family and has the "rights" to solve marital conflicts. As per UNICEF statistics: Justification of wife beating reaches the level of 36%.
Rape, sexual violence are common and specially growing is the harassment of girls students by teachers and fellow students.

Most of the population is still in rural areas where polygamy, early forced marriage remain widespread. Early marriages lead to girls be taken out of school by their husbands, increase illiteracy, and causes high number of pregnancies: 24% of women ages 15 to 19 already have 2 children. Remember most of these are unwanted pregnancies because destitute women have no access to contraception.
Believe or not despite the Mozambican Family Code reads that marriage is "monogamous", polygamy is still very prevalent in rural areas.

Rural women for whom land is the source of their live hoods  have no rights to ownership. The houses belongs to the husbands who holds the assets. The husbands can get rid of their women simply throwing them on the streets with no warnings or rights... I know nurses who went through hell because of this tradition but slowly rebuilt their lives. By the way a good nurse from the hospital wants now to find an American husband, she heard they make much better husbands then her ex- Mozambican. If you know of any available American man just let me know...

On top of all the inequalities there are a lot of widows in Mozambique due to the civil war and HIV/AIDS high rates. These are vulnerable women whose traditional customs strip them of their rights specially ownership and inheritance.

The single-parent household led by women have the highest rates of extreme poverty. It's very unheard of single-parent men in this country.

Although Mozambique has ratified the International Women's Right Protection measures violation of these rights is common:  persistence of discriminatory laws, violence against women, limited access to property, education and health care as well obstacle to access to justice " African for Women's Right" March 2010


Here are some statistics from UNICEF 2011 for Mozambique and some from the USA to compare. If you want more information just visit UNICEF website.

  • Total population: 23.930. 000
  • Life expectancy at birth= 50 years  USA= 79 years
  • Total literacy rate= 56%
  • Adult literacy rate female as % of males= 61
  • Urbanized population= 31%
  • Percentage below international poverty line  (US$ 1.25 per day) = 60%
  • Maternal mortality ratio lifetime risk= 1/43  (USA= 1/2,400)
  • Contraceptive prevalence = 12%  ( USA= 79%)
  • Child marriage by age 15 = 21%
  • Child marriage by age 18 = 56%
Today I say tears to these women who do work very hard, for whom pregnancy and delivery is still a death sentence.  I wish them a way of becoming stronger and find their freedom status in the society  to give themselves  and their children a stronger and more equitable life....

But there are good news in the horizons:  Mozambique has eliminated maternal e neonatal tetanus from its statistics and I do have large number of female medical students in my classes.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

African adventures at Gorongosa National Park

Gorongosa National Park is in the heart of Mozambique. It has over 4,000 square km of valley floor and some surroundings plateaus.  The rivers spread over the area originating at Mont Gorongosa.
Three main vegetation types support the Gorongosa ecosystem's wealthy of wildlife: savanna, woodlands and grasslands.

                      

During the long civil war the number of animals specially mammals was dramatically reduced as Gorongosa was one of the battle fields of the war.
Elephants were slaughtered for their ivory, lions and other carnivores died of starvation when their prey zebra, antelopes, wildebeest, buffalo were eaten as bush meat by hungry people.  Many of the park large herbivore populations were also reduced by the war and poaching. However more than 400 kinds of birds and reptiles survived.

Since 2004 the Carr Foundation's Gorongosa Restoration Project, a U.S. non profit organization is helping the Mozambique Government to protect and restore the ecosystem of the park.  Animals  are being reintroduced to their land.

Bob and Flavia and their friends Eric and Alison, Nick and Annie got into their 4 x 4 wonderful 1998 Toyota  Land Rover Prado Active Vacation and headed over to this beautiful land.   Of course it took us a while to get there (about 5 hours) because neither the potholes  nor the police let you speed in this part of the country.
We had a great time. As money is short now in our lives we opted to camping over staying in one of the fancy and must say beautiful but very expensive roundale guest houses.  The camping facilities were great with a very nice hot shower.
Poor Eric the picture was not good and the cake was not pretty, but was delicious.

It was Eric's birthday.   We had a wonderful barbecue with vegetables
(otherwise Flavia would have gone hungry), t-bone steaks, potatoes and grilled pineapple. The delicious meal culminated with a birthday cake baked by Flavia ( sorry Eric as Flavia is not a good baker, but at end the cake was a success). Our feast ended with smores. Alison was able to find pink marshmallows at the supermarket in Beira. They were pink but according to the human carnivores in our group  tasted really delicious.  The weather was pleasant and even a little hot during the day but chilly and comfy at night by our fire.

Here are some of the pictures of our great adventure. Gorongosa is one of the most beautiful places that we had visited so far in this side of the world.


The entrance and our great car ACTIVE VACATION perfect for the occasion
This was the first wildlife we saw as soon as we entered the park.  After that Flavia's desire for camping went down the drain, but Bob and Flavia managed to sleep inside the car very comfortably. All the sits unfold nicely and we had 2 comfortable beds.