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IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 11, 2005
International Journal of Epidemiology 2005 34(5):998-1000; doi:10.1093/ije/dyi040
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2005; all rights reserved.

Photoessay

I Have a Story to Tell: Celebrating 10 Years of CAMFED{dagger} International

Mark Read and Mary Shaw*

* Corresponding author. Department of Social Medicine, Canynge Hall, Whiteladies Road, Bristol B58 2PR, UK. E-mail: mary.shaw{at}bristol.ac.uk

Photographs by Mark Read, text by Mary Shaw

This powerful book1 centres on the theme of the education of girls in Africa, tackling the poverty that excludes them from it, and the opportunities and improvements in health and employment that can be its consequence. The book marries photographs of individual women and their lives with personal testimony, a small selection of which is presented below. Each personal story exudes determination, enthusiasm and hope, yet the shadow of the sheer scale of poverty in Africa is ever present. For each copy of the book that is sold a girl in Africa will go to school for a year.

I have a strong foundation for my life through education. I can say that education is my mother who managed to give me special love so I could stand up.

Some of my friends got involved in different things. Some decided to go in the streets and do robbery. Some decided to have early marriages and are now being ill-treated by their husbands. Some are prostitutes. And many of them have died due to AIDS.

Without my education, I just cannot imagine what kind of life I could be leading. I was one of the poorest girls to start off in my community and people treated me just like that. No one thought that my life would ever be transformed because to them it was all so very hopeless. Poverty had silenced me and I never thought I could rise from that curse. I absolutely agreed with my neighbours and just thought I was born in poverty and would die poor. After all, what else was there to believe?

Education has sown a seed in me, which is growing and flowering to produce other seeds, the seed of lifting the value of girls and women in the communities around me. I now understand that women can be recognised as important people in the community, and I can communicate freely bringing all my views and discussing them with people, even those in high positions.

AIDS, AIDS, what do you want?

You kill people

You have taken my father and now my mother

What shall I do in the world without parents?

I don't have food to eat

I don't have clothes to wear

AIDS, AIDS, what do you want?

You are finishing us all.

When I have a son, I will tell him not to treat his children as we were treated. I will discourage him from being a polygamist. There is too much jealousy and the wives are not free. His children will starve as we did. There is competition between wives. If one is pregnant and they buy a nice maternity dress the other decides to get pregnant as well. ...

Through my education, I have turned out to be totally different to what I thought I would become. I am now confident, independent and determined. My community now takes me as a leader. They have chosen me to be a pre-school teacher, a job that I love.



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  		Spiwe Matimba, now a community health worker and business mentor to other young women.

 


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  		Esther Jena, a business woman administrator.

 


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  		Child reciting poem she wrote for her class, taught by Cynthia Chinhamo.

 


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  		Cynthia Chinhamo, works as a pre-school teacher and health worker in her community.

 

   Notes
 
{dagger} The Campaign for Female Education. Back


   Reference
Top
 Reference
 
1 I Have a Story to Tell: Celebrating 10 Years of CAMFED International with photographs by Mark Read. Cambridge: CAMFED International, 2004. ISBN 0-9532907-1-9. www.camfed.org


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This Article
Right arrow Extract Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
34/5/998    most recent
dyi040v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Read, M.
Right arrow Articles by Shaw, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Read, M.
Right arrow Articles by Shaw, M.
Social Bookmarking
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What's this?