Doing…Being…Doing
Suffice it to say that, along with the intense experiences in Sri Lanka, came the realisation that there was a ‘thesis afterlife’. I opened up to it, becoming an impassioned and knowledgeable campaigner for improvements in plantations. I researched and wrote about the health impacts of biomass fuels, the links with poverty, and the use of animal dung collected, dried, and used in open fires in overcrowded and unventilated housing. I found that the consequences of indoor air pollution and inhaling smoke were not limited to the range of bronchial conditions I had encountered on the misty slopes of the tea plantation in Sri Lanka. Studies revealed links to non-nutritional anaemia, low birth weight, and increased infant mortality rates—a host of conditions affecting women in particular.
I became an ‘activist’: researching, writing, and presenting, raising awareness of the links between working and living conditions, and highlighting the situation of women and children in plantations. My work as a consultant to the ILO was cut out for me, and I was passionately involved and committed. My mentor, Jurgen, passed more and more challenging work my way. At the age of 36, I produced the report for the International Building Committee on Labour Standards in the construction industry and was the technical expert when the committee met in 1987. Then, Jurgen suggested preparing a proposal for submission to donors on “Women in Plantations”, and I went on a preparatory mission to Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, and Tanzania—all countries with large-scale commercial agricultural sectors, whether they called them plantations or farms. After detailed consultations with the local workers’ organisation in Tanzania, it was decided to start the programme there. At the end of 1987, with international attention still focused on the question of housing conditions and the beginning of donor interest in the ‘women’s question’, we drafted and submitted a comprehensive project proposal to the government of Norway.
The first lesson for me was learning patience. I found this a difficult phase as we waited for a response to the proposal for funding; the needs seemed so urgent, the proposal so appropriate. A related lesson was one of learning about organisational cycles, their priorities, and internal politics. 1988 was excruciating.
But the long-awaited funds from Norway did come through, and there was huge excitement as I prepared to establish this programme of ‘technical cooperation’ for the ILO in Tanzania. I was the CTA (Chief Technical Advisor), and the usual approach was for a CTA to be based in the programme country for its duration—in this case, for at least three years. But I had designed it in close collaboration with the local workers’ organisation and saw myself as a non-resident, my role being supportive: helping to shape strategy and build capacity while withdrawing progressively over the three-year period. Nonetheless, the programme required that I spent long periods away from Nyon and Ronald, two to three months at a time and twice or three times a year.
The programme started at the beginning of 1989. The funds, in fact, lasted four years, and during this time, I travelled to Tanzania seventeen times. By the time of the final evaluation of the programme, known locally as MWEMA, it covered a total of seventeen plantations: tea, sugar, and sisal in several regions of the country, and we had established a national network among women workers.
I don’t intend to write extensively about this compelling time and my memoirs of Tanzania. I was deeply committed. I recall my first visit to set up the preliminary phase. During a pre-implementation workshop, the organiser—my local partner and project co-ordinator, Halima—was clearly and visibly close to delivery. Immediately after the workshop, I went to the hospital with her as she was about to give birth. I massaged her back as she entered labour, and we went through the shortlist of possible candidates for the post of project officer. Together, we held the interviews in the hospital shortly after the birth of her son, and Philippina Mosha, an intelligent and motivated young woman who had recently completed a course in Norway on Labour Law and Maternity Rights, was our first choice.
My experiences over four years in Tanzania merit a separate volume. Witnessing women grow into their power, undertaking research on their own situations, analysing and compiling findings, presenting these to management, and arguing for improvements in working and living conditions based on their growing knowledge of their rights, was exhilarating.
I, too, was growing, developing my competencies as I learned to trust my intuition and allowed guidance from my heart. Increasingly, my project assessments and reports honoured qualitative indicators over quantitative ones, exploring flexible and creative responses to ‘technical cooperation’. It was a fecund and very productive time.
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With hindsight, I realise I received a lot of support from the unseen realms. How else can I describe my experiences and some of their surprising outcomes during these years?
One example was a visit to Uganda, which I was asked to undertake by the ILO, perhaps two years after I had started my programme in Tanzania. This was perhaps in 1991, when this fertile jewel in central Africa was beginning to gaze outwards after years of civil war and strife. I was a catalyst for a ‘tri-partite’ voyage into the deep, dark interior of a triangle of land which had borne the worst of the conflicts. The ILO mandate meant I could travel with Pajobo, the trade union leader for plantations, who had been unable to visit his constituency in some regions for ten years or more. We were accompanied by John, a young, intelligent official from the Ministry of Labour, and Alex, a sympathetic welfare officer from the plantation sector representing the employers.
Through the Ministry of Labour, we had access to an old car (with doubtful road-worthiness) and a driver who, after six hours of gruelling potholes and encroaching darkness, was sweating profusely. We also had gifts: two live chickens and some assorted goods which had probably not been seen in the conflicted triangle for years. This geographical triangle held the bulk of the once-flourishing Ugandan tea plantations.
I was sitting in the back seat, in the middle, with the chickens under my feet. There was silence in the car. The jovial exchanges had long since ceased, and each man was engaged in his private thoughts and anxieties as we approached an armed checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. Now all the men were sweating. I could smell the fear.
And then it happened. I was prompted by a clear, intuitive sense of what I needed to do. We were fifteen metres from the checkpoint when I was guided (it was stronger than that) to lean forward and switch on the cabin light in the old car. I leaned my young white face forward into its light, illuminating me fully, my long brown curls, big brown eyes, and my blue UN laisser-passer document, which I was holding very visibly in front of my chest. As our car drove slowly up to the halt, in my halo of light, I felt like a magnet for the eyes of all the men around and outside the car. I breathed quietly and deeply, holding my gaze as the flashlight rudely pierced into the dark cubicle, probing the areas around me not touched by the cabin light, going beyond my silhouetted contours and revealing the chickens and my travelling companions in the shadows.
Clearly, I was a surprise, and the soldiers were completely taken by it. We moved through this encounter, our documents returned to us with grace and ease. Ten metres beyond the checkpoint, the four men in the car with me began to breathe again, their relief evident in the bawdy banter which ensued. We all needed a beer and stopped for one as soon as we could!
We arrived at our destination another four hours later, in the dark, having driven through the untended tea bushes which had now become tall forests of tea trees. This plantation was to be the focus of a rehabilitation programme funded by the World Bank. The next morning, the ragged workforce gathered to meet Pajobo, their first contact for perhaps ten years. I was very moved, witnessing this, and astounded as I heard these men in tatters posing erudite, articulate questions about the future of the labour force and the community living here.
I learnt that during the civil war, this had been a sanctuary—a hiding place for many political activists, and amongst this crowd of vulnerable and ragged people were university professors and teachers. The stark reality of this place and its future struck home.
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