WOMEN KEEP THE AFRICAN CONTINENT ALIVE! Ambassador Nagy declared that it is accepted that women have the responsibility of keeping the African continent alive, despite destructive burdens that are all their own. “Now, to me, Africa, is also an issue of women, Nagy said; “women’s empowerment, women’s rights, women moving forward. But so many women of Africa spend so much of their time looking for water.” He explained; “When I visited areas of southern Ethiopia during the dry season -- and the dry season can mean four, five, six, seven, eight months without a drop of rain; that’s just how it is -- during the height of the dry season. I visited areas where women have to walk seven hours one way to get water, and it’s the women’s job to get the water. It’s not the horses, if they have horses; it’s not the men; it’s the women." “So you have these poor women. They probably have some plots of ground that they’re growing crops on. They’re keeping their families and children. They’re cooking. And then at night, they take a 40-liter jug, which in itself weighs quite a lot, on their heads and they walk through the bush at night to go to the water source, seven hours, fill up the jug, and walk back seven hours. And while they’re walking, of course, they’re vulnerable to attacks by hyenas, falling and hurting themselves, being attacked and kidnapped and raped. So it’s an extreme hardship. “Because of cultural attitudes toward women historically, first of all, they would have to have the right -- and people are fighting on this right now -- and there is progress. That’s the good news, that you make condoms available, you make birth control available. But then they have to have the right to go to the clinic and get it. So it’s all well and good to, like in northern Ethiopia now, they’ve actually put condom machines in some of the bigger towns where, if someone wants to go get a condom, they get it free of charge. They just go get it. But, there again, the woman has to have the right to insist that her man wear the condom, because it doesn’t do much to distribute condoms if the guys aren’t going to wear them. But I have to say that water is very close to one of the most fundamental needs and necessities, because it impacts everything else. If a woman is not walking 14 hours a day to get water, she might have time to go to school to learn how to read and write; to know a little, even listen to the radio to know about her rights and privileges; to form associations with other women so that they can support each other. “My job here is not to teach, but I do a course every year on Africa, because I think the world of Africa. And I explain to my class, the point I keep stressing is that the whole system is a house of cards, whether it’s women’s rights, health issues, HIV-AIDS, famine, or ethnicity, health -- water. Everything depends on everything else.” # # #