Tanzania: Researcher Explores Lives of Disabled Women & Girls
By Laura Hershey (LauraHershey@compuserve.com)
Elly Macha, originally from Tanzania, is a researcher from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She undertook a research project last year, examining educational, economic, and other issues affecting women and girls with blindness and other disabilities. As a blind woman herself, she was already well grounded in the realities these women face; but she learned far more than she expected to about obstacles such as lack of access to health care, equipment, and transportation. In particular, she saw the severe impact of global economic developments, such as poverty-producing "structural adjustment" policies. Disability World interviewed Macha at the 2001 Society for Disability Studies conference in Winnipeg, Canada, where she presented the results of her research.
Laura Hershey: Could you tell me a little bit about the research that you've done in Tanzania? What where you hoping to find out?
Elly Macha: My research is on disability, gender, and access to education in Tanzania. I'm looking at obstacles encountered by visually impaired women in Tanzania in accessing education -- cultural obstacles and the way culture perceives visual impairment, and what are the practices and beliefs in certain cultures. I'm also looking at obstacles like economic obstacles -- the hardships, the way parents are unable to meet the educational needs of their visually impaired girls. I'm also looking at policy issues, any disability policies or special education policies in Tanzania which articulate the needs of visually impaired children, and disabled children in general.
LH: Are you doing these studies in rural areas?
EM: Yes. These areas are Dodoma and Tabora. Dodoma is in central Tanzania. I really traveled extensively in very remote rural areas of Dodoma. I've been to 42 rural villages. I visited these women in their own homes, so I've traveled quite a lot from home to home, from village to village, from town to town. It has been very inspiring.
LH: You had to be pretty creative and find accessibility resources for yourself in doing this research, right? Because you have a visual impairment yourself. Can you tell me what kinds of arrangements you had to make?
EM: When I was planning to do this research, I knew I would need a grant. Because I was moving from one home to another, from one village to another, in very remote places of Dodoma, that were not reachable by public transport, I knew I would need a hired car. Fortunately I got a grant from a charity in the UK, and I got another grant from a research body in Tanzania called Research On Poverty Alleviation, or ROPA. So I was able to hire a car and a research assistant. Without this grant, I wouldn't have been able to conduct this research.
Interrelationships between Poverty & Disability
LH: I know from your presentation yesterday that the areas you were studying were very poor areas. And you said in your presentation that disability and poverty are the causes and consequences of each other. Can you say more about the relationship between disability and poverty?
EM: Yes. To start with, poverty is one of the contributing factors to impairment. For example, a good number of the women I interviewed were visually impaired because they were affected by German measles. They couldn't get access to vaccinations. I asked their parents why they didn't take their children to get vaccinated against measles, and they told me some of the health centers where vaccination services were being provided were very far. Some of them had to walk seven to ten hours to reach those places. Because they didn't have money for bus fares, they were not able to take their children for vaccinations. This is how poverty has contributed to the impairment of these women.
On the other hand, because of the impairment, some parents had to spend so much money, even go in debt, to take these children to the hospitals. So poverty can cause impairment, and impairment can exacerbate poverty. If parents have a disabled child they will use all the resources they have to try to do something for her. I came across a family that told me that they had to sell their cattle, and they had to sell every harvest they had, for their child to go to school and have a technical aid. They use all of what they have, making them poorer and poorer. So they are interrelated, these two phenomena.
LH: How do you think nations and international bodies should respond to this problem? You said yesterday that we can't hope to solve the problem of poverty until we solve the problem of people with disabilities in poverty. How should the world be addressing the problems of poverty and disability as they impact families like the ones you've met?
EM: Because of the way poverty and disability are interrelated, developed nations should use seven percent of GDP to help poverty eradication in developing countries. Helping to eradicate poverty will bring a big change. The women I interviewed last year are in very poor situations. If they could get educated, if they could get opportunities to economic venues, then even disability would not be felt like it is, because they would be independent, not dependent. There are so many women getting their daily bread through begging. If they could be economically satisfied, economically engaged, then there would be no begging. I think developed nations have a major role to play to assist third-world countries out of poverty. At the same time disabled people in these countries will be given a better future life.
Research Methodology
LH: I would like to ask you to talk about your research methods. You were using a method called emancipatory research. Can you talk about how emancipatory research is different from traditional, scholarly research methods?
EM: Emancipatory disability research is a situation whereby a researcher initiates a research agenda with the people who take part in that research. If I was really to do emancipatory disability research, I would have first gone to meet these women, and set a research agenda with them, and we would then plan together what issues this research should address. Through this conversation, involving these women's own agenda, I would be the facilitator only. It would be like we are agreeing together on this research. And then we interpret the findings. And then when it comes to information dissemination, everybody will take part. It is a process from the beginning to the end of the research.
For me, it wasn't possible, although I would have wished to do that. I would have needed more time to be with them, and more resources.
Emancipatory Research
LH: Even with the limitations that you faced, it seems that you really had in mind the ideals of emancipatory research. Why are you committed to the idea of emancipatory research?
EM: Researchers [traditionally] consider disabled people being researched as people to provide information, to fulfill their research agendas -- or [for] Ph.D. students, like me, to make sure that they get the information so they can write their Ph.D. theses, and at the end get their doctoral degrees. So, they would be exploiting disabled people, and then disabled people who took part in the research would just be left without benefiting [from] the research. I think emancipatory research is a better approach, if it can be implemented. In Tanzania, for the time being, emancipatory research is still a dream, I would say, because the majority of disabled people live in rural areas. In Tanzania it takes 24 to 48 hours to reach these women, and then, once you are at the main station you need another transport to go to those rural areas. So, without resources it can be impossible to really implement emancipatory research.
Situation of Disabled People in Tanzania
LH: Let's go back to the women's lives that you studied in Tanzania. Are opportunities beginning to open up? Do you see any hope for improvement in their lives?
EM: There are a few NGO's trying to bring into their agenda disabled women's issues -- although not many, I would say. The problem of economic opportunities for disabled people, in particular for disabled women, is that still many mainstream organizations don't trust disabled people. Banks wouldn't give loans to disabled people, because to get the loan you need to have security -- something to safeguard your loan in case you are not able to repay that loan, then the bank can sell that property, be it a house or whatever, to regain the money. Many disabled people don't have houses; they don't have security, properties, so that they can get loans. This is still a big obstacle.
As well as education. There are a few schools providing education for visually impaired children. But most schools have no facilities. For example, for a blind child to go into the classroom, she or he will need a writing machine, Brailling paper, a tape recorder, typewriter. These things are very expensive. Many parents can't afford to buy these things. Some of the things are even more expensive because they have to be brought from abroad. For example, to get a Perkins Brailler is about $600, and to transport it to Tanzania is another $200. How many parents can afford this? Not many.
Impact of "Structural Adjustment" on Disabled People
Tanzania, in the last ten years, was under this new policy of Structural Adjustment Program. Education is one of the things which was no longer free. Parents have to contribute towards the educational needs of their children. Many parents are poor; they can't afford these things. This is a major hindrance. I met women who dropped school because they didn't have anything to write with, they didn't have any materials. They didn't see any point of going to school without any hand-frame or machine to write their notes on.
LH: Are there other ways that Structural Adjustment policies have affected people with disabilities?
EM: They have to pay for their own transport, and a lot of things, on their own. Before, the state would help. For example, now parents have to give their children bus fares or train fares to go to school. There were so many dropouts when I was visiting, because once the school was closed, and the children went home, they never came back because the parents couldn't provide for the fare to come back to school, or they couldn't afford the uniforms, or they couldn't afford somebody to escort them.
Memorable Finding
LH: What was the most memorable thing that you learned from your research with the visually impaired women in Tanzania?
EM: The way these women received me. They saw me as somebody who was concerned with their lives, and I think they really appreciated that. They asked me whether I could do something to change their lives -- try to tell the government that these women need loans, that there should be no restrictions giving loans to these women; or tell other women's organizations to include more disabled women in their programs. So they saw me as somebody who came, for the first time in their lives, to talk with them about these things. They saw me as somebody who would do something [for] their future life. I feel that I owe them this, that I should really do something for them. If I could advocate for their plight, and if I could influence, in one way or another, that something happens, start to be happening in their lives in their different villages.
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