We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Paulina is on the left and Mama Baraka, on the right.

Many of you who read this blog already know about Paulina, a mother, grandmother, and very feisty middle-aged Maasai woman living in Kimokouwa. Paulina gets frustrated with the slow pace of change where she lives in rural Tanzania and she's not afraid to tell you about it. I know she's not the only woman who feels this way; she's just one of the most vocal. I am thinking back a couple of years ago when we were standing outside of Philipo's duka or small shop by the Arusha Nairobi Road sipping on a warm Coke (regrettably, the only drink available) on a hot day. "Even the donkeys are treated better than we are," Paulina said with lots of passion and very expressive eyes. She was referring to 'women'. 

The Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development has ended in Brazil and, sadly, it did not deliver what so many around the world had hoped: concrete actions and commitments to achieving them. "Instead, we saw a wasted opportunity to build on the way the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) have focused global attention on the needs of the extreme poor...this is a huge setback for Africa...the continent continues to suffer from deep, persistent, and enduring inequalities," said Mohammud Yunus. The international aid organization, CARE, summed it up this way: "Without a clear road map to achieve sustainable development, millions of women and men are forced to continue a life of poverty and are threatened by ever increasing shocks such as natural disaster, food price hikes, and climate change." I have been trying to understand sustainability in a simple way. Isn't it about all of us living  in such a way that we take adequate care of our "home" - the earth - and our "families" - all the inhabitants of the earth? The failure of the Rio+20 Summit means that Paulina's life of extreme poverty - and others like her too many to count - stands very little chance of changing or improving if we leave things to the world leaders. We know we can't do that. 

"Women are the real architects of society."

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Paulina is already helped by the women in Kimokouwa Village when it comes to performing the daily activities she must do to take care of her own grandchildren and orphans entrusted to her care. Things like walking many kilometres each day to fetch water for cooking.  Paulina only has the use of one arm since losing half of her right arm to a snake bite years ago. Still, she makes the daily walk to the open well where the women draw water after the cattle drink. The other women hoist the heavy canvas water bag onto Paulina's shoulders and set the strap around her forehead so she can bring water back to her boma. 

In order to better provide for herself and her family, Paulina joined the KWGP - Kimokouwa Women's Goat Project. She is raising female goats and selling male offspring them when they are a year old. She keeps 90% of the sale price - usually about $50.00, and 10% or about $10.00 goes into a bank account for project maintenance. And Paulina gets milk from the goats, a good source of nutrition. In TEMBO's estimation, Paulina is doing all she can do to empower herself. Still, it's not enough to raise herself out of extreme poverty. She lives in a part of the world beset by extreme drought that worsens each year because of climate change. When the water supply from Mount Longido dries up each year, Paulina and her family have no choice but to drink polluted water, risking severe illness.

The Summit document agreed to by world leaders at Rio+20 contains inspiring words, like the ones below, from Paragraph 120:

We commit to the progressive realization of access to safe and affordable drinking water and basic sanitation for all, as necessary for poverty eradication, women's empowerment, and to protect human health, and to significantly improve the implementation of integrated water resource management at all levels as appropriate. In this regard, we reiterate our commitments to support these efforts in particular in developing countries through the mobilization of resources from all sources, capacity building, and technology transfer.

There are so many women just like Paulina in Longido and Kimokouwa and millions more like her in the world. It will be up to ordinary citizens like us to put the Rio Summit words into action without waiting for world leaders to set a course for us. That's why the title for this post is so poignant. The words were spoken by the elders of the Hopi Nation in Arizona in the year 2000. They are so relevant for us today. We simply cannot wait any longer for others to act: we are the ones we have been waiting for.