I did warn last month that November is hideously hectic. So busy, I've had zero time to blog for several weeks. And now it's December and Christmas is upon us...
The rare slivers of downtime I have managed to steal - usually between 10.55 and 11 at night - have been spent with a ratty-looking paperback being passed around a group of gals from my church.
It's Half the Sky, a meticulously researched and thoughtfully compiled global call-to-action to educate and empower girls. It's not a soapbox and it doesn't preach. Rather, husband-and-wife New York Times journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn lay down the facts on the undeniable economic, social and health benefits of valuing girls and giving them a hand up.
They share account after account of women in impoverished nations overcoming sexual imprisonment, life-threatening physical neglect and sheer powerlessness through education and practical economic development. At the risk of cutting across Christmas cheer and getting a little strident, I'd like to share one such account, to remind those of us who live genuinely free here in Australia that there is still much to do elsewhere in the world. While Aussie women may bump their heads on glass ceilings in the workplace, we're not deprived of education, choices, rights and voices simply for being born with a uterus.
Such was the case for Goretti, an uneducated 35-year-old mother of six in rural Burundi in central Africa. Robbed of all personal freedom by an over-bearing husband, she was forbidden to leave their clay hut without him. Even though she was forced to haul heavy grocery bags home from the market, she had never handled anything more than the equivalent of 10 cents, such was the control her husband maintained.
Her life was dramatically transformed when she encountered the American aid organisation, CARE. The organisation forms village associations of about 20 women, who band together to improve their quality of life. Goretti boldly attended her first CARE meeting after encouragement from older female relatives who had seen first-hand the benefits of the female networks. Each woman brings the equivalent of 10 cents (the most, like Goretti, many can lay their hands on), which is pooled and loaned to members, who must invest it in a money-making enterprise and repay the loan with interest. Goretti invested her small loan in a bag of fertiliser, which helped produce a bumper crop of spuds.
Before too long, Goretti was making and selling banana beer, and contributing way more to the household than her abusive husband. The irony was that her husband previously blew about 30 per cent of the family income on similar beer at the local bar. But when he saw how much Goretti's independence and business improved their family's living situation, he not only allowed her to carry on with her enterprise and learn to read and write, but resisted the urge to plunder her stock! In the end he conceded it was "better to have a partner, than a servant."
Wisely, the authors are cautionary with their optimism - and Boretti's story is not without challenges. Her success is built on the provision of beer, a source of discontent in hers and other African villages, and her existence is still heavily dependent on successful crops. But there is no question that equal access to opportunity has radically renewed her life and that of her family.
Goretti is one of millions of women living in cultures in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that will continue to wrestle with poverty, disease and violence while ever women are regarded as unequal and incapable.
If you have time over the holidays, get your hands on Half the Sky. It will stir in you a hunger for justice - and that's just the sort of thing we should be thinking about at Christmas.
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Thursday, 25 October 2012
November is December on steroids
With less than a week left of October, I’m putting it out there: I hate November. It has become the new December, where life’s usual frenzied pace is dialled up a whole new notch to helter skelter on steroids.
November is the month where weariness from nearly a year’s worth of the day job collides head on with the kids’ malaise over school, a flurry of school break-up concerts and award ceremonies and a disturbing increasing in the number of work-related Christmas parties because everybody thinks December is too busy!
What concerns me is that I don’t think our family has much of a margin to go any faster. We’re already living at break-neck speed. Last week, hubby and I had to arrange a drive-by near the kids’ high school so he could spring me $40 because I didn’t have time to divert to an ATM. We literally slowed as we drove past each other and did a “boyz-in-the-hood” type exchange out our windows. All that was missing was my hoodie and doof-doof.
Mothers seem to feel this early onset of the silly season more than fathers. Perhaps because we’re at the coalface of the school notes about classroom parties and end-of-year drama performances, while also negotiating with the various family off-shoots about whose turn it is to host Christmas and – as in the case of our blended-family – who will have the kids and when. The co-ordination needs its own gant chart and spreadsheet. Heck, it needs its own project office!
Meanwhile, most of the men I know are browsing circa 1970 magazines to see which style of facial hair they’ll be sprouting for Movember. While I applaud the fact proceeds go towards research for prostate cancer and depression – and I’ll be sponsoring friends and family this year – I can’t help but think husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are the only ones with sufficient time and headspace to consider fundraising at this time of year.
Perhaps I’ll start my own charity, Moanvember, and ask people to donate to send worn-out working mothers on a month-long holiday to a tropical paradise. You can all sponsor my under-arm growth because, heavens knows, there’s no time to take care of that right now!
November is the month where weariness from nearly a year’s worth of the day job collides head on with the kids’ malaise over school, a flurry of school break-up concerts and award ceremonies and a disturbing increasing in the number of work-related Christmas parties because everybody thinks December is too busy!
What concerns me is that I don’t think our family has much of a margin to go any faster. We’re already living at break-neck speed. Last week, hubby and I had to arrange a drive-by near the kids’ high school so he could spring me $40 because I didn’t have time to divert to an ATM. We literally slowed as we drove past each other and did a “boyz-in-the-hood” type exchange out our windows. All that was missing was my hoodie and doof-doof.
Mothers seem to feel this early onset of the silly season more than fathers. Perhaps because we’re at the coalface of the school notes about classroom parties and end-of-year drama performances, while also negotiating with the various family off-shoots about whose turn it is to host Christmas and – as in the case of our blended-family – who will have the kids and when. The co-ordination needs its own gant chart and spreadsheet. Heck, it needs its own project office!
Meanwhile, most of the men I know are browsing circa 1970 magazines to see which style of facial hair they’ll be sprouting for Movember. While I applaud the fact proceeds go towards research for prostate cancer and depression – and I’ll be sponsoring friends and family this year – I can’t help but think husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are the only ones with sufficient time and headspace to consider fundraising at this time of year.
Perhaps I’ll start my own charity, Moanvember, and ask people to donate to send worn-out working mothers on a month-long holiday to a tropical paradise. You can all sponsor my under-arm growth because, heavens knows, there’s no time to take care of that right now!
Sunday, 7 October 2012
If only Aldi carried Shapes...
Each week, like so many of us, I toss a burgeoning bundle of catalogues into the recycling bin, all except one – from the good people at Aldi. I love the Aldi catalogue, namely because – and perhaps a tad embarrassingly – it’s one of the most serendipitous experiences of my week.
Where else do you find cycling duds, complete with “ergonomically formed” arse padding, in the same realm as solar-powered welding masks, baby cos lettuce, and assorted supplies for scrap-booking (a craze that has long overstayed its welcome)?
I confess I don’t frequent Aldi as much as my joy over their catalogue may lead you to think. Grocery shopping is a task I relish as much as scrubbing the loo. It’s generally relegated to the eleventh hour of the weekend, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. And, as much as I do like some Aldi products (their Australian olive oil, tinned tuna slices and creamy raspberry yoghurt, to name a few) they don’t carry all of the household faves, among them Arnott’s Shapes. At any given time you can open my pantry to find no less than half a dozen varieties of these assorted “baked-not-fried” snacks, because no two of our children like the same flavour. Not only do I think our brood single-handedly keeps the cogs turning at the Shapes factory, I marvel at the ingenuity of Arnott’s to keep coming up with umpteen new variations of the flavour, BBQ. But I digress…
The fact that Aldi doesn’t carry everything on our shopping list means it becomes a supplementary supplier when we can find the time. But that doesn’t deplete my enjoyment of flicking through their assorted weekly wares, which, much to my delight, regularly include random and amusing-sounding German foods in honour of the supermarket chain’s origins. Take pfeffernüsse (pronounced, I think, Fef-fer-nooser), delicious little gingerbread biscuits, or lachs-schinken, which, from the picture, looks a bit like pastrami, but could for all I know be slices of smoked eel.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other retailers in the lead-up to Christmas, as more and more face liquidation in the face of online competition. Surprise and delight us with your catalogues, and throw in the odd Spritzgebäck for good measure!
Where else do you find cycling duds, complete with “ergonomically formed” arse padding, in the same realm as solar-powered welding masks, baby cos lettuce, and assorted supplies for scrap-booking (a craze that has long overstayed its welcome)?
I confess I don’t frequent Aldi as much as my joy over their catalogue may lead you to think. Grocery shopping is a task I relish as much as scrubbing the loo. It’s generally relegated to the eleventh hour of the weekend, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. And, as much as I do like some Aldi products (their Australian olive oil, tinned tuna slices and creamy raspberry yoghurt, to name a few) they don’t carry all of the household faves, among them Arnott’s Shapes. At any given time you can open my pantry to find no less than half a dozen varieties of these assorted “baked-not-fried” snacks, because no two of our children like the same flavour. Not only do I think our brood single-handedly keeps the cogs turning at the Shapes factory, I marvel at the ingenuity of Arnott’s to keep coming up with umpteen new variations of the flavour, BBQ. But I digress…
The fact that Aldi doesn’t carry everything on our shopping list means it becomes a supplementary supplier when we can find the time. But that doesn’t deplete my enjoyment of flicking through their assorted weekly wares, which, much to my delight, regularly include random and amusing-sounding German foods in honour of the supermarket chain’s origins. Take pfeffernüsse (pronounced, I think, Fef-fer-nooser), delicious little gingerbread biscuits, or lachs-schinken, which, from the picture, looks a bit like pastrami, but could for all I know be slices of smoked eel.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other retailers in the lead-up to Christmas, as more and more face liquidation in the face of online competition. Surprise and delight us with your catalogues, and throw in the odd Spritzgebäck for good measure!
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Managing up
Life is full of stakeholders. Family, friends, bosses, colleagues, neighbours, your energy company, the manager of your kids' netball team. Some are more important than others. My husband, our children, our parents - they're key stakeholders. The bloke who drives the 210 bus rates reasonably low. Unless of course he's running late; then he's top of my list for every minute he's delayed.
Like it or not, all of these stakeholders have to be managed. Management may be as simple as telling hubby you'll be home in 20, so get the water boiling for the pasta. Or it might be paying the overdue electricity bill, lest hubby be boiling the pasta on the gas cook-top by candle light. At work, it might be delegating a task to one of your reports (managing down), getting together with a peer to discuss a shared issue (managing across), or letting your boss know her deadline is way out of the park and that if she wants you to meet it, she better bring in the Army Reserve (managing up).
Right now, my brothers and I are managing up on the home front. We've hit that sobering intersection in life when my 85-year-old father requires what's officially known as "residential aged care". Sadly, my 83-year-old mother's unending devotion and dedication to my physically immobile father is no longer sufficient to keep him safe and well.
He's currently in respite care in a relatively nice facility, where the Department of Health and Ageing will allow him to stay, courtesy of Veterans' Affairs, for 18 more days before the nursing home starts charging its usual four-star-hotel equivalent of a daily rate. For my mother, whose generation endured rationing during the war and wears economisation as a badge of honour, the idea of handing over hard-earned savings and superannuation for Dad's daily upkeep is nothing short of appalling. I don't think it's the money itself, I think it's the concept of depleting a life's work of accumulated wealth - going backwards, if you like.
Of course, my brothers and I see it differently. Thus we're managing up, trying to persuade Mum to consider the sale of the family home, or at least a reverse mortgage on it in the short-term, as an investment in hers and Dad's quality of life. At this stage, I think it would be easier to convince my boss to bring in the Army Reserve. I'll let you know how it goes.
Like it or not, all of these stakeholders have to be managed. Management may be as simple as telling hubby you'll be home in 20, so get the water boiling for the pasta. Or it might be paying the overdue electricity bill, lest hubby be boiling the pasta on the gas cook-top by candle light. At work, it might be delegating a task to one of your reports (managing down), getting together with a peer to discuss a shared issue (managing across), or letting your boss know her deadline is way out of the park and that if she wants you to meet it, she better bring in the Army Reserve (managing up).
Right now, my brothers and I are managing up on the home front. We've hit that sobering intersection in life when my 85-year-old father requires what's officially known as "residential aged care". Sadly, my 83-year-old mother's unending devotion and dedication to my physically immobile father is no longer sufficient to keep him safe and well.
He's currently in respite care in a relatively nice facility, where the Department of Health and Ageing will allow him to stay, courtesy of Veterans' Affairs, for 18 more days before the nursing home starts charging its usual four-star-hotel equivalent of a daily rate. For my mother, whose generation endured rationing during the war and wears economisation as a badge of honour, the idea of handing over hard-earned savings and superannuation for Dad's daily upkeep is nothing short of appalling. I don't think it's the money itself, I think it's the concept of depleting a life's work of accumulated wealth - going backwards, if you like.
Of course, my brothers and I see it differently. Thus we're managing up, trying to persuade Mum to consider the sale of the family home, or at least a reverse mortgage on it in the short-term, as an investment in hers and Dad's quality of life. At this stage, I think it would be easier to convince my boss to bring in the Army Reserve. I'll let you know how it goes.
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