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Lines in the Dust
In a small village near Tamale in northern Ghana, a group of men and women sit around in a semi-circle, discussing the chart they've drawn in the dust. The chart has three columns, showing the hours in the day, and the different tasks men and women undertake during those hours. It soon becomes clear that it's the women who undertake the most labour intensive work - fetching water and firewood, cleaning and preparing food - and the discovery sparks a lively debate about why the men can't take on more 'women's' work.
Known as 'Reflect', this participatory approach to adult learning and social change doesn't rely on importing textbooks from the outside world. Instead, everything's created by the participants themselves. In this Muslim village, it's a radical move for men and women to sit down and debate together to begin with.
Sanatu lives in the village with her eight children, with her husband, his two other wives and her mother-in-law. She's a trader, selling things like soap and cosmetics. "Before I got involved with the Reflect group I felt out of touch with the world around me but now I'm learning so much," she says. "Speaking out in front of men used to make me nervous but now I'm in the Reflect group I have more confidence in my own point of view." Sanatu is one of the 900 million adults across the world who don't know how to read or write, who've been failed by conventional education. In contrast to most literacy classes for adults, Reflect takes a much broader view of learning, using the participants' own experience and knowledge as the starting-point.
For instance, fetching water has always been women's work in this village but after the discussions in the Reflect group, men can be seen doing tasks they'd never done before. "If other people see me fetching water, they think it looks strange, but I don't let it bother me. In our community, we're becoming more aware, we're learning how to help our wives," says one villager.
Making a chart of men and women's workloads has a dual purpose. As well as changing ideas about whose job it is to carry all the water and fuel, the chart is used as a tool to teach literacy and numeracy. Learners copy the symbols they've put on the ground onto card and paper as a stepping-stone towards reading, writing and number work. They're learning how to handle a pen, and they're introduced to the principle that marks on paper can represent words and ideas.
For Sanatu, learning to handle numbers has a direct impact on her work as a trader. Now she has the skills and confidence to go out of her village and buy direct from a wholesaler. As she doesn't have to pay such high prices to travelling traders, she can make more of a profit herself when she sells her goods.
On another continent, in Kanatalabanda village in the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, Reflect is used in a very different context. The 'tribal' people who live in the ancient forest have started a group to fight for their land rights. They're adopting Reflect as a tool to help them resist the threats to their traditional livelihood.
The villagers rely on their native forest for survival and harvest wild plants and grow food crops on the hills. But the arrival of commercial companies is disrupting this traditional balance. They put pressure on farmers to abandon their ancestral ways, and grow cash crops like cotton instead. This does not always work out.
Balamma complains: "I don't know what to do. I've invested thousands of rupees in this cotton but the harvest is bad, the crop is failing. With all these pests, what will be left to harvest? They've eaten the whole thing." And she's not the only one to complain.
The villagers come together to discuss the problem in a meeting known as a "Gotti". Gathering to talk in the Gotti is a practice going back many generations. What's new is that they're using the Reflect approach to make their discussions more concrete and more participatory. The Gotti also uses theatre to underline just how much extra work it takes to farm cotton. The farmers act out all the stages of growing cotton, from ploughing to spraying and feeding.
As a result, many villagers decide to give up growing cotton. Balamma explains: "We worked hard for so many months for such a low return! All our efforts were wasted, we're left with nothing. So we've decided to stop growing cotton and start planting our traditional food crops again."
To grow traditional crops, farmers need a reliable supply of seeds. Through the Gotti, the villagers develop a self-sufficient solution: a seed bank. For each kilo of seed Balamma borrows, she'll return two kilos after the harvest. And to keep the seed bank records, Balamma needs her new-found skills of reading and writing.
At first, Balamma could not see the value of literacy and numeracy. "I asked, why should I learn to read and write? What good would it do me? But learning new skills does help me communicate. So far my reading and writing aren't perfect but I'm learning to speak out and to ask questions."
Reflect also helps people make the link between the local and international. The Gotti uses community theatre to uncover the global story behind the pressure to grow cash crops. Company reps sing: "Plant cotton and you'll get rich, you can wear jeans like us instead of a loincloth!" A spoof TV chat show brings the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation on stage and tackles the big issues of privatisation and globalisation.
Balamma gets the message: "The play shows us what is really happening. I liked the scene with the television show, it showed how we are exploited and told us about the powerful people at the top. We shouldn't let ourselves be pushed around like this. If we lost this forest, we'd have nothing..."
Balamma
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Balamma and her husband take part in a protest rally. People from villages scattered throughout the forest join forces to demand their indigenous rights. The new depth of understanding that Balamma has achieved at the Gotti sessions and her own emerging sense of self-confidence, spur her into action in a way she wouldn't have dreamed of in the past.
TRANSCRIPT
Read the full transcript of Lines in the Dust
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