Looking into my friend’s
bloodshot eyes I can see that she is tired. She wipes the sweat from her brow
with a dirty rag, and smiles at me as she rolls the cloth and strategically
places it on her head. She calls three
other women over to help her lift an enormous sack of onions. I watch her bend
down as they lift the sack and I see that she has lost weight; her shoulders,
back and arms are rock-hard. Once the sack is positioned comfortably on her
head she turns and says she is “going to come;” I take a seat on a bench. Onlookers
gawk at me, surprised to see a white lady amongst the grit and grind. It is an
area of Kumasi called Racecourse; it looks very much like a shanty ghetto, the
structures all made from rotting plywood and scrap metal; the environment is hot
and crowded, dirt paths snake between shacks as though pedestrians have been
cautious not to step in muddy patches and filth. Litter covers every square foot of the
ground…
“I’m going to market in Wa” – that is what she told me before
she left and never came back.
I started to ask around; it seemed as though people were
hesitant to tell me any information about her. Finally her sister told me that they
had talked on the phone – she had gone to Kumasi to work. If it was as simple
as that, I thought, then she would have just told me. She was my friend. Why
would she have lied? I continued to
press the issue and find out what exactly had caused her to just run away
without telling me. As the story unraveled it became clear why she left.
Her husband had impregnated a young girl – my friend was crushed. She had been married to this
man for six years, they had two children together. When this girlfriend found
out she was pregnant, and that the husband would also wed her, she started to
tease and provoke my friend. She would publically embarrass her at the
borehole: claiming the husband loved her
more, that she was new, that he would soon forget his old wife. This provided
an open forum for the community to gossip about the problems my friend was
facing.
My friend has only completed P-6 and can barely speak English;
reading or writing is out of the question. She is also strong – a hard worker
who, throughout her childhood, had been encouraged to be on the farm as opposed
to attending school. At this point, with a life full of farming ahead of her,
no education to fall back on, and two children to raise, the challenge of
handling a new wife was too much for her to bear. Living in the village, heartbroken and
repeatedly taunted, was an impossible prospect. She had to get away; she had to
go to Kumasi where she could make her own money and feel some sort of
independence; to feel control over her situation. She wanted to show the women she could
overcome what they were saying about her.
Six months passed until I heard her voice again.
Currently a third-year PCV in Cape Coast, I served my first
two years in a small village in the Upper West Region. The three northern
regions, in comparison with the rest Ghana, are predominantly underdeveloped
and deeply influenced by Islam. Most of the population is illiterate and their
main livelihood is sustenance farming. Through the circumstances of poverty,
lack of education and various social obstacles the women of the north are at a
great disadvantage. Many of the young girls are discouraged to attend school as
it is seen to be a waste of family resources (females are considered more
useful on the farm). And education isn’t seen as a way to feed hungry bellies –
it is a long-term investment that many homes cannot afford. It’s not uncommon for families to participate
in the tradition of marrying off their young daughters to remove the stress of
another mouth to feed in an already-impoverished household.
When it comes to work, there is a noticeable difference in
the amount women are expected to complete daily versus men. Both attend farm and have various jobs to
complete, but women are also given the tasks of firewood collection, caring for
the children and bringing back the harvest.
It is a rare thing to see a man fetching water, but a woman can walk
upwards of 10k each day with heavy loads on their heads. All of this is done with grace – a look of ease,
even as they carry a newborn baby on their back.
Without education or money to change their situations, the
only escape for many is taking a chance on Kayayo
(traveling for work as porters in Kumasi or Accra). Women who return to the
village from working in the south walk taller; they come back in new clothes,
lobes sparking with shiny earrings; they can afford the things they need to
make life better; they don’t have to ask any man for coins – they have a better
sense of independence and confidence.
But not all Kayayo stories are so successful. The mere facts
of being a woman and a stranger to a
large city can result in a completely different lifestyle than what they are
used to in the village. Most of the girls head to Kumasi with the intention of
making some quick cash and going home, but city life can catch them like a
predator. Vulnerable, they get trapped
into prostitution, drugs, and theft; it isn’t until they arrive that they realize
how difficult it is. Many girls sleep on the street and they are highly
competitive – doing whatever it takes to make more money, more money! Young guys who stay in the area hustle and scam to make
a buck, usually they take a liking to one of the girls. Offering security by providing
a place to sleep (in his metal shanty hut) it isn’t hard sell to a girl who is
used to the safety of her compound. He’ll begin to make more demands of her;
using his shack as bait, the young girls fall into a trap they can’t get out
of.
---
When my friend returned from off-loading the sack of onions
she was able to sit with me. I was worried, I had so many questions – I’d heard
so many different stories about Kayayo, but I wanted to hear her story. Tagging along, her older
brother helped with the translation; her particular job site was the most
competitive – they had regular pay and could go home with seven, sometimes
eleven, cedis per day. It was an area of Racecourse filled with cattle trucks, brimming
with yams and onions. She told me that many women coming to work for the day
couldn’t finish the job; that it’s only for the very strong. Women on the
street aren’t strong enough to carry from the big produce trucks, she said,
sometimes they can’t carry at all – they
beg; only posing as Kayayo. For women begging to carry personal luggage or empty
a cargo truck near a store, the competition is very serious. They’re not
guaranteed a single Ghana cedi a day; worse, they sabotage each other – hiding
one another’s silver basins, they make it virtually impossible to carry loads.
My friend’s job was to off-load bulk produce and carry it to
vehicles transporting it to buyers (restaurants, chop bars, and market sellers).
She was saving her money in a communal Susu box – every day she would take what
was needed for food and the rest would be put into savings. Though the work was
hard, her situation sounded ideal and I wanted to see where she was lived; I
hoped she wasn’t secretly living on the street.
We walked through the makeshift ghetto and reached a very old
(probably condemned) structure. Outside of the abandoned warehouse naked kids
were running around; some women came in and out of the bathing area, others
perched over TZ coal pots. We entered a long room lined with suitcases – clothes
dried on crisscrossed lines; prayer mats were propped or spread out; empty
bowls lay everywhere. As I walked in women began to shout my local name – they
were from my community – with true joy they rushed forward and hugged me, offering
me a spot on their prayer mats and calling their new friends to meet me. I was
bombarded by greetings. Many from my village asked to call their husbands or
parents, some hadn’t been in contact for months; my phone was passed around and
my credits finished in no time.
The warehouse was simply a transplant of village life; women
had divided themselves by language and took turn babysitting and cooking – they
created their own community. As a custom of greeting, my friend came to bring
me water; I sat with women hovering over me until the excitement died down.
Soon my friend was able to get back to her story; she’d seen girls leave the
warehouse to move in with boyfriends, thinking they had made it big. Those who
didn’t make enough during the day would try to make money at night; this I took
to mean prostitution. She promised me she didn’t plan to do that; her goal was
to save enough money to sustain her once she returned to the village. She
considered herself a divorced woman, only thinking for herself and her
children; she missed them terribly.
---
This took place about a year ago and my friend has since
returned to Wa; she is no longer with her husband and is living a life
independent of him. She took the money
she earned and is now an apprentice at her aunt’s seamstress shop. Though her experience
turned out well, not everyone is so lucky.
Education in HIV prevention is important, but efforts also
need to be put into helping safeguard these women in large and dangerous
cities; resources need to be invested in accommodating their transient status,
instead of allowing them to be subjected to street life. Something as simple as
open communication has the potential to go a long way in improving their lives;
it’s only when they become isolated from their family and homes that they are
truly in danger.
The issue with Kayayo is not that women run off to Kumasi and
ending up in prostitution; it’s about women seeking independence through
financial security. In a society that
makes them feel inferior, incapable of bettering themselves, this is often their
only choice. These women are courageous, driven, strong, and intelligent – they
know they’re going into a hard life, but they weigh the risks versus the opportunies
if they stay. The work these women do is vital – a good portion of the economy
is carried on their heads – and unless the financial and cultural situation in
the northern regions changes drastically, Kayayo is inevitable. What needs to
happen now is the investment in keeping them safe.
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