How to Make a Bundle – Ann Jones in Liberia

Preparing for the final photo show, Chocolate City photographer Margaret Wolo (left) offers a look at her latest snaps to Navanita Bhattacharya,  then GBV Coordinator for Liberia.  Navanita subsequently joined the GBV Technical Unit to become GBV Technical Advisor for West Africa. Photo: Ann Jones

The International Rescue Committee is working with women’s advocate Ann Jones to help women in war zones — survivors of conflict, displacement and sexual and domestic violence — use photography to make their voices heard. Ann is blogging the year-long project from West Africa. If you’re just joining us, you can read her earlier posts from Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia here. Monrovia, Liberia Our time in Liberia is coming to an end.  We return to Monrovia to plan a big two-day workshop—to culminate in the first-ever all-women’s photography exhibition in Liberia.  We invite all the Global Crescendo photographers from Montserrado and Lofa Counties.  For good measure we invite a delegation from Nimba County as well.  Road conditions kept us from traveling to Nimba County to conduct the photo project, but we know the Nimba women have a lot to give and to gain from joining the discussions. On the first day, women from the three counties get together to talk about their photos—good practice for the upcoming show.  Many of the photos depict acts of violence—committed in public in the plain light of day with complete impunity.  Acts of violence intended to punish women for things they’ve done or force them to do things they do not want to do.  Acts of violence intended to control the lives of women. “What problems do women and girls have as a result of violence?”  Country GBV Coordinator Navanita Bhattacharya raises the question. The women make a long list.  “HIV, AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, excision (female genital mutilation), forced marriage, forced pregnancy, forced labor, rape, fistula, other internal injuries, broken bones, paralysis, miscarriage, stress, frustration, depression, fear, deprivation of education, exclusion from decision making, denial of choice, consignment to servitude, deprivation of health care, death.  “If the violence continues, it will finish us,” photographer Patience Walker says.  “We must fight back.” During the final two-day workshop, Global Crescendo photographers and other participants worked intently on their collective agenda for social change to create a better, more peaceful Liberia. In this planning group are (left to right): photographers Kulah Barbor and Finda Saah, GBV Assistant Program Manager Esther Karnley,  and photographers Margaret Wolo and Mantina Capard. Photo: Ann Jones The women illustrate their problems in drawings and dramatic sketches.  (Who needs cameras?)   We see wives beaten, pregnant women abandoned, girls raped, girls kept from school, girl students seduced by their teachers, pregnant girl students expelled from school, widows forced to yield their dead husband’s property, married women forced to submit to their sexual “duty,” young girls forcibly married, girls and women forcibly impregnated.  “Can this situation be changed?” Navanita asks.  The women shout, “Yes!” Turning to areas of great public concern, the women discuss health care, education, and the law.  They find it impossible to do so without speaking of the violence against women that underlies everything.  There is too little health care, they say. It’s too expensive.  And few health care workers are trained to treat survivors of gender-based violence.  Education is thought to be the rightful province of boys.  Girls are kept from school to labor at home, or to marry.  Girls enrolled in school are forced out by the sexual predation of their teachers.  Law scarcely applies.  There’s no law against domestic violence or marital rape (a wife’s “duty”).  Judges are incompetent or venal.  “Any man can put a flag in front of his house and call himself a judge,” says one woman.  Police and magistrates regard assaults on women as unimportant.  They take bribes.  They blame the victim.  They compromise cases at the expense of the victim.  They exploit the victim, offering her a hearing in exchange for a little sex on the side.  The law serves only those with money—men. Against such obstacles, Navanita launches the dreams of women.  What do they hope for?  “We want to be safe in our homes, in our country, and that is our right,” says one.  Another says, “We have a right to dream of a free, safe Liberia.  It is possible.” What would they like to see in five years’ time?  Vera dreams that all the ruins will be rebuilt and all the girls and boys will go to school together.  Anna hopes to walk freely in the streets, without fear of attack.  Mantina hopes that women and girls may be safe in their homes. Annie hopes that women will be self-employed.  Esther dreams that girls will be educated and taking up positions in government. All the women dream of the day when Liberian streets will be safe for girls to be girls. Photo: Kulah Barbor It’s time to break out the flip charts and make action plans.  The women know what needs to be done.  But who will do it?  How?  And how will they know if it’s working? By noon of the second day of the workshop, the women have produced finely detailed lists of answers to those questions.  Plus a timeline.  What’s to be done by whom next year, next month, next week, and right now this very day.  Well, maybe they can’t jail all bribe-taking magistrates today, but even to speak of it is an act of courage and self-affirmation—and a step in the right direction. The women speak of all kinds of brave, new-fangled things.  One says, “Your husband beats you, you take your case to court, your husband knows the judge, and the case is closed.”  But someone else says, “If we got together all the women this happened to, we’d have a big crowd.  We could go back to court together.” The women smile at the prospect.  One says, “We could sit there.  In the court. Together.” Betty, from Nimba County, says:  “We are like a bundle of sticks.  If the bundle is loose, men can pluck us out, one at a time, and break us.  But a tight bundle of sticks cannot be broken.” Then it is time for the grand finale—the first all women’s photo exhibition in the history of Liberia.  I’ll tell you about that next time.

Frisky Women – Ann Jones in Liberia

Husbands say to “frisky” women who point out work that needs to be done, “You’re equal.  You do it.”   These no-nonsense women are cleaning up their neighborhood in Topoe Village in Montserrado County. Photo: Rebecca Freeman

The International Rescue Committee is working with women’s advocate Ann Jones to help women in war zones — survivors of conflict, displacement and sexual and domestic violence — use photography to make their voices heard. Ann is blogging the year-long project from West Africa. If you’re just joining us, you can read her earlier posts, starting in Cote d’Ivoire, here. The story continues in Liberia, where Ann is posting updates and photos on Mondays and Thursdays. Voinjama, Liberia The most powerful radio station in Liberia belongs to UNMIL, the United Nations Mission in Liberia.  Everybody listens to UNMIL, even though UNMIL pipes some fairly heavy-handed propaganda into the air.  Every morning you can catch reggae legend Joseph Hill singing, “Stand up and do something for yourself.”  Half the unemployed men in Liberia must be rousted from bed by Joe Hill nagging:   “Can’t you be a mechanic? Can’t you teach yourself to paint a house? . . .Can’t you make a pair of shoes? Can’t you do something with the tailor? Get up and do something for yourselves Rise up and work!” For women, UNMIL radio has other ideas.  “You’re a woman,” the syrupy male announcer says.  “You can be anything you want to be.  Be proud of yourself.  You’re beautiful.”  Then comes John Lennon singing his Yoko anthem: “I love you, now and forever.” Men may need a Rasta push to get to work, but women don’t need another love song. Love is what gets too many in trouble.  Women talking about violence against women, always name—near the top of the list—“denial.”  That’s the violence done to a girl or woman by a man who seduces her with promises of love “now and forever,” impregnates her, and then denies paternity. That’s what women in Dougoumai say the local magistrate recently did to another young woman.  The Women’s Action Group tried to help her during her pregnancy, but they say she often went without food for days on end.  I meet her when she comes to a women’s meeting without her new baby.  She’s taken it to the magistrate’s office and left it on his desk.As the husband of Oritha, a photographer from Kolahun, remarked: “IRC is making the women frisky.” Oritha responded, “IRC just told me my rights.  I can figure out the rest myself.” Maybe women have been listening to the wrong song on UNMIL radio.  All at once there seem to be a lot of them rising up to do something for themselves. Next up on the morning radio roster is “Everyday Talk” with cohosts Sharon and Fauzia.  Their show is nothing like the ponderous night time talk shows aimed at men who call in to voice their opinions about whether Samuel Doe or Charles Taylor was the better president.  Sharon and Fauzia ask real questions like, “Is there any future in loving a married man or woman?”  And when all the callers say they’d never do it, Sharon and Fauzia say, “Hey, it’s goin’ on out there right now, people!  Get real!” It’s nearing graduation time, and Fauzia sends out congratulations to her “little sister” about to “come out” from the University of Liberia:  “Be all that you can be,” she says.  “Don’t get married now.  Go for the Master’s first.”  Sharon and Fauzia are smart and funny.  They give good advice, and they don’t take any crap.  A male caller addresses Sharon as “dear.”  She says, “ My name is Sharon.  You got that?” Never underestimate the revolutionary potential of a woman president.  Suddenly women show up in jobs held only by men before, and in Liberia men cannot object.  Even die hard male chauvinists admit that men destroyed the country.  In Lofa County everyone lives in the midst of ruins.  Men go to the bush to cut poles from which they construct a simple house frame.  They fill the frame with mud and grass and roof it with thatch or, if they can afford it, corrugated zinc.  All around stand the ruins of substantial and attractive concrete houses that few can afford to build anymore.  Domestic architecture has reverted to an earlier century, thanks to the misrule of men. Photographer Hajah Kamara and her proud husband, snapped by Hajah’s camera partner. Photo: Komassa Malay It’s the hour of women in Liberia.  Frisky women.  I’m walking though Voinjama with the photographers when we meet a security guard who happens to be married to one of them.  He poses with his arm around his wife while her partner takes their picture.  Beaming, he says, “I never knew girls could snap.” His wife Hajah says, “Girls can do anything.”  It’s a new feeling for the photographers, but it’s growing on them. In the next street we come upon an incredible sight.  A woman on a motorcycle.  A big one.  Wearing boots and jeans, she’s straddling the machine, preparing to ride.  She looks like one tough cookie.  The photographers encircle her, snapping as fast as they can.  She eases back on her bike and gives the women a big smile.  The shot they want.  Then she dons her helmet, revs her bike, and peels off.  The photographers burst into cheers, waving goodbye.  They tell me excitedly who she is.  As the superintendant of roads, she rides her motorcycle all over the county, supervising repairs. A classy role model for frisky women: The Lofa County Superintendant of Roads. Photo: Annie Koiwu There aren’t a lot of role models yet in Liberia for these new frisky women.  But the few that exist are fine.  Many NGOs, including IRC, still offer women training in tie dye and soap making; and women gratefully learn these modest skills.  But what they really want to be is Sharon or Fauzia.  Or President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  What they really want to be is County Superintendant of Roads.

Hocus Pocus – Ann Jones in Liberia

Christianity is a powerful force in Liberia, as is Islam. Photo: Anna Snyder

The International Rescue Committee is working with women’s advocate Ann Jones to help women in war zones — survivors of conflict, displacement and sexual and domestic violence — use photography to make their voices heard. Ann is blogging the year-long project from West Africa.Their story continues in Liberia, where Ann is posting updates and photos on Mondays and Thursdays into February.Talk about women’s rights in Liberia and it’s not long before some man marches out God. He’ll say, “Men are in charge of women because that’s the way God wants it.”Women answer back. Kebeh, who is not literate and has never heard of Shakespeare, says, “Women and men are the same: born in the same way in the same place. If you cut us, we bleed.”Sangai says, “If God wanted woman to be under man, he could have made her from Adam’s foot. But no, he took the man’s rib—to show we supposed to be side by side.”Annie says, “We supposed to be a helper. You want to move that table, I help you. I want to move that table, you help me. That’s how that works.”Kormassa says, “It’s not God saying we supposed to be under men. It’s culture.”Annie says, “Yeah, we used to have to walk on our knees because of culture. And we did it because we always have to look to feed our children. But now we stand up.” Kubor says, “It was only culture that made the boy child ‘better’ in the first place.” “What is this ‘culture’?” I ask. “Where did it come from?” Oritha says, “Human beings made culture.” “What if women made culture?” I ask. Kebeh says, “Women made culture already, but men don’t respect it. They use their power to keep it down.” Oritha says, “They use violence to keep it down. That’s what this gender-based violence is for.” God and Allah don’t come into the equation as these women analyze life. It’s men, not gods, who keep women down. Yet standing up is not easy. Sangai says, “We know about our rights now. But men say the GBV program will go away, and then our rights won’t do us any good because we be left without men of our own to take care of us.” Oritha tosses her head. “I don’t care,” she says. “I’ll carry my soap to market and sell it and buy food for my children.” These women are defiant, but they tell me of other man-made rules harder to challenge. God and Allah, it seems, are nothing compared to the power of witchcraft or the spirit world or what these women call “African signs.” “Women are not allowed to cut in the palms,” Sangai says. She means that women and girls are forbidden to climb palm trees and cut the fruit from which valuable palm oil is made. Some women have tried, and all of them have come to a bad end. First they are said to be not women but “monkeys” who climb trees. Then, if they persist, they are killed. “How are they killed,” I ask. “Who kills them?” “They just die,” Sangai says. “They are killed with spirits.” This phenomenon has been well documented in Africa: a person violates a taboo, then quickly sickens and dies for no discernable physical reason. Western observers attribute such inexplicable deaths to the power of belief. “But why would women be killed for climbing palms?” I ask. “Ah,” says Kebeh. “There’s money there.” Simple as that. The Masonic Temple, heavily damaged during the wars, is Monrovia’s most impressive building. The secret brotherhood still influences Liberian life, to the detriment of women. Photo: Ann Jones Yet not simple at all. Liberia is layered with “culture” and traditions of different origins, different vintages, different potencies—all of them arrayed against women. The largest building in the capital is an immense Masonic Temple, built by members of the secret fraternity. One more tradition, like Christianity, that the Americo-Liberians brought back with them from the New World. Until the reign of Americo-Liberians ended in 1980, every Liberian president was a master Mason. Some of their secrets spilled into the streets, and to this day the simple act of shaking hands is an intricate exercise in finger-snapping interdigitation that separates the elite from the excluded. Speaking of a rape case, one woman tells me: “A man walks into court, shakes hands with the judge, and the case is decided right there.” One of the photographers tells another story—about the firewood ceremony. Every so often the girls and women who are initiates of the Sande bush are required to carry firewood to the head woman. They must walk through the village wearing only skimpy panties. Village men stand by to ogle the procession of near-naked women. The photographer says the ceremony is humiliating. She wants to protest—to refuse to participate. But in recent years two women did so, and both of them died—killed by “African signs.” She believes that if she refuses, she too will be killed by “the spirits.” Even to speak of these taboos is to risk certain death. Yet this woman speaks. Hocus pocus, you may say. But try to imagine the courage of this woman who believes in the power of witchcraft as surely as you believe in the law of gravity. And the Sande bush? What is that? It’s another secret society, this one for girls whose mothers hand them over at a very young age to women called “Zoes,” who take them away into the bush and initiate them in secret knowledge and secret procedures. The Zoes slice off a girl’s clitoris and her labia, and then bind her legs together while her wounds seal as scars. The best alternative to the “Sande bush”—where girls are subjected to genital mutilation—is the public school. These girls may have a chance for a better future. Photo: Komassa Malay Kuleh, a photographer from Montserrado County, was taken as a girl to the Sande bush and mutilated in this way. Years later, as a married woman, she felt the old scars torn, the old wounds ripped apart, each time she gave birth. Now she has a mission. She tells women: “Don’t send your daughters to the Sande bush. Send them to school.” Sometimes women listen, and sometimes girls are saved. The Sande bush, Zoes, spirits, African signs, witchcraft, “tradition,” Masons, Allah, God, men. That’s what women are up against in Liberia.

‘Suffering Greatly’ – Ann Jones in Liberia

Liberian “leaders” such as Charles Taylor financed their wars by selling off timber in the country’s precious virgin rain forests.  They are responsible for desolation like this. Photo: Ann Jones

The International Rescue Committee is working with women’s advocate Ann Jones to help women in war zones — survivors of conflict, displacement and sexual and domestic violence — use photography to make their voices heard. Ann is blogging the year-long project from West Africa. If you’re just joining us, you can read her first series of posts from Cote d’Ivoire at theIRC.org/16days The story continues in Liberia, where Ann is posting updates and photos on Mondays and Thursdays into February. Voinjama, Liberia One day, after weeks of working with Global Crescendo photographers in and around Monrovia, I board a UN helicopter for Lofa County.  With me is Program Manager CarmenLeah Ascensio, from the New York office, lending a hand in Liberia.  It was Navanita Bhattacharya, the GBV Coordinator for Liberia, who asked us to work in both an urban and a rural setting.  Lofa County in the far north is definitely “rural.”  Hence, the helicopter. It’s a spectacular flight, cruising at times over the canopy of intact rainforest.  But often we look down on forests decimated by logging—second growth, bush, and clearcut patches where forests may never grow again. Charles Taylor financed his war and his presidency by selling off virgin timber to foreign loggers.  It’s another kind of rape that cannot be repaired. In the little town of Voinjama we meet ten Lofa County women named by their Women’s Action Groups to take part in the photo project.  Four of them are from Voinjama, the other six from two smaller towns an hour or so away by road.  The Montserrado County photographers worked solo in their home communities—and they continue to work with coordinator Marian Rogers while we’re away—but I want the Lofa County photographers to have a chance at teamwork.  I ask them to pick a partner from their own town, then give each partnership a camera and run through basic instructions: how to point and how to shoot. Hajah Kamara (center) helps team mate Kpana Malay (right) take their first photographs.  At left, looking on anxiously is IRC social worker Hannah Sammie, who assisted the Global Crescendo project in Lofa County. Photo: Ann Jones Then we’re off on a walk through town, shooting as we go.  The women take teamwork seriously: one points the camera, the other pushes the shutter release button.  One asks permission, the other composes the photo.  One shoots, the other explains to the photo subjects why the Women’s Action Group is taking pictures and what exactly is wrong with beating your wife. For the next two weeks I’m scheduled to travel daily with IRC social worker Hannah Sammie to visit the teams in their home communities.  Sometimes CarmenLeah will come along, but often she’ll stay in the Voinjama office, attending to behind-the-scenes details that make this project possible.  As I did in Montserrado County, I sit with the local Women’s Action Group to listen and learn, and then we walk through the community “snapping.”  But Lofa County is different.  It got the worst of Charles Taylor’s war.  Sitting with women’s groups, I hear stories that make me weep. One day I return to the office to find CarmenLeah going up in flames. She’s been reading a report on Liberia from a prominent international organization.  It elaborates on a popular historical theory I mentioned before: that war sprang from the resentment of slighted young men.   Amid 92 pages of empathic explanation of the grievances of “marginalized young people” who wrecked their country, CarmenLeah has come upon a paragraph devoted to the sub-topic: “Gender.”  It includes this sentence: “Women suffered greatly during the war.” “Suffered greatly?” CarmenLeah is shrieking.  “Is that all they can say?  What does it mean?” I can tell her what it means because I’ve just come from Kolahun District where one member of the Women’s Action Group showed me the scars on the left side of her neck:  a series of parallel horizontal wounds starting just below the ear and moving down, toward the throat.  Some guerilla locked this thin whisper of a woman against his chest and slowly, inch by inch, laid open the flesh of her neck in ribbons of blood. That wasn’t all they did to her.  Charles Taylor’s men broke all the fingers of her left hand so they point backward now, stuck at impossible angles.  They slammed her in the back with  rifle butts so that one leg is paralyzed, and one arm too, the one with the useless hand.  She can still walk, leaning on a home made wooden crutch.  But that leaves her no good arm; and she can’t carry anything on her head, having no good balance.  She has five children, some of them fathered by rape.  The soldiers held her a long time.  They made her cook for them.  How many raped her she cannot say.  She tells me she has a problem: the room in which she lives leaks.  Every day it rains hard, and every day her children get wet.  She would like to be able to keep her children dry. Global Crescendo photographer Kebeh Jallah took this photo of her sister, the village “sick woman.”  Gang raped by militia men, she is partially paralyzed and bed ridden. The white chalky substance visible on her skin is said to relieve pain. Photo: Kebeh Jallah CarmenLeah knows such things herself.  She was with me the day before in Dougoumai when Kebeh, one of the photographers, took us to meet her sister.  The woman people refer to only as “the sick lady” lay on a bed in the one-room house.  She sat up to greet us, using twisted hands to move her swollen useless legs. She was captured by a militia fighting against Charles Taylor and gang raped repeatedly by ten men.  Nobody can say how long they kept her. They rammed their gun butts into her back—a common technique it seems—so that her legs are paralyzed.  They smashed her hands.  She cannot stand or walk.  She cannot hold anything in her hands or feed herself or comb her hair.  Her face is oddly dislocated too from too many blows.  She speaks but I can’t make out her words. Her sister says she is asking if I can bring her a dish.  Her mother and her sisters cook for her and feed her by hand.  But she would like to have her own dish.  Her own spoon.

West Point – Ann Jones in Liberia

The West Point Women’s Action Group leads a campaign to clean up the main street. Photo: Kulah Barbor

The International Rescue Committee is working with women’s advocate Ann Jones to help women in war zones — survivors of conflict, displacement and sexual and domestic violence — use photography to make their voices heard. Ann is blogging the year-long project from West Africa. If you’re just joining us, you can read her first series of posts from Cote d’Ivoire at theIRC.org/16daysThe story continues in Liberia, where Ann is posting updates and new photos on Mondays and Thursdays. I go every day with Marian Rogers, our local coordinator, and other IRC social workers to the home community of one of our photographers.  I join the Women’s Action Group to listen and learn.  Then I take a long walk with the photographer, taking pictures. Women from the action group come along, coaching their photographer, making sure she sees what they see. One of my first stops is West Point, the poorest, most densely populated community in the capital: a garbage strewn, fly infested warren of mud and zinc hovels squeezed between beaches where a land spit slides into the sea.  West Point’s location is so idyllic it might have been Malibu.  But it isn’t. The Women’s Action Group meets in the town “justice” hall.  Up front near the door a clerk takes down the legal complaints of people who drift in off the street, while in the back of the room I jot in my notebook the concerns of thirty women.   Women smoke fish on the West Point waterfront. Photo:  Kulah Barbor “Rape is rampant,” says the first woman to speak.  “It goes on every day.  Young girls be raped.  Children be raped.” “Then what happens?” I ask.  I know that one of the first acts of President Sirleaf’s government was a strict new rape law.  The legislature excluded rape in marriage from the law—sexual service being a wife’s “duty”—but a few men have received long sentences for raping women other than their wives.   “Nothing happens,” comes the reply from all sides.  “It is shame for the family.  The parents, the child, they don’t talk about it.” “They make compromise,” says the chairwoman.  “For money.  Maybe just small, small. Or maybe if the man is rich, the parents can get two or three thousand Liberian dollars.”  (That’s $100 to $150 American.) “So the parents know who the rapist is?” I ask. “Yes, yes.”  “But they don’t report him?  They don’t go to the police?” “No, no.  It is shame for the family.”  At last I see: the family is shamed because the rapist is part of the family.  An uncle.  A brother-in-law.  A cousin’s nephew.  There are other reasons for not reporting the rapist.  Sometimes the family is afraid of him.  More often they feel sorry for him. “Maybe he is a student,” one woman says.  “If he is reported, his future is damaged.” “What about the future of the girl he raped?” I ask. “Nobody thinks of that,” says an old woman. “Why not?” The old woman looks at me with sad, patient eyes.  “Because she be girl.” One woman wants to blame the victims.  “Look at the way young girls dress,” she says.  “Like they looking to be raped.” Another woman, displaced from the north, says, “Don’t be blaming them.  Even Muslim women who go with the whole body wrapped, even they get raped.” The chairwoman says, “Even wives staying in the house can be raped by the husbands.” Another woman says, “My neighbor’s daughter was raped.  She is four years old.” West Point is one of the most violent areas in Monrovia.  Girls are not safe. Photo:  Kulah Barbor We sit in silence for a while—just sitting with the presence of violence that for these women is as relentless as rain, and as ungovernable.  Then they tell me more. About all the men who impregnate girls, by rape or seduction, and then abandon them.  About the Fulas who beat their multiple wives every day.  About the man who, having paid the bride price, often beats his prospective wife with a canoe paddle in the public street.  About men from Guinea who traffic young girls to Monrovia for prostitution. “What can you do about these things?” I ask. They report some rape cases to the police.  They bring survivors to talk with IRC social workers who are here in the community every day.  They bring the pregnant girls and women who have been abandoned, and they take their cases to the association of women lawyers, seeking support from the fathers.  They campaign for government regulation of “video clubs,” private businesses that show x-rated, violent, and pornographic films.  The four year old rape victim was attacked by a twelve year old on his way home from a video club, trying to “practice” what he had seen.  (In 2005-06, a Medecins Sans Frontieres study found that 85 percent of rape victims were younger than 18; 48 percent were between the ages of 5 and 12.) “Where you find poverty, you find hungry men,” says the old woman.  “Where you find hungry men, you find violence.”  She is talking about men hungry for riches, hungry for power.  “Men who have a little something do violence to the vulnerable to get something more.” Later we walk through the back alleys of West Point.  On the sea side at the far edge of the community, lean hard-muscled men are making a fishing boat as their grandfathers did, digging out a massive log for the keel.  Along the shore, women tend fires in sooty oil drums overlaid with wire screens.  They spread the day’s catch upon the screens and move among the drums, through smoke and scorching heat, to flip small silvery fish as they dry and blacken.  These are old arts, but the fish are small now and sparse, the boats small and less tightly made.   The broad beach beyond is buried in trash and reeking garbage. As we walk back, women mention things we haven’t seen—government schools, a hospital, a clinic, a playground for children, a women’s center.  They do not exist.  The women lead me to a very small windowless building.  An international NGO promised to build a women’s center but quit after putting up the ground floor and a stairway to the nonexistent second storey.  After many months, the Women’s Action Group has scraped together enough money to pay a man to close the stairwell so they can use the ground floor. Watching him work, the chairwoman says, “When we have our meeting place, we can make bread.”