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Published: November 18th 2007
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Northern Friends for Development
This is a picture of the girls in front of the centre. They are shown with their teacher and Hawa. Note: Freedom Thursdays is a weekly Human Rights program on our Radio Station Justice FM.
Since I have arrived we have looked at a variety of topics including the efforts to eradicate Guinea Worm, Mental Illness and the stigma attached to it and the relationship between police and the community.
This month we also focused on the phenomenon of the ‘kayayoo’.
Ending Kayayoo in the North
By Nichole Huck
Kayayoo is the migration of school age girls from the rural areas in the north of Ghana to the South where they hope to find work.
The girls find themselves in menial jobs, especially head portage.
They can barely survive on their earnings and have no access to education.
Some organizations in Tamale are trying to change this by providing self-employable skills training and education.
Including an organization started by 25 year old Hawulatu Inusah.
She is the project director for Northern Friends for Development.
When she was only 23 years old Hawulatu (or Hawa as her friends call her) moved from the north of Ghana to the south to attend business school. In Ghana it’s common for young people to go south in search of education and employment.
Sewing
These girls are learning how to sew. The south has a more vibrant economy and more educational institutions.
Unfortunately - many who migrate do little to improve their situations. More than 25 thousand girls are estimated to have left their homes in the North in search of work in the south. They went with no known friends or relatives to stay with. They leave their family and friends in the rural areas and end up alone and homeless on the streets of Accra - just trying to scrape by.
The streets are filled with these young women or ‘Kayayoo’ as they are known in local language. You will see them walking the streets carrying heavy trays on their heads. They sell everything from sandals to oranges to charcoal - walking for hours in the scorching heat with the hopes of selling enough to survive.
When Hawa visited the market she would often meet these young girls who come from her home in the North.
She realized the girls had no future on the streets and they told her heartbreaking stories of sexual assault and exploitation by men who had offered the young girls temporary accommodation.
Hawa decided she needed to do something to help these girls ---
so when she returned to Tamale she started the Northern Friends for Development Centre.
She took the girls off the streets of Accra and brought them to live with her at the centre. She found people to teach the girls sewing, weaving, and hairdressing. The hope is that if they learned a skill - they would be able to support themselves. Many of the girls have not been to school and are illiterate. A local teacher began volunteering his time in the afternoons after classes to teach the girls basic literacy and numeracy.
The first time I visited the centre I met 14 old Asana. She is one of 10 girls at the centre dressed in identical blue dresses sewed by themselves.
Asana came to the centre to learn how to sew. Five of them take turns on the sewing machines - making miniature versions of dresses with the little material they have to practice with.
Another girl sits on a chair braiding the hair on a plastic head. She is learning how to be a hairdresser. It’s a trade that can earn someone a decent living in a country where many women are willing to spend an entire day
getting braids put into their hair every month.
Two other girls sit side by side on a weaving loom. It’s a tedious task - hours and hours go into each inch they produce. But weaving is a highly valued skill and people are willing to pay good money for quality work.
Asana takes time from her sewing to answer some of my questions in English. Unlike some of the other girls - she went to school for awhile. Her father is a farmer who sells yams, rice and groundnuts (like peanuts). Her mother sells oranges. Asana dropped out of school when she was 12 years old to help her mother. Every two days she would go to the market and buy 5 dollars worth of oranges. She would then wander the streets with the tray of oranges on her head. If she sold them all she would earn 7 dollars. That means her profit every two days is only about two dollars. To put that in perspective -- Two dollars will buy you a carton of juice or soy milk from a grocery store or four loaves of bread.
Asana has a one year old son - her mother takes
Singing Class
This is from our afternoon of "You are my Sunshine" care of her child while she comes to the centre. Asana says the child’s father lives with his parents and she doesn’t know how old he is. No one taught her about safe sex - birth control is frowned upon and nearly impossible to find. Large billboards scream ‘practice virgin power’ - but they don’t tell young girls how to convince an older boyfriend to wear a condom.
The girls arrive at the centre at 7:00 every weekday morning. Their teachers arrive at 8:00. The teachers are more of glorified volunteers - they earn a mere 25 dollar per month. They give their time to the centre because they believe in what it will do for the girls. Hawa tells me a good hairdresser or seamstress can make between 10 and 20 dollars a day.
The girls stay at the centre for two years. Once the teachers are satisfied they have learned their trade - they will be partnered with people in the market who will show them how to run a business. The hope is that each girl will be able to get a micro-credit loan and start her own business upon graduating.
This is not without challenges -
the girls are quite young when they graduate. Despite the literacy and numeracy classes - some will graduate without being able to read or write at a functional level.
The last time I visited the centre I was asked to teach the girls a song in English. I wrote the lyrics to “You are my Sunshine” on the old blackboard and the girls came in and opened their notebooks to start copying down the lyrics. Some of the girls had never been taught how to form the letters of the alphabet - I watched as one girl placed her hand over her classmate’s hand to show her how to form the letters. English is taught in schools - but some of the girls had never been to school so they could speak only the local language.
We translated the song into Dagboni and then began the process of trying to memorize the foreign words. The girls were enthusiastic and we had a lot of fun - we made up actions to accompany the words and took turns leading the group and dancing in a circle. But it was difficult to imagine how in two short years some of them would
English Class
This is the classroom at the Northern Friends for Development Centre be able to run their own businesses. Even after completely University I would feel overwhelmed at the thought of running my own business. But the skills they learn will definitely give them a fighting chance of improving their lives.
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Pat Ribey
non-member comment
thanks for article on Kayayoo
Hi Thanks for hearing my question re how do girls/women live in Ghana. I am working with some women to build confidence/ empower women here in rural Sask. We have internalized the core beleifs of society so much that we beleive them to be true. I wonder if this would also be true for women in Ghana? E.g promoting virgin power but not encouraging the women to use their own power to ask for what they need-even as I write this I cam imagine the resistance to this from women. I was pleased to hear about women helping women- this is key here too. Often women put other women down rather than encourage. Thanks. is there any way we could help these centres that teach skills to the girls known as Kayayoo???