It was Wednesday and Elliot’s teacher informed me after school that he was part of the Eid Al-Adha assembly, and would need one of the long white Muslim gowns for it. Could I source one by Friday? I thought I’d seen them being sold at a mosque just around the […]
There’s stacks to unpack from the list of good and bad husbands and wives that a Tanzanian friend posted in a whatsapp group recently. I will only make two observations here, one about the husband list and one about the wife list. Husbands: economic care must include the emotional My […]
The other day a Tanzanian friend shared over a whatsapp group qualifications of a good husband or a good wife. Each one began with a list and explanation of lesser types of husbands and wives. Today I provide summary translation of the qualifications of husbands and wives. In the next […]
When I was a little girl and I did something wrong, my instinct was always to justify on the basis that I was provoked, or one of my sisters did something worse…. “But she…” or “But what about her?” My mum would ask me, “Who are we talking about here […]
President Magufuli’s reasoning against pregnant girls returning to secondary school was that they would be distracted from their studies by breastfeeding their babies. I found this somewhat surprising, because a friend of mine in Dodoma had told me about how at her workplace, breastfeeding women are given regular breaks to […]
I’ve been thinking about the idea of ‘rights’ recently, more specifically human rights. I’ve been thinking about it in relation to breastfeeding, which in Australian law is a right not a privilege. The hungry baby has the right to be fed without delay, and the mother has the right to […]
Tanzania’s President John Magufuli has introduced a ban on teenage mothers returning to school. His emphasis has been on the consequences after the fact; he cites their ‘distraction’ from their studies as the reason they are not allowed back. (There has been limited discussion of how these girls got pregnant. […]
Meet Jesus at uni 