Thread by @JayperryP

A reflection on Western African illiterate women diaspora in Italy.
I want to share a reflection I made a while ago.

I'm a so-called second generation migrant in Italy if Ghanaian descent, working with asylum seekers and migrants as mediator and teacher.
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#Ghanaians make a distinction between #wisdom (literally "home intelligence") and #education ("school intelligence").
Working with Africans, especially Ghanaians and Nigerians, as a mediator I can see too often there is a lack of the latter.
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I have met several illiterate or poorly educated young women (25-35 years).
Illiteracy comes with early death, exploitation, abusive relations, early parenting and – on what concerns my job – a high difficulty to understand and adapt to Italian/European system.

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Everything is written, law disciplines almost each aspect of individuals private lives. These ladies don't speak English, they can't communicate with their doctors or their children's teacher, they can't ask for an information or save their money, they often eat badly and feed

their children worse, confusing wealth with health.
At times they ignore their date of birth and their children's own.

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Without any doubt, some of the most hardworking, determined, fierce and willful women I have met are illiterate.
Yet, lack of education reduce their view and their possibilities.
A woman who can't even write her name, no matter how strong she is, will be forced to rely on her 👇🏾

children - risking to loose their respect besides loading them of a big responsibility they shouldn't have – or her partner.

#Men often turn into enemies: they take possession of their credit card and steal their money, insisting to decide how to manage it, 👇🏾

they don't really explain things to them, abandon them with kids (whilst Italian law obliges parent to pay a monthly sum to each children even after separation), and abuse them.

Our #women deal with #whitepeople's rules and #prejudices, african judgmental communities, fake 👇🏾

selfish pastors/imam's rules, families in Africa waiting for money: before they understand how to balance themselves, years have passed and gone.

The women I'm talking about are commonly poor, orphans or belong to "traditional" families where boys come before everything. 👇🏾

Their right to receive and education is stolen from them. They must clean, farm, cook, sell, bear all sorts of mistreatments.
And here we are.
How are these ladies supposed to be independent with this premises? How can they improve their lives?
I am very much concerned about 👇🏾

this issue. Education and economical independence are important for every woman but for migrants is even fundamental to survive in a foreign country, where they are even more exposed to abuse, slavery, work and sexual exploitation, delinquency, depression and death.

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Ofcourse I'm not saying *all* African women are like this or that men don't deal with suffering, illiteracy or violence. Unfortunately they do and we don't talk enough about it. But women are far way more exposed to social and family disparity. 👇🏾

We can and must do more to overcome this problems starting from our homelands. We owe it to our youth and to the future generations.

Thank you for reading.
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#ghana #nigeria #education #women #westernafrica