Perspectives
Sitting next to an interesting chap on a flight back from Prague who runs a film production company, I found myself moaning about the cold Bordeaux and the delayed departure of the flight. I came across two emails in my burgeoning Inbox this week that I wanted to share as I guess we all benefit from seeing a broader picture. These two messages make me feel incredibly humble, appreciative of my lot and less likely to moan about cold Bordeaux. It's also worth noting that Luna manages to run a successful IT business in these circumstances.
From: Ms. Constantine Obuya, Executive Director, The African Centre for Women, Information & Communications Technology (ACWICT)
Hello Dana,
Thank you for your email. It is good to know of your concern for us. My family and the ACWICT team are okay. The situation in the country is not very stable but there is hope considering the Kofi Annan led negotiations. Our program activities have been hampered to a great extent especially those located in the western and Rift Valley Regions.
These regions have had spates of violence as they the stronghold of the popular party, ODM.
Our Nairobi Centre was however not affected and is slowly beginning to pick up although restricted movement and displacements still make it difficult for our beneficiaries to attend classes.
We are now working out ways of getting back to work on a program that had just begun changing lives of women and girls in many ways. In the light of the post election crisis, ACWICT is involved in the peace building initiatives within a consortium of humanitarian NGOs in Kenya.
ACWICT was identified as a key partner in the Media and Public Communication cluster of the "Heal the Nation" campaign. Within this cluster, ACWICT will work alongside the mainstream media as well as media focussed NGOs.
The Media and Public Communication cluster is charged with generating and disseminating peace messages in an effort to heal the rifts caused by post election violence in Kenya. ACWICT will use its e-governance for gender equality strategy to disseminate the peace messages.
Key components of this strategy include the GGP website-www.gendergovernancekenya.org, USAWA electronic news bulletin, the Short Message Services (SMS) and online discussion forums.
Women who are our target have borne the greatest brunt in the violence. As is common in any situation of conflict, men succumb to injuries leaving women as heads of households. Any support, financial or in kind, would help our efforts to reach out to these women and give them hope.
We will keep you posted of any developments
Best Regards, Constantine
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From: Luna Shamsuddoha, Dohatec New Media, Dhaka
Hi Claire
Thank you for your kind thoughts. I and my family are well. It was one of the worst cyclones that one can remember, the storm width was bigger than that of Bangladesh. Death toll so far is about 1700 but there were massive/colossal damages to crops and properties. Communication system has been very badly hit. It is reported that coastal areas had water surge as high as 20- 30 feet. It is also said that the Sundarbans, the mangrove forest around the southern coast of Bangladesh famous for Royal Bengal Tigers, was able to provide some kind of protection. Dhaka is about 300 miles away but it took its toll, it was battered badly when the storm went by us. There was no power in the country until late last night, only restored in very few places (we were one of the lucky ones), and no water supply either. It is presumed would be weeks before power will be completely restored. We have a some kind of early warning system that works and about 1.6 million people were able to reach high ground concrete storm shelters. But there are still millions out there, we have many islands around the belt that is unaccounted for. I believe it will be days before we know the extent of damage. Bangladesh is in any case going through uncertain times politically and economically, situation is very difficult. Bangladeshis are known for their resilience but this time I have no clue what will happen.
