MEET GLADYS

Gladys came to visit me today. I had known her as a child when, orphaned, she had to work to support her family in serious difficulty due to the death of her father.

I was very pleased to learn that she married and devoted herself to her family. She has six children who attend primary and secondary school. Her husband had a good job, and until now, life was peaceful. Then he left her and married another woman, leaving her to provide for all her children alone.

Gladys is a tireless woman, determined to keep going as long as she can to send her children to school. Every day she looks for possible jobs to do to earn something: hoeing the fields, washing the laundry, cooking… It doesn’t matter how hard it is, if she earns something to live on and send her children to school.

But despite her commitment and effort, she can’t give them what they so desperately desire. And so this year one daughter goes to school, another drops out and will resume in a few years: this is the intermittent schooling of poor families.

She, like so many other women, wants to work. We talk at length about the past, and I piece together the missing pieces of her family. She tells me about each child, their dreams, and their desire to live life to the full, despite the daily grind.

At sunset it starts again. The road is long and all on foot, but she sets off serenely, hoping that perhaps, one day, something good might happen for her and her children. I look at her and think that African women truly deserve a Nobel Prize.