A friend sent me a link to this video. Please share your thoughts. Here's the site's description:
Set in rural Malawi, this 6 minute film follows the life of Mary, a widow with 8 children. Her struggles are struggles of millions of women throughout the world. A film from ICRAF* and ILRI** for International Women's Day 2010.
*World Agroforestry Center
**International Livestock Research Institute
Thanks for posting this video, Kathryn. It was inspiring to see the hopeful outcome for Mary Sabutoni and her kids. Though it’s short, the video captures a lot of the issues confronting families like Mary’s. For me, that was also the frustration of it, realizing that a 6-minute video can do only so much - kind of works in “bullet points” rather than in fuller elaboration of the issues or providing answers to my questions.
ReplyDeleteThanks indeed for sharing, Kathryn. I couldn't agree more with Heather, it's an inspiring story that leaves so many questions unanswered at the same time. My only reservation is the incompleteness of the information that is contained in the clip - is it really that Mary had never heard about fruit trees? I grew up in a very rural area in Malawi (similar to Mary’s) and back then I remember my mother would encourage us to plant trees around the home during rainy seasons. We did the same thing in elementary school. My assumption is that probably what the project/organization did was simply to encourage her and the others in her community to plant trees, and then provided them with the necessary inputs.
ReplyDeleteAlso, is it really that Mary's improved living conditions were purely a result of the soil fertility-enhancing trees that she planted in her field (which supposedly led to higher crop yields)? In Malawi, where most soils are degraded from growing maize on the same plot every year, you are almost condemned if you don’t apply chemical fertilizer to your crop. Such technologies as intercropping maize with legume trees are only meant as supplements, you cannot use them in isolation and get so better yields. Was there anything else that the organization did to support Mary that is not stated in the video clip? But then maybe it’s all because they tried to squeeze everything into 6 minutes. Probably some of these questions would be answered in a much longer video of what the organization did in Mary’s community.
And lastly, while the translation was quite good overall, I felt like there were some parts that could have been done much better. An example in point is at 02:09 where Mary says “we gathered together in our village and agreed to start a group” but it is translated as “My husband died of AIDS” (something she never mentioned herself, although she later said she has HIV).