Our theme was Africa. Our two guest speakers have both spent substantial periods of their lives living and working with African women. And both of our speakers, in describing their experiences, touched our hearts.
Nancy Durrell McKenna, an award-winning photographer and film-maker, has spent most of her professional life documenting the lives, rituals and traditions of women and families around the world. Originally from Canada, she’s lived most of her adult life in the UK. She talked to us about the work she has done in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa and specifically about the work done by the charity she founded in 2003, Safe Hands for Mothers. Nancy is shown on the left in the photo above, along with Margaret Wickware (c) and Camilla Gibb (r).
Her presentation shocked us with the brutal statistics of deaths of women in the continent largely caused by the lack of access to appropriate health care during pregnancy and childbirth but also by the dire consequences of child marriages and genital mutilation. It was difficult to hear the stories and see the photographs that
Nancy’s charity has disseminated to drive home the need for resources to provide assistance and education to remote communities, but also hugely inspiring to hear how one person’s vision to make a difference can become a reality. If you can contribute in any way to helping Safe Hands continue their work, please visit their website and get in touch with Nancy. She distributed information about a forthcoming ‘pilgrims walk’ to raise funds – and we wish her and Safe Hands all the best for the future. Camilla Gibb has been mentioned in an earlier blog entry. She was born in the UK, but raised in Canada and attended the University of Toronto. It was not wholly surprising to learn that Camilla and Nancy have met before, having such a shared interest in Ethiopia and the cultural issues that affect women in that country. Camilla spoke to us about how her interest in Ethiopia started. As part of her PhD studies, Camilla spent a year living with a family in Ethiopia, dressing in a way that followed local custom, and researching the religious practises of her community. But like Nancy, with her desire to make a difference, Camilla knew that she needed to move beyond her work as a social anthropologist to become a writer, so that she might communicate the emotions and feelings of the people she observed. She has certainly done this with her novel, Sweetness in the Belly.
Camilla amused us by pulling out her very dog-eared copy of her book, but we were very quickly silenced as she read to us a portion of the novel. It transported us to the house in Lambeth where advice and help was given to Ethiopian refugees who had fled horrific circumstances but who were now seeking loved ones – seeking any connection to what they had lost.Camilla and Nancy graciously answered our questions and spent time talking with individual members about their work. Please do follow the links to learn more about their work.
