Reviewing The Joys of Motherhood

I really enjoyed reading The Joys of Motherhood. I really got a sense of what it must have been like to live in Ibuza and Lagos back then. Most striking about the book to me was how their society lived. When I first started reading the book I was shocked how all the men had several wives, and the term senior wife for the first wife the man had ever taken. I knew there were societies that had such practices but I had never read in depth about it. Reading this story really let me put myself in their society/tribe and put myself in their shoes.


Being a female I found myself through out my reading of the book having many objections, thoughts, and feelings in regards to how all the women were being treated. The women were so looked down upon and education for girls was seen as a waste. When a baby girl was born it was always such a "disappointment" to the fathers. Like the girls were worthless and only sons were the ones they should take pride in. One thing the fathers did like about the girls was when they married they received a handsome bride price. But the women were not even allowed to choose their own husband. The women were controlled almost totally by their husbands and or fathers.


The concept of strongly tied families was an important one to the characters tribes in this book. Families had a lot of expectations of their children, like the expectation and assumption that their male children were to take care take care of them. To me it almost seemed in the book that they only had children to eventually profit from them. An example is when towards the end of the story(pg.200-202) when Oshia is going to go to school in America, his father Nnaife becomes enraged by this and asks him when was going to take on his family responsibilities(which mean taking care of the rest of his siblings in the household). Oshia had no idea of these responsibilities and was puzzled by his fathers question, and he was even going to ask his father for monetary help. Nnaife disowned him and said he never wanted to see him again. Oshia's mother Nnu Ego felt the opposite it seems because she wanted to help her children as much as she could and wanted them to become as educated as they could.



If Ona and Nnu Ego had an opportunity for micro-finance I believe their stories could have had a different ending. For Ona if she could have started her own business it would have let her be self sufficient, which would have been good because she was always having to do as her father wished. A small business would have suited her well because she was very independent and strong willed in her ways of thinking.

As far as micro-financing with Nnu Ego it could have really changed her life for the better. She was already very ambitious as far as that she sold a few things in the market already. She worked very hard to sell what she could like collecting sticks to sell as firewood or selling cigarettes. But the trading she did do was never going to make her rich. With micro-financing she could have started a somewhat bigger business and could have had a more steady income coming in. She might have even been able to hire other women to work for her. Nnu Ego could have been able to make money to take care of her children with out having to worry about how much her husband would be bringing home and if it would be enough to cover everything. I think she would have been a much happier woman with her own successful small business.
And another note in the New York Times article it talked about how those in poverty spent too much money on candy and alcohol, then we see in the book how Nnaife spent lots of money on Palm wine. Money that could have gone towards food for the children or their schools fees. This New York Times article ties in very well with the Joys of Motherhood.


For both these women micro-financing would have given them more Independence and would have not let the men have as much control over them. While their tribe and society values were very set in their own ways if changes happened slowly they would have been eventually accepted. Especially because these programs would help bring more money into the hands of women which means more money would be spent on nutritious food, health care, and on children. It would also increase the standard of living overall.

Thinking about the Women's Crusade article

This article was very insightful and in some ways inspiring to me, which I will explain later. After reading the article it made me realize just how unpublicized these women's issues are. As it said in the article how a lot of the women issues are considered "soft" issues, which they should not be, these issues are very serious and cause a lot of damage to both the women and their societies they live in. In my opinion I feel that front page news has gotten in the rut of always putting international issues about war, politics, and economy on the front line. There should be a change to what is considered front page worthy, or there should be other humanitarian issues included at least.

I felt very inspired after reading about Tererai and how she set her goals and buried them in the tin can and how she has now reached every single one of the goals she set. The were huge goals but she overcame what must have been very difficult obstacles and achieved what she wanted. I thought to myself if this is possible then what is not possible?

Looking at three different news source's

After observing and following Al Jazeera, Guardian, and ABCNews(the one I picked) I have made comparisons between the three and have found many differences. First off, when looking at the home page before clicking any links, I saw instantly differences in the way news stories were presented on the homepage. For example, when looking at Al Jazeera in comparison with the other two, the homepage contained only what I would call "real news stories" meaning there was no entertainment news stories like there were on the Guardian and ABCNews homepage.


I was able to find an article on all three sites that discussed the NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization) air strike in Kunduz Afghanistan. This headline article was about NATO jets bombing two fuel tankers believed to have been hijacked by the Taliban, causing an explosion injuring and killing many Afghanistan civilians in the area. After reading the three similar articles I was able to see that all three news sources had different points of view when talking about the story.



ABCNews gives lots of details about the bombing and also states how civilian casualties have lately been reduced in Afganistan. The article puts "blame" so to speak on NATO German troops, saying they called in the attack fearing the hijacked tankers would be used in suicide attacks at it's nearby military base. This was the only place of the three articles I reviewd that mentioned Germany. ABCNews talked much more about the actual incident then in the Guardian. This is the link for the ABCNews story http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=8497657&page=1

The Guardians article did not really talk about the actual incident that happened in Kunduz. The article stated how this air strike(added to other incidents involving civilian deaths that have happened) would lead President Obama to "suffer the same fate as President Bush." The remainder of the article talked about troop deployment that would increase in the U.S. and NATO's involvement in the war. Link for Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/04/afghanistan-taliban-nato-air-strike

These two articles had two very different agendas they each wanted to cover in their article. I thought it was interesting how the Guardian's front page article about this story gave so few details about the event.

I found the article on Al Jazeera to be the most interesting in my opinion about this NATO bombing story. I was able to get a sense of the emotion that those in Afghanistan felt when reading the article written from their point of view, which is something your not going to get from any other news source besides the one where the event has taken place. This article made the Afganistan civilians seem more human, not just oh some more civilians were killed over in Afganistan. They seam more human to me in his article because for example the article said that it was a sad place there, and how bodies were taken to the mosque and people were praying. Later in the article it is stated how those who were injured in the attack had all lost family. Having heard this from their prospective it made me see how they are not inhuman as we are given the feeling here in America. I think being so far away and hearing only our coverage on global stories like this one make us feel detached from the situation to where we don't think that these people are the same as us, when in reality they have family, friends and lives just like us. Al Jazera article link http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/09/200994465561117.html