Literacy Bridge
When we interviewed Nadowli Kuubataanono, a farmer and traditional birth attendant, she spoke about how she uses her Talking Book for health, agriculture, and livestock. But Nadowli also used the Talking Book to present her concerns about girls dropping out of school and migrating to the cities for work.
She hopes Talking Books can help governments and people everywhere to better understand the issues that are important to people living in remote villages — people without literacy skills or access to electricity.
I am going to use this opportunity to plead to the government about our daughters’ education. As a member of the food committee, we don’t want all of these efforts to go in vain, we don’t want to see the children that we care for come out with nothing in the future. I want the government to hear our cry because our girls a lot of times stop in the middle of schooling and run away to Accra. Some suffer and die there and are not able to return and continue with their education. This situation hurts our school system. I would like the government to do something to stop it, because others come back with diseases like AIDS and transmit it to others. I don’t want the efforts we put in their education to not yield something for all of us. We want our children to have good education, and pass school, so they can one day become teachers, doctors, and nurses; that will make our suffering mean something. This is one of the problems I want to talk about.
One of the many benefits of these devices is that, people like us don’t know the USA or even Accra [capitol of Ghana] for that matter; but we are able to say something in to this device and the message will be carried to some one some where to listen to it. I hope that some one will listen to this message and may be able to help solve problems affecting girl child education, and that is another benefit of the device.
Look at me, I don’t know any where I can go or what I can do to say something into the air so the government can hear our problems and fight for us so that we can keep our daughters from going to Accra and other big cities leaving school behind. But now that I am saying this into this machine, I am hopeful that some one will hear and may be able to help us stop these kids from running away which will lead to the collapse of the school.