What can I do to get a better future? – Women urban migration in Ethiopia
- By Yayehyirad Lencho from Ethiopia
- 6 mai 2015
- 2 min de lecture
You are a young woman born and raised in rural Ethiopia with big dreams stained by poverty. What can you do to get a better future? Let me tell you the story of Wedensh*, a woman I met while collecting data for a school project.
Wedensh is a women development worker in Keble. She comes from a family of farmers and as any other farmers’ children, her brother and her were commuting to the nearest town to attend high school. After Wedensh completed 10th grade, she had to give up school because she did not have good grades enough.
At that time in her life she did not know what to do. Her family was expecting a lot from her and she was thinking about how difficult life was in her village. She did not want to go back there and stop her education. What options did Wedensh have left?
She talked about her situation to a friend who told her that her teacher had a crush on her and that he would probably take care of her and let her get an education. It was not an ideal solution, but what else could she be doing? So Wedensh accepted to meet her teacher outside of school and they started a relationship together. Then, they moved to the city and this man indeed sent her back to school. Thanks to him Wedensh graduated and got a degree. They also eventually got married.
Today Wedensh is happily married with a son and has a good job. In a way, she got the future she was aspiring to when she was just a girl. She feels good in her life she told me. So I felt good for her too.
This story is not uncommon in Ethiopia, and in many developing countries for that matter. Most of the time women in rural areas do not have many options to access education and therefore hope for a better future, other than marrying a man. Many factors push rural women to get married like poverty or traditions which make it impossible to achieve your goals just by yourself when you are a woman from the countryside.
In Ethiopia, more than 85% of the population is living in rural areas without appropriate access to health, education and other related issues. Women are even more impacted by this situation. I understand why Wedensh and other women do whatever they can to escape poverty, like getting married. Because us, the African youth, we are all driven by the same urge to get a better future for ourselves and our families.
* Name has been changed
