Joan French: The ‘girls’ education lady’

Remember Joan French, the leftwing activist of the 1970s and ’80s? Well, French’s name may no longer be heard that much around Kingston and elsewhere in Jamaica, but it doesn’t mean that she has given up activism for the quiet life in the hills somewhere.

It just that the focus is a little different and the she is operating at the other side of the world – in Africa – where she lives and works for UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) in Burkino Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, teaching and developing programmes for educating young girls.

It is a preoccupation that began for French in Jamaica which she transferred to Burkino Faso when the bug hit five years ago during a trip to that country.

“In 1999 (before officially moving to the country) I went to Burkino Faso to conduct training programmes with some West African countries,” French told all woman last month during one of her “once-a-year” visits to Jamaica.

“I was sitting in my hotel room one day, and looked through the window and noticed hundreds of woman riding motorcycles, some in traditional garb and some in Western dress. They sat with straight shoulders, upright and proud, maybe not even knowing that was their image.”

That the women displayed strength and pride in their stance in a male dominated society caused French to sit upright and look closer.

French has been looking at this strength in women for decades, although its manifestation has meandered a bit with time. While education has always been at its core, it has various times involved politics to a greater or lesser extent.

In her younger days, Joan made a name for herself as a member of the Teachers for a Democratic Jamaica Teacher’s Association (TD/JTA) and later the National Union of Democratic Teachers (NUDT). At that time, she was one of a number of women who were actively involved in Sistren Theatre Collective, which used drama to address social issues affecting women. One such issue was the attitude of women to power and authority, and although in Sistren women had a say, the same was not the case in the JTA. A group, which included John Haughton and Paulette Chevannes, became synonymous with opposition to the “practises and autocracy” of the JTA, and they were not afraid to say it. They felt the JTA was an organisation that represented an “age and a perspective that had done very good work in their time,” a euphemistic way of pointing out that there was need for more engagement and democracy.

Their desire for transparency and change came at a time when Jamaica was ablaze with radical ideological discourse, and, perhaps due to the fact that some of the teachers in the NUDT were members of the communist Workers Party of Jamaica (WPJ), they were perceived as part of those spreading the feared communism, and the JTA would have none of it.

The teacher’s union expelled them in 1978, a move that led to the birth of the NUDT.

“The battles were hard, and it was a tireless fight. We got maternity leave for the teachers and we got study leave. We won some. We won some..” she recalls.

Older now, and somewhat tempered and “with more respect for ritual and order” the fire of social activism still burns deep in her belly, and it still burns for the young.

That passion made her restless in Jamaica, and in 1991, Joan French decided to leave her homeland to fight the same fights elsewhere.

“I was becoming a bit frustrated at some of what was happening in the women’s movement (not necessarily political) and some of the fragmentation and lack of unity around some key issues,” said French.

In the late 1980s, she recalls, women from different political backgrounds found it difficult to unite with other independent women to air issues affecting them. Discourse became tribalised, and instead much effort went to supporting the male leadership, while women actively bad-talked, divided and undermined each other.

But while the stalled state of women’s liberation was the main issue leading to her departure, there were also personal ones.

“My children were at the stage of university and a teacher’s salary was nothing to send anybody to university on. So I was looking to new horizons, but also something that would keep me connected to some kind of forward movement activity.”

Eight years working with the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) in Barbados, and then in Colombia with UNICEF brought her to New York City, where she spent four more years with UNICEF, learning French by going to the United Nations headquarters for classes during her lunch breaks.

Her experiences in all three countries, combined with her French lessons prepared her for her current job in Burkino Faso, but when she arrived there, Joan French was still surprised by some of the sights and sounds of the new culture.

Though a myriad of things set Burkino Faso apart from the rest of the world, including growing strawberries in scorching temperatures, Joan said, “I have never seen a group of boys on the corner anywhere in Burkina Faso doing nothing – for a country so poor. I see it so much everywhere else, including developed countries.”

The role and position of women in the society also caught her eye.

Burkino Faso is a West African state, landlocked with Mali, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Niger, and is often rocked by coups d’etats.

Joan lives in its capital, Ouagadougou, and “knocks wood” that so far, there has not been any serious political turmoil.

With gross national product per capita of US$230, there is an estimated 77 per cent illiteracy rate among the nation’s 12.6 million people – most of whom are engaged in subsistence agriculture.

Like Jamaica, Burkino Faso has a passion for football, an abundance of mangoes (none of which are like those we have here in Jamaica) and family values, which gives honour to age and experience.

French speaking, it maintains much of its ancestral heritage of community chiefs, and like many other African States, it is beset with poverty.

Families marry their girls, some as young as 13 years, in order to have one less mouth to feed.

“A young girl will suffer abuse just to save enough money to buy her wedding dress, where she will have more respect in the society,” she explains.

The women, however, show lots of resolve in a country where they have no respect unless they are married.

Still, there is hope. In 2000, the military government adopted an anti-poverty strategy, to open the economy to market forces, while shifting resources to the education and health sectors.

It is also building schools, for both boys and girls.

“For such poor people they have such a wonderful do-it-yourself spirit,” she says, in the same breath reminding Jamaicans how blessed we are with our abundant sunshine and rainfall, which enables our agriculture.

The concerns of her new home seem to be not-so-new, as from her vast experience in different regions of the world, Joan French has realised that the issues affecting children – poverty, under-education, lack of education, economic and sexual abuse, – are usually the same.

” (In Burkino Faso) there is a lot of begging and it is exploited because there are those who send the children out to beg, for their benefit. But, you know in keeping with the Muslim religion, it is felt that it is better to beg than to steal,” she points out.

There is also child labour and children are taken from the rural areas to the cities, and to other countries, where they are exploited economically and sexually.

So why would anyone stay in a country beset with so much poverty and other social ills, so far from home, and where she is only one of 300 foreigners working there?

Joan says she does not feel excluded among the populace. When she passes on the road, she says, “you hear ‘the UNICEF lady’ or ‘Mama’, which is comforting.”

French is pursuing a mission, and considers increasing the percentage of children now attending schools one of her greatest achievements at UNICEF. For her efforts she was recently honoured by the Pan-African Organisation of Women.

“We have just broken the 52 per cent mark. When I came here two years ago it was 42 per cent – 49 per cent for boys and 36 per cent for girls – so you see the disparity between the sexes. It’s the big issue, it’s a UNICEF issue, and it is one that I have decided to focus on,” she vows.

Even among people on the ground, Joan has made her name. In Burkino Faso, where the Muslim tradition does not allow for boys and girls to be in the same school, there are separate schools for the sexes, and Joan is known as the “girls’ education lady”!

Fulfilling her passion daily, Joan French still has time to explore and discover the nuances of the African nation, and along the way she’s come across some things in common with Jamaica, and some which are very, very different.

“In my two years there, they have had two murders. One was the first in 30 years, and the other was a political murder which most people feel was committed by people from another country,” she points out casually.

“And there is an increase because I heard about another three,” she adds, highlighting the fact that more developed countries, with more educated populations, like Jamaica, struggle with murder rates in the hundreds.

Food wise, living in Africa took some adjusting, but she survived.

“Food habits vary, bananas are eaten ripe here, but in the Ivory Coast they are eaten green. So I go there to get bananas. Ackee is not eaten as we know it in Jamaica. It is used to make a sauce in some rural districts.”

No life in a foreign country is complete without humorous anecdotes, and Joan tells how, after discovering an ackee tree outside her window and showing the locals how it is used in Jamaica with salt fish (which she carried from here), the following year, all the ackees disappeared from the tree.

And music?

“Reggae is everywhere in Africa. They know Bob Marley, his picture is on a T-shirt here and there. In fact they had banned his birthday celebration in Guinea one year, because it was so big.”

The rhythm, drums, dances and expressions, may not be exactly like we know them here, but there are expressions of our moves in dances there.

And some of the other things that are common to Jamaica, “public sector corruption, paying to get documents.”

Sounds familiar?

As she switches the discourse to Jamaica, she speaks of the heavy “Miami-isation” of our country, but sees, and is frightened by the hidden suffering beneath the hard exterior that people try to show. Joan is also concerned that Jamaican talk on radio and other media, appears not to be that concerned about issues affecting families, children and education.

Nevertheless, Jamaica is, and will always be home, and every year, Joan French returns to the roost to spend time with her two children and grandson.

She’s not in a classroom, but every day Joan French lives her dream and legacy (she comes from a family of teachers) working to improve the lot of the young.

And what’s in store for her say, five years from now?

“There is life after UNICEF and people are retiring early, but I guess I will be here for sometime. But I don’t know yet, I had some things happen to me in the last two years that could have been quite difficult, but I have overcome them. So I give myself two years at a time,” she says.

Regrets?

“I am disappointed that the NUDT went into decline and I feel that it was our own short-sightedness., because I have since learnt that it is very important to look at leadership transition in an organisation. I don’t think we paid sufficient attention to that. Maybe the vision was not so clear, but then again, maybe the JTA also changed. I don’t know, I don’t know,” she adds wistfully.