Global News by Tag: poverty
JÉRÉMIE, HAITI – Mirlene Jeudi is an expecting mother from Jérémie, a small town in southwestern Haiti. Her due date is only a month away, yet she has not been able to stop working. Her husband died after she became pregnant so she is now a single mother and must save enough to support her children.
BAMENDA, CAMEROON – Mdubila Pascaline, 29, is a journalist in Bamenda, a city in northwestern Cameroon. She says she sends some of the money she earns to her mother – simply by using her cell phone.
Her mother lives in Mbiame, a remote village that is more than five hours away from Bamenda by car. She does not have a bank account, but she can collect money from her daughter with just her phone.
“It’s very efficient and cost-effective,” Pascaline says.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE – Stella, 43, works as a vendor in the high-density suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. She sells fruits and vegetables under a tree, along with another female vendor.
But without a license to operate as a trader, she says it’s becoming increasingly difficult to earn a living. Keeping her eye on her table as she speaks, she says the vendors must be on the alert for constant raids by authorities.
GULU, UGANDA – Just before Christmas, Irine Ayot, 42, found out that her 14-year-old daughter, Evelyn Acan, had been defiled.
Ayot, who earns a living selling fish and other goods at a market in Gulu, a district in northern Uganda, says she was waiting for Evelyn to pick her up after work, but her daughter never showed up. Ayot, crippled from a land mine explosion, sought help from someone else to carry her fish and other items home.
ZANGAM, KASHMIR, INDIA – Mohammad Subhan, 75, has been in the pottery business for more than 40 years in Zangam, a village in Jammu and Kashmir state. But he says that the industry isn’t what it used to be.
“The art has of course declined to a large extent,” he says.
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Marry, a Sri Lankan woman who guesses she is in her 40s, is a prostitute in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital.
Marry knows little about herself. She does not have a birth certificate or a National Identity Card, a compulsory document for all adults here that must be carried at all times. So she says she made up her own name and guesses she is around 40.
Entrepreneurship in Africa: Part 1 in a Series
SELIBE-PHIKWE, BOTSWANA – Just a few yards off the road to Bobonong, a village in Botswana’s Central district, Kewagamang Talampe lives at the Mokgalwana cattle post.