Culmination

The Let’s Hear Your Voice project concluded today with the photo exhibition. We held the exhibition this morning in the church sanctuary. We utilized the Rutgers PhotoVoice Manual idea of using clothes line and clothes pins to hang the photos and captions and it worked great. There were a few windows ideally placed that were used to anchor the clothes line and we quickly assembled them early this morning.

The pride that showed on the faces of the women when they saw their photos was priceless. As expected there were not a lot of attendees as the ability to promote the show was limited and it was difficult for the women to generate interest (without paying them to attend). A photo exhibition is a new concept here so it was not surprising that attendance was fairly low. However, families and friends of the women came, as well as other members of the church and a few random people walking by. Those that came seemed very interested and spent some time reviewing the photos. The women enjoyed explaining the ideas behind their photos. 

One of the attendees was quite interested in the photos. I saw her perusing the photos very intensely and seriously and was glad that someone was really absorbing the message. A few minutes later Pastor Henry came to me and said that this woman, a police officer, wanted to talk to me about the lies that she found in the photos. Put me on the defensive immediately! She wanted to look at all 25 pictures in the exhibit with me and tell me her “perspective” on almost every one. She took issue with the distances to clinics that women had reported, she did not like that one of the women had said that people go to traditional doctors because the clinics are crowded, she disputed that some people photographed could not get care even though this is what they stated, and she was upset at other inferences that the clinics are congested and patients not triaged. About halfway through our review of the photos I told myself that I had nothing to defend, except the integrity of the women. I told her that the women did not lie. I explained that the women participants reported what the people in the photos told them or made comments based on their own experience. She called a few of the women over to explain their captions. It was a very tense situation. Some of the ladies were standing in back of me listening and some watching from across the room. I acknowledged to the police officer (I don't remember her name) that some things may have been unclear due to the language barrier, but that there are always many perspectives to complicated issues. We made polite smiles at each other and she departed.

The picture below of me listening to the police woman (not in uniform) exemplifies the PhotoVoice philosophy that a picture is a worth a thousand words.

After the police officer (she was not in uniform) left I spoke with the women and told them everything was fine and they did not do anything wrong. I reinforced that these photos were the truth as they know it and that people are going to have different views of the same issue. I tried not to disparage the police officer, but they certainly expressed their own opinions.

We closed the project with each woman telling us what they are going to do to help remove barriers to health care. One is going to take medicine to people in remote villages, one is going to provide home care, two are going to start a drama group to educate people in the villages, one is going to talk to people about why they should not go to witch doctors, two are going to work together to find ways to transport people to hospital and one is going to provide family planning education.

Initially I thought the ultimate goal of the project was to have the health leadership hear what women had to say and an initiate dialogue at an institutional level. Now I understand that the real objective was to empower women to realize that they have knowledge and the ability to influence change. There are things within their control that they can do to make a difference. Even if one of these women follows through on what they stated they will do to remove barriers, it will have been worth the time, money and energy.