Hi, Malika Boma, and you're listening to a podcast hosted by the Accelerating Achievement for Africa's Adolescents Hub,
hosted by Oxford University and the University of Cape Town.
This podcast was recorded as part of a series in Oxford in November 2019 to discuss the theme of understanding adolescence in African contexts.
Thanks for listening! This is a podcast exploring ideas around violence and adolescence in African contexts.
And and before we get into the, you know, the the substance of the discussion, I think it would be great if we introduced ourselves.
So, so I'm Elke Burma, and I am together with Chris Desmond looking after work package three on the accelerating
achievement for Africa's Adolescents Hub project and I am in my professional life,
a professor of world literature in English with his specialism on the West African novel.
My name's Diana Walters. I work with two hats.
One of them is that I, a lay Anglican chaplain at the University of Plymouth.
So working on a in a university environment,
in a in an interfaith cross-cultural into dialogue kind of way with staff and students as part of lots of different programmes going on.
And the other thing that I do, the other work that I do is I work in as an international heritage consultant.
So working, particularly in post-conflict countries, a range of them former Yugoslavia, former Soviet Union, many former communist countries.
And I've done about four to five years work in Kenya, working with heritage and looking at ways that heritage can support development.
Thanks, Diana. My name is Patricia Daly. I am geographer here at the University of Oxford and professor of the Human Geography of Africa,
and I am interested in African politics and particularly issues.
I have done research on violence in Africa, but political violence in particular,
and that led me to look at Gender-Based Violence and Sexual Violence in conflict affected areas and in particular in Burundi and Rwanda and the Congo,
but mainly in Burundi. And I'm interested as a geographer.
I suppose I'm interested in this multiscale relationship.
So violence, I don't see violence. Well, I can talk about that later contact.
Yes. Thanks, Patricia. Hello, my name is Heidi Steckel.
I'm the director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and I for the Oxford Hub Accelerator Hub.
I am leading with Ilona %Q, the package number two, which is on existing data and new cohort studies.
Thanks, Heidi. So just kind of open things up a bit.
It's already clear from your introductions that you are interested in, have thought about,
have considered the impacts of violence on individuals lives in particular,
I think women's lives and on the lives of young people and also not forgetting political violence in particular.
When we think about this of building up now to a kind of a very open question.
When we think about interventions that might improve the lives of adolescents, whether in African countries or elsewhere,
where we think about those interventions, we're often confronted with violence as a as a social problem impacting people's lives.
This violence takes many forms,
and I've in my research in the past looked at how infrastructures can often work impact on people's lives in disruptive.
And restrictive ways.
So, so I suppose this opening question is, how do you understand, how do we all here understand the violence that impacts the lives of young people?
Yes, I think it's a very good question. As you already indicated, we tended to look a lot at violence against women, women and girls.
But the big issue that we find when we look at adolescents is that in some ways they are falling between
the cracks because from the violence against women service and the violence against women's world,
we look at intimate partner violence. So we do include in our surveys, women and girls aged 15 and above.
But really, the focus of these services is partner violence.
What violence do you have from your partner and to some extent, non-partner violence at the same time?
The more you know, the violence against children services that are out there, they focus on violence that children face in the home,
by parents, potentially by schools, by neighbours and their closer surroundings.
And they start looking at intimate partner violence as well. But then also they end this interviewing women and girls, children who are 18.
So in some ways, none of these surveys really capture these multiple forms of violence that adolescents
experience because they're in this between age where they start to have relationships,
and at the same time, they're still living with their parents or their caregivers.
Very also face might face violence from obviously don't necessarily.
And then they also most of them hopefully are still in schools.
And the more and more research that is done in schools find that there is multiple forms of physical violence by teachers through punishment,
et cetera. But there's also increase. There's quite a lot of sexual harassment going on as well.
And then, you know, also on the way home,
there are all these kind of new news stories or studies that show that adolescents when they go home or children, they also face violence.
They are in public spaces. So I think that's quite a big range of forms of violence that adolescents face that are very particular to that,
that age group because they face these multiple forms because they're transitioning and taking in.
Everything we know from the life course is that adolescence also is an extremely important area and time period in adolescence in the life course,
because this is when first relationships are formed, then you know, they might start having children.
So it's quite quite a very tense,
intense period where this experience might also really set the course for the future partnerships, the future life that they have.
And and Patricia added to that very complicated spectrum that Heidi was just sketching that.
We also have we relating to public spaces.
We also have political violence and we also have yeah, I mean, there's been quite a bit of work that's been done on,
say, the ways in which young men and women have, particularly young men have been drawn into political conflict,
whether it's as child soldiers or whether forming militias at the time, you know,
at election time and the young men who see or the adolescent seem to be vulnerable are those living in
predominantly safe and informal settlements or in rural areas through which in which rebel groups operate?
I, you know, I mean, I think I'm much more I suppose my interest really is more broadly in how these different forms of violence intersect.
And as a geographer, we, you know, we see violence is being produced in the particular spaces,
but also how particular spaces that might themselves produce violence and the relationship with those spaces at different scale.
So I'd be interested. I suppose my work would be interested in looking at, say,
the consequent domestic violence doesn't happen or any of the sexual violence doesn't happen in isolation from the wider society.
So what are the violence? What you know, scholars now call slow violence?
What forms of slow violence or low intensity violence might trigger, you know, or, you know, facilitate these other forms of violence, right?
I mean, what is happening within the society, the wider context that that might result in?
You know, in hunger and deprivation and stuff like that of violent violence in the places that I visited in the say in the informal settlements.
I think for me, one of the most vivid ones was the informal settlement in Nairobi.
And just seeing the desperation on adolescent, I was talking to young men and the desperation on their their faces for me and.
The way in which, you know, just the living conditions there, you know, everything was structured around producing pain.
And I think that sort of violence then feeds into other, as you say, young and it's at a critical age.
It's when, you know, critical adolescence is a critical age.
It's when young people are inhabiting their bodies almost for the first time and they are vulnerable in all sorts of ways.
And they are seen, you know, it's the sort of age when the body is seeing a young person's body is seen as being out,
but can be seen as being out of place or wherever they go. Whether it's in Britain, it's in shopping malls or in, you know, women at night,
young women at night or in the city centres or wherever you know, they're not seen to.
They don't have a space for them to inhabit where they're actually seen, except probably on a football ground,
where it's also a space in which they're recruited for violence in certain in.
And the football is one of the areas that police politicians sponsor football matches and football teams.
And that's a space where recruitment takes place. So, you know, I'm interested in, I suppose,
looking at these spaces where violence that may produce violent situations for young people and
also where they might encounter violence and how that is related to the way the structures.
And I guess they are both kind of out of place.
And yet they feel themselves to be hyper visible in a way because, you know, as you say, they're just inhabiting their bodies for the first time.
So they're kind of out there. And yet, you know, not not in place while being but being hyper visible.
Does this also relate to some of what you've observed, whether in your work as a chaplain or your work in Kenya?
Yeah, most definitely. I mean, I'm really, really interested, Patricia on your own that the spatial aspect of this,
because I think that that's something that that absolutely resonates with the work that I did that I do in Kenya,
which is around narratives and particularly cultural narratives and the absence of peace in those narratives,
the kind of the inevitable focus there, the the grand narrative of conflict, which has normalised conflict in so many ways in both.
I mean, in terms of space, spatially, in terms of architecture,
in terms of living conditions right through to sort of peer pressure and and that sort of level of relationships as well.
And that I'm always struck by that sense of how you have to.
And I'm going to say something really sort of contradictory in that you have to fight for spaces of peace,
actually, you have to fight to counter that. And adolescence is, you know, I think we are so quick to, possibly because we remember it and all.
We witness it in our own children, our own families.
But you know, it is that place of turmoil and the negative connotations around that seem to manifest somehow in so many different ways.
So the work that we're you know, that we've been doing with peace museums, which are predominantly across Kenya and Uganda,
and they are often very often in the rural communities, which are very susceptible to political persuasions of finance,
particularly around election time and sort of layers with with issues around drugs and and
and guns and so on that that sense of the loss really of any other alternative narratives.
And as if somehow we we expect them to when we go into those spaces as well, it's it's taken for granted.
How do we reclaim that, I guess? Or how do we actually give those voice because they are so easily?
Mm-Hmm. And I suppose what what you've all highlighted is that it's not only that that if you like,
I don't know life or politics or or even the formation of militias impact violently on these adolescents lives.
It's also that they themselves in part in consequence, in part because they're transitioning between life forms, if you like.
As Heidi was saying, it's also that they themselves are agents of violence.
I mean, you know, I think it was a it was a phrase that you use Patricia.
They producing pain. You know, they they I guess they understand that there's a kind of power to be to be had through producing pain.
I mean, that's very problematic, right? So that within so that these young people who are encountering, you know, different multiple forms of.
Violence, you know, if you like immediate violence. Public violence, intimate violence.
At the same time, reacting perhaps violently through this.
Is this is this something that relates to do your research at all in any way?
We don't need to go around in the country. I think there's a lot of evidence.
Well, you probably know most of the, you know, look at that sort of, you know,
people who have been abused and their propensity for, you know, reproducing the abuse in their adult lives.
And I'm, you know, I heard we recorded.
I mean, I listen to it at all not so long ago about abuse in homosexual relationship.
And the figure was that there was a sort of 80 percent chance of people, you know,
carrying out abuse if they'd been abused as a child or, you know, young person.
And that was really, you know, I was struck by that figure and I suppose suspect it's the same in other areas.
It's as high in other, you know. But but there is and the part and then I was thinking about, you know,
a young person who's in a homosexual who's who is coming out or is hiding how much abuse they must go through in schools and in a home, probably.
And how you know how it must be difficult to move beyond that.
And then that led me to think also about some of the young men, young people I've met, say, in Burundi,
where you know, they they their memories, their intergenerational memories of their parents,
you know, members of their family who've been extended family who have been killed and then how many of them,
if they if the relative was close, they want retribution. And I'm going to talk personally, although it's been recorded.
I had a very violent mother when I was growing. When I wasn't, when I was growing up, it was when I was 10.
I came to Britain to live with my mom, but I grew up at my grandparents and aunts and uncles, and I had a fairly loving to know.
And then my mother, who was actually a very difficult situation and suddenly, as I got older,
realised and for reasons that she never mentioned until I found out after she died, it was very brutal to my brother and I very, very frightened.
We couldn't do anything without her, you know, whacking us, getting the belt out and so on.
And I was trying to figure out, you know, and I obviously realising myself as an adult and a parent, I could actually become like that.
I started to think about what I could do to make myself not be consciously think about how I should behave.
You know, like when my if something my son did something, I'd get up, you know, I would start to get upset.
And then I realised, Oh my God, you know, I can't be married. I love it.
And there's no way I should go down that route for, you know, whatever.
So I think at some point we do make those choices as to whether we continue or not.
I think the context helps.
Going back to context, you know, I mean, I was slightly I was slightly economically more salient than my mother, for example.
You know, the pressures that, you know, it's different. And I think that economics, you know, the context,
whether it's you could be in a wider family context about the other people around to mitigate against that sort of violence on TV.
Or you might be on your own and you're much more, you know?
And it's not just talking about Africans, it could be any anyone.
So, you know, what's what context are they growing up in that might enable, you know, that my facilitate or not the reproduction of that violence?
That's what that's what I'm interested in. And you know what?
You know what the context that facilitate the reproduction on one hand, but that that also facilitate the kind of diffusion or the kind of removal?
Yeah, all of those those violent consequences and how people think through, you know,
consciously or so, you know, consciously do that, you know, because I'm sure,
you know, a lot of people actually think through, you know, or even adolescence at that time,
do whether they become violent or not and what you see that drive, you know?
So, you know, it just immediately speaks to something. So I did my Ph.D. research on violence and pregnancy in Germany.
And I found, quite interestingly, for a lot of women, it just continues during pregnancy.
But there was some very fear over the violence stopped, and they said it's because the men actually said, I don't want to be like my father.
And it was a very conscious decision.
And then I think in terms of evidence and, you know, this intergenerational transmission of violence when you had violent parents there,
I mean, your likelihood is higher to be violent towards your partner experienced violence when you had it.
But actually, you're more likely. But it doesn't mean that it is like that for all.
Actually, most of the people show resilience and show that they actually they are not violent towards it.
So and then it depends really on the factors around it is. You know, did you have a mentor or did you have a person who, you know,
helped you through this difficult time as your family who showed you other types of, you know, resolving a conflict?
So I think there are a lot of these mediating factors that actually can break it.
And as you said, you know, there's very strong consciousness of, I don't want to be like that.
And I, you know, I will try to find out the strategies. So I talked a lot.
This young also very young parents, and one of them just said, Oh, as soon as I saw the conflict coming,
I would just go out of the house and taking this one because from the outside,
he can't hit me because others observe the same way of making sure the conflict doesn't go that far.
So I think this context is extremely important. Yeah.
Have you also encountered sort of certain mediating factors, too?
Yes, absolutely. I think this is, you know,
these sort of how how one either encounters or can create or support spaces of transformation or all spaces of choice or whatever it may be,
whatever kind of words are appropriate, I think is is a is is a question that is not often looked at.
And I think that's a real shame because I mean,
that's that was exactly what we were trying to do with working with the with the peace museums, which is the the programme.
The sort of the basis of that philosophy was that was that, you know,
regardless of the fact that communities have these sort of years and generations of,
you know, violence and conflict and disputes largely over land or water or whatever, you know, sort of very, very, very fundamental things.
There was no inevitability about that. When you start to actually look at the sort of the coming at it from the perspective of cultural heritage,
when you start to look at the material culture or the or even more so the intangible culture.
So the memories, the landscapes, the plants, the you know, the things that are shared across.
And this applies, you know, in every context that I've worked.
Once you start to begin to to sort of find those kinds of and they become like transmitters, really, they play a role.
But it's oh, they have the potential to, let's say, to play a role that that gives some kind of, you know, small voice more alternative.
And it might just be that stirring within the individual.
But of course, you know, the reality of the context, the reality of the economic situation, you know, the agitator or the rest of it.
I mean that we mustn't we, you know, we really must recognise that as being absolutely crucial.
But for sorry, just to go to Patricia's story that she shared, I think her grandparents did show, you know, a kind of a how should a family?
How should children be raised in family talk? And, you know, so the groundwork was actually probably made by them that showed your strategies.
How, you know, how should I be doing this? How should I handle myself if my child overwhelms me, which all children do fine?
But, you know, so you kind of have this contrasting thing like, you know, and this might not be a former mentor of anyway,
but just one relative that shows an interest or shows different ways of dealing with conflicts that are non-violence.
So or friends? I mean, I had a verbally very violent father who is dealing with a lot of war trauma himself.
And, you know, I escaped to the houses of friends and was particularly drawn to if I now look back on me and didn't see at the time,
it was particularly drawn to friends who had families that were very kind of, I don't know, less hierarchical than what I was used to.
So, so it's I think friendship groups also also quite important there.
It's interesting that we're all using the language of space, though.
Aren't we all using that sort of sense of withdrawing or moving or or moving it to a different emotional or relational space?
I mean, it is really spatial. But I think just from my contacts, one of the things that saved me was the library.
Yes, it's another space. I know it's quiet.
Books. We've got entertainment. Yeah. Well, yeah.
And that's, you know. And so, you know, having the library spaces where young people can go to libraries,
places where they, you know, you've club, but more so the library books library was open.
I mean, you look at us, you know, we're taking these spaces away.
It is actually criminal. I think in terms of, you know, where are we supposed to go?
Really? Yeah. And especially when you don't have money and when you're young, you know, you can't go and buy a coffee, a coffee for three.
£3. And especially where the to from the kind of really serious to this like these frivolous
bribery where the weather isn't isn't exactly great for hanging out on the street anyway.
But yeah, having spaces where they can go and actually envisage in an imagined being in another world, you know, I think is really, really important.
I mean, I often wonder and this does take it a bit further.
So I'm saying we have all these big interventions that we are running.
And I think in the heart of these structural interventions and these big programmes that are run and in terms of finance,
I'm very keen to find out if actually talking to someone else about it is something that doesn't prove it.
And we don't have the evidence yet, so it might actually be harmful as well. So I don't know.
But I think in some ways, you know, we also have to think a little bit different how we tackle violence.
And maybe just, you know, I think it does relate to your chaplaincy,
like being able to go somewhere and just telling your story and having someone to listen,
you know, being practical kind of not judging that already might have kind of people to, you know, react differently the next time.
There is some amazing work going on around storytelling and encounter in particularly
a wonderful organisation in Northern Ireland called Healing Through Remembering.
And they are just doing the most amazing work, which is all based on that.
It's the it's it's recognising the power of the individual story and the opportunity to and it follows very, very strict ethical guidelines.
I mean, it's really, really, really well thought through. And an organisation called Diversity Challenges does this a lot.
And they, for example,
have brought together former members of the RUC of the Royal Ulster Constabulary with former members or supporters of the IRA in the same space.
Hearing each other and the the research or the evidence is coming out of those kinds of initiatives is really impressive, really impressive.
I mean, Brexit may throw all that back into that back into the air, but you know this.
I totally agree with you, Heidi. The sense of this is that of the individual story in the space to and but also the learning,
the skills being equipped and supported to listen to something that is really intensely difficult.
And, you know, that counters everything that you may have been told and sharing stories as in different perspectives to that may be your story.
But actually, this was my role on the day. This is where I was.
This was my perspective on that particular situation.
I've been doing research, obviously with refugees as well, and one of the things that seems to happen all the time and you know, I suppose,
you know, researchers have talked about how we how do we factor this into our research is that refugees like to tell their stories.
And I mean, they often it can be traumatic because they often have to tell them in difficult
spaces in courts that in Britain or in front of an immigration tribunal.
Those are horrible, traumatising spaces, but also they want to tell them when they meet an interview.
We are saying, is it because that's the narrative they are told or they expect us to want to hear?
We're trying to decide or whether it's it's just, you know, we're a way of coping.
Yeah. In your work, Heidi,
have you observed that adolescents are more comfortable telling their stories in certain
contexts than others or in relation to certain with certain people rather than other others?
I'm not sure if I can completely answered. One of the recent studies we've done wasn't sexual harassment in schools in Tanzania.
And I was extremely surprised how open these girls and boys talked about their experiences.
And because I would have assumed that it's something that, you know, it's a bit more hidden, but apparently it seems to be so frequent that,
you know, a teacher would make comments on a girl's figure in the whole classroom as everyone present.
And I was also surprised how much boys really picked out on that and how uncomfortable
it made them and how much to actually judge the teachers kind of comments.
So they didn't really did not like it, but. And how much to actually realised that and vocalised this as well?
So I think sometimes you would be surprised some kind of a bit coming back from the previous discussions.
I do wonder about, you know, adolescent boys.
And if we're hearing them enough actually without really thinking about experience of violence and all these traumatic,
difficult things, because I think girls have it a bit easier to talk about it than boys who kind of have.
Behave as men, and they are more constrained by all these expectations that are put on them or they themselves put on them.
So in some ways, I think it's one of the things we really should be focussing on more is how to,
you know, hear their their voices a lot more because it is so us kind of going back to the beginning.
It's so important because they are the, you know, the partners of the future.
As the fathers of the future, they are going to be in positions of power or, you know, anything.
And I think we've drawn out some very, very interesting threads. But is there anything that anyone would like to kind of close with or some things
you think we might have if we had another go we might talk about next time?
I've got one, which is I mean,
I think that in such interesting reflections on space and context and safe space and
transformative contexts and and football fields as places of possible violence,
you know, all these, you know, spaces both open and closed that impact people's lives in in particular ways, sometimes violent ways.
That was that was, to me, very, very interesting. But anyway, we have a few more moments just to think aloud if we like.
And then I mean, just thinking about space. You know, that's what I mean.
For example, I mean, the police are more likely to round up young man on the streets to the streets unless the you know,
the you know, they like people, too, unless they I mean, historically, if you look at, you know, young men as street traders,
you know, they've been formed, you know, they've been gangs, they're organised. They can.
But I suppose we're not talking about adolescence because again, you know, as you see, yeah, it's these young men are in their 20s or even older.
I mean, you know, you know, I was interviewing this, this young man, and I'm sure he was in his 40s or he looked well,
it was really difficult because he just looked so much older than he probably was, and he was saying he was talking about retirement.
But he he still still saw himself as a young, you know, a young man.
And I just felt that. Well, I mean, I think there'd been research done on this.
You just haven't fulfil any of these dreams. And he has not, as far as he was concerned, reach adulthood.
So they're much more vulnerable towards violence in cities. I mean, girls tend to be indoors or expected to be indoors,
but many young men are expected to go out and find work or be on the street, you know, irrespective of their age and do something.
And that's nothing to do. So that one, you know, so it's not just in vulnerability in terms of being drawn into political violence,
but also in terms of just being, as you say, being out. You know, that's a really interesting observation.
You know, that set me thinking very much about what you how you started that, Patricia,
when you talked about your example of the old, slightly older man who's who?
And I'm just thinking, you know, there's a kind of set of emotions that we automatically associate with adolescence.
And if it's the kind of the inability to fulfil dreams, you know, in that sense, it feels like a place where you get stuck.
Yeah, yeah. And yet it's meant to be a time of I'm thinking of Heidi's word transitioning.
It's meant to be a time of great promise of kind of fulfilling, realising, fulfilling your potential.
Finding your role in life, you know, all those sort of open ended things.
And then when it, you know, when none of that, you just played so much longer.
Yeah, there is a postdoc, actually. Really? Yeah, but young man and run.
So I think I have a nice closing on that plan, which is that, you know, the violence it's you know,
it obviously is a human rights issue for both men and women, but it's also really an adolescence.
But it really is a developmental issue.
So regardless of where they, you know, experience violence, we have to prevent that because, yeah, it kind of spreads.
So does one individual experience as violence, as an adolescent, it might sort of over to the relationship, to the children they have.
And it might, you know,
go into all this political violence and the public violence in the public spaces because it's not just contained as we often still think about it,
it really goes through. It spreads. Yes, not the virus, but we can end it and we can prevent it.
Fabulous. And that's what we're going to do. Thanks very much, all three of you.
Thanks to. Thanks very much for listening to this podcast.
Do you have a listen to the others in this series on understanding adolescence in African contexts?