allAfrica.com: Africa: Make Africa's Tragedies Comic (Page 1 of 2)

How do you wake up comfortable Norwegians to the distressing realities of child deaths and maternal health in developing countries? Through the comic books they so love.

And so, Norway's development agency Norad sent 34-year-old comic book writer and artist Lene Ask on a ten-day trip to rural Tanzania -- her first trip outside of Europe.

"The fourth and particularly the fifth millennium development goals on maternal health and child deaths are lagging the farthest behind," Norad's division head for global health and Aids Paul Fife told IPS.

"We want to reach new demographic groups with information about the large rates of maternal and child deaths in particularly Africa," he said.

Comic books might seem an odd choice of strategy, but they are highly popular in Norway, a country where adults clutching the latest copy of 'Donald Duck & Co' are a surprisingly common sight at supermarkets.

Besides that, Ask has already proven her mettle with an intelligent 2006 debut graphic novel titled 'Hitler, Jesus, and Granddad' that features a personal exploration of questions of identity and belief. It earned her the title of best Norwegian comic book debutant at a national awards ceremony.

To help Ask portray issues in an effective way, Norad decided to send her somewhere she could make her own real life observations.

"The reality for women and girls in Tanzania and many other developing countries is so brutally different from the reality in Norway, that it was important to enable her to talk with the women directly, to talk to health workers in the field, and then to write and draw what she experienced," Fife explained.

"We also believed that the fact that she had not been very far afield before meant that her reactions would be similar to that of many of the Norwegians that might read these stories, and that she might interpret her experiences in a way with which they can identify," Fife said.

Ask is in the process of writing and drawing seven separate stories for Norad. Six will deal directly with her experiences in Tanzania, while one will illustrate her preconceived ideas about Africa before the trip. She hopes that they will challenge readers to think for themselves and reassess their own preconceptions.

"I'm also a photographer, and with photography it is often difficult to avoid the impression that you are showing some kind of objective reality. What I really enjoyed with this project is the fact that comic books are always very subjective because you're viewing my own personal drawings and writing," Ask told IPS.

"It's liberating to be able to get away from the illusion of trying to tell the 'truth' about Africa and developing countries, because people have been served the cliché of starving children with flies in their eyes and of the white Norwegian going to Africa and dictating problems and solutions so many times. These stories are shaped by me and readers will know that they're not necessarily being served the truth, but my perception of it," said Ask, who stayed in Tanzania from May 23 until Jun. 2.

One of the stories recounts Ask's encounter with a rural Maasai mother in the village of Mti Moja, an hour's drive from the northern city of Arusha. She is cradling a baby boy with hydrocefalus, a condition which causes the head to expand in a way that can damage the brain.

IPS was allowed to preview the unfinished story. Ask, seated across from the mother, asks her why she has not taken the boy to a doctor. The mother explains that she did go once, after a relative had sold a cow to finance the bus ticket for the trip. However the doctor was not there, and after two days she was forced to give up and return home, unable to pay for another trip.

Ask and her companions drive the child to the doctor. The doctor says the boy has been brought to him at the last minute as he was about to die. The long wait has left him blind and possibly deaf. In the final frames Ask and her companions are forced to reflect on the motivations and consequences of their actions.

"This story is about how easy it was for us drive the mother and her child to the doctor, and the satisfaction we got from saving the boy's life, but also about the doubts we had later on. What kind of a life will the boy have? Did we do this just to satisfy our own desire to feel good about ourselves, or because it really was the right thing to do?"

Another story depicts the difficulties that a woman who used to be a female circumciser faces both financially and in terms of her personal standing after being retrained as a midwife. Yet another recounts the experiences of a hairdresser in Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam who had to give birth on her own at a rural clinic, and her subsequent battle to survive as an impoverished single mother.

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