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130 chapter six Malaria, Single Mothers, and Social Suffering The melancholic nature of much theorizing in the social and human sciences is perfectly comprehensible because of the ethical commitment many practitioners have to “telling it like it is,” documenting and analyzing the horrors and miseries of the contemporary world, explaining how the privilege of some creates the misfortune of many, how power distorts and extracts the value and vitality of lives. This is one of the most valuable contributions the human and social sciences make to the analysis of the contemporary. henrietta moore 2011:69 When an observer witnesses the effects of structural injustices and sees little more than cultural difference, is this not a conflation of cultural difference and structural violence? paul farmer 1999:154 silent Violence One late afternoon in July 2005, I was sitting on the threshold of a large Swahili house,1 along with Mama Afidhi, my field assistant, watching a mason putting some final additions to the exterior of a new concrete house that was about fifty feet away from where we were seated. All of a sudden, the mason turned back and shouted at a young woman who was engaged in an animated conversation with a group of friends close to the Swahili house, and demanded that she come to him right away. The young woman refused and he threatened to beat her up if she did not come immediately to him. She refused to budge. Furious at her defiance, he let out a string of profanities and threatened to kill her if she did not do exactly what he was asking. She stood her ground. The mason charged at the young woman with a hammer and another tool in his hands; she bolted, in anticipation, through the long corridor of the Swahili house, tossing Malaria, Single Mothers, and Social Suffering · 131 both Mama Afidhi and me aside as she crossed the threshold. The mason, who I later learned was the young woman’s husband, chased after her through the Swahili house. The young woman ran out the back door and disappeared into the thicket of cashew trees. Stunned by what I had just witnessed, I asked Mama Afidhi if she could explain to me what was going on. “Hii ni kawaida tu” (This is just normal), she said, matter-of-factly, meaning that this was just a common occurrence.2 As we walked back to my house, she added that everyone in the neighborhood knew that the mason was a drunkard and an ill-tempered, abusive husband. Two days later, I learned that the mason had severely beaten his wife, accusing her of adultery, among other transgressions, and it was likely that they would soon be divorced. That young woman was Salma, one of the 120 single mothers I interviewed between 2007 and 2008 in Mbande and the neighboring villages on various aspects of their lives, including their experiences dealing with their children’s sickness. This chapter is not about the nature and magnitude of gender-based domestic violence in my fieldwork location. Instead it is about how elements of gender inequality and women’s social and economic marginalization relate to the question of childhood malaria and child survival. The excerpts from life histories of single mothers and illness narratives presented here reveal the larger social, economic, and cultural context in which mothers, especially those who are single or previously married (many of them abandoned by their male partners), have to deal with their children’s sickness, including repeated bouts of malaria. I address the question, How does childhood malaria affect the everyday lives of single mothers who have to care for their children, often in contexts of extreme poverty and very limited social support? Alternately, How does being a single mother affect care-seeking for childhood malaria and child survival? In the previous chapters, I emphasized some elements that address this question and concern. In Zaina’s case in chapter 4, for example, I showed how being a single mother of five children intensified her travails when seeking treatment for her sick children—there was no help around when she really needed it. In this chapter I will discuss more closely the manner in which the status of being a single mother is imbricated in childcare and child survival, particularly in contexts of gender inequality, extreme poverty, and high prevalence of malaria and related health complications among young children. I have divided this chapter into three sections. I begin by briefly reviewing...

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