Rosie Scribble

At seven the world should be a happy place #ShareNiger

Something got to me yesterday. Really got to me. And it wasn’t that I was late adding my entry to this week’s gallery. It was much much more than that.

It was a tweet. This tweet:

The reference was to a lady called Fatima Soumana who lives in Niger and saves children who are sold as wives.

That’s children, CHILDREN, being sold as wives. 

Hard to comprehend isn’t it?

The word children just does not sit comfortably next to the word wives. I’m still struggling with it today. 

I’ve replayed the tweet over and over in my head. I hoped I’d mis-read it. I scrolled through Twitter, but no. I hadn’t. The evidence is here:

And here:

My daughter is eight. 

She is tiny. She is often quite shy. She sometimes worries about the world around her. She sleeps with a soft toy monkey. 

She likes bubbles; she likes pink. She likes glitter; she likes paint. She likes running on the grass with her shoes off. 

She is sometimes outgoing, sometimes a bit silly. She’s a normal child living a normal childhood.

But that’s our version of normal. 

How very different life is for children just a relatively short distance from us. Just a seven-hour plane journey separates us from a very different world.

To think that a child even younger than my own daughter could today be living with her husband, or being prepared for marriage, just doesn’t bear thinking about. 

But we must think about it. Nothing will change for in the lives of these girls if we don’t.

For the second time in recent weeks I’m reading Half the Sky. I was going to quote some dismal facts here about pregnancy rates and maternal death rates in children under the age of 18. I was going to quote figures for the rates of underage marriage in the developing world. I was going to draw attention to the horrific rates of child sex trafficking. 

But I’m too choked up. 

At seven my daughter was still settling into school. At seven my daughter was watching Peppa Pig on television. At seven my daughter still had her innocence, her childhood and the world was – and still is - a safe place for her to be.

How different the world looks for a seven-year-old girl living in extreme poverty in a developing country.

One tweet can make a difference. Please #ShareNiger today and keep up to date with the blog posts over on Geekisnewchic.com, Mummy-tips.com and blog.worldvision.org.uk. You can also sponsor a child at worldvision.org.uk.

At seven the world should be a happy place.  And children should have a childhood.

Prize Draw: Win an Andrex Eco goodie bag worth £50

To celebrate the launch of their new Eco toilet tissue, the team at Andrex have sent me a gorgeous Eco goodie bag. I’ve been overindulged with Fairtrade chocolate truffles, Neils Yard foaming bath a pair of ladies bamboo socks. 

They are also offering a second goodie bag as a prize for one lucky reader. (Trust me, run out of toilet tissue and you’ll suddenly realise how lucky you are.  We’ve thoroughly tested and researched this theory.)

The goodie bag also includes a pack of Andrex Eco, an environmentally friendly toilet tissue featuring a combination of natural bamboo and recycled fibre. Thank goodness for that.

Restless

All day I’ve been restless. All day at the very back of my mind, something has been bothering me.

I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on it but something hasn't been right.

I’ve felt unsettled, unable to concentrate fully and I’ve jumped from one task to another, never completing one fully.

And then it hit me. 

The sink is full of dishes, I’ve a basket of laundry to dry and I’m sure there’s some homework I need to be doing with IJ, but I’ve abandoned it all.

Because I know what it is now.

I haven’t taken part in the 100^th Gallery.

So here’s a picture postcard from my trip to London yesterday. It's not brilliant but at least I've done it. 

That’s better. 

So is everyone reading Fifty Shades of Grey?

I recently stumbled across a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James. I say stumbled, it was actually sitting on the table next to me unattended and just asking to be picked up. Some books are just like that.

Intrigued as to what all the fuss was about, I’d decided not to flick through it on a recent visit to Stresscos. It was sitting there in the bestseller slot right by the entrance. If I'd reached out to subtly read the back cover, no doubt the entire display stand would have fallen over, an alarm would have sounded and the whole of the store’s security team would have rushed to my side.

No doubt it would have been highly embarrassing and more than a little awkward. Knowing my luck my parents would also have been in that store at that very moment along, with the local press. Images of me causing havoc with the carefully crafted instore display could have been beamed around the world. At least, that's the sort of thing that runs through my head in circumstances like this.

There is no them and us ...

I've complained this week. A lot.

It's a long list, but for the purpose of this blog post here’s a shortened version:

• I've had to lug endless boxes of toys down the stairs so that our decorator can paint IJ's bedroom.
• I've had to put all my books into boxes so that my bedroom can be painted too.
• I forgot to charge my iPhone so couldn’t reply to emails during a trip out.
• Added to that, my Internet connection then went down for two whole hours.
• And did I mention we ran out of milk?

There's a word for all of this. Well, three actually:

First world problems.

Hardly the end of the world are they, really?

I could in all honesty survive without my phone for a week. If Facebook wasn't accessible and Twitter locked me out for a month I'd still be here at the end of it. In the grand scheme of things, they are not that important. And these things are luxuries to others. How easy it is to forget.

I saw children in Africa touch an iPhone for the very first time and stare in amazement at the sight of a camera lens.