How Ashura Onesmo rose through poverty’s claws

Knowledge is the key to empowerment. This is one of the principles that has driven Ashura Onesmo’s life for five years now.

Indeed, this 45-year-old woman who works in a stone quarry in Boko, Dar es Salaam caught an important opportunity to learn entrepreneurship through the ATD (All Together in Dignity) Fourth World Organisation.

This decision to become involved in the organisation since 2017 now allows her to gradually move out of extreme poverty.

Through her story, Ashura has become a true model of emancipation and hope for all those struck by the scourge of extreme poverty.

Ashura was born in a family of 4 children in the Kilimanjaro region and is the third.

She went to primary school and passed her exams in order to continue.

However, she was not able to go into secondary school due to her family’s financial situation.

Her family’s poverty was the result of a conflict between her father and her mother.

Life then threw near-impossible challenges her way, and she was forced to learn how to take responsibility of her life really early.

She worked at a farm between the ages of ten and twelve while her mother was also working in local markets.

That was a tough life.

She expected to avoid her kids having to experience the same life.

When she married, she moved to Dar es Salaam because her husband had a work here in a company.

They bought a plot in the Ubungo area.

Unfortunately, he lost his job, and they have been forced to move to Boko with their two kids.

They lived in a tent for six months. She tried to run a small business but that did not work out well either.

Then, her main activity became breaking rocks in a stone quarry named “Cambodia”, the main economic activity in the area.

This blue-collar type of job is exhausting as you spend all your energy under the scorching sun.

It is exhausting and dangerous. Stone dust causes tuberculosis and other diseases.

The work is very physical, and for women this can sometimes lead to miscarriages and to internal injury.

Thus, this demanding work does not allow her to earn more than Sh2000 (less than $1) in a day.

Every morning, Ashura wakes up at 5:00 am in order to take care of her family and goes to work after.

Unfortunately, at one point she fell very sick for a long period which led to her first child being sent to her home village to help ease her burden.

Meeting ATD Fourth World

One day, the ATD Fourth World Organization visited this quarry.

They met with Ashura as part of their research about the hidden dimensions of poverty.

She became part of the research and participated as a co-researcher too.

The ATD organization has been a real opportunity for her.

This worldwide solidarity organization was created in 1957.

Since then, they have been fighting hard poverty by seeking out people living in the worst economic conditions.

The aim of this organisation is to provide tools for people in very precarious situations for them to overcome their situation.

This mainly involves giving them access to education.

With them, Ashura participated in a study conducted in cooperation with Oxford University.

The organization is also recognized widely by university researchers.

The study outcomes were presented to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Inside ATD Fourth World, Ashura was willing to gain knowledge.

She discovered a lot about poverty contexts, and through that about her social one too.

She understood that access to education is primordial to get out of poverty.

“Education is also very important because you learn how to spend your money properly.,” she explained.

Then, by aiming to kill two birds with one stone, she learned about specific craft skills and entrepreneurship.

She participated in the creation of a group of twenty-four women named TABOTE (TA for Tandale, BO for Boko, and TE for Tegeta).

This group, based on solidarity, wants to give similar tools to different women, aiming for empowerment.

Together they decided the different rules of the group.

Rules such as sharing the group income fairly, carrying solidarity within the group, or not to discriminate against group members belonging to different tribes serve to guide them.

Before they met with ATD, they had attempted to build a women’s group to work, but this project collapsed.

With TABOTE, they learned how to make soap, batik tissues, and ways to sell their products.

Ashura is one of the important figures in the group, and has even become its president.

As a result, she knows how to assert herself when necessary.

As she says, this group allowed her to spread her knowledge as well as to have the confidence to stand in front of others.

Through strong will, Ashura was able to enter into a process of emancipation, and has truly become a model for many within ATD and also outside the association.

For her, TABOTE represents an important opportunity that can help her get out of her dire situation.

However it is important to underline that hard poverty is not something that you can easily overcome.

According to the hidden dimensions of poverty, based on the ATD’s research, people living in poverty face many challenges.

That does not depend only on them; for example they have to face social and institutional maltreatment, material and social deprivation, a lack of decent work, or their contributions seen as unrecognised.

Getting out of poverty is not just a simple matter of will.

These different external factors strongly impact minds of people living in poverty.

Most of the time, that leads to a feeling of disempowerment as well as to a sufferance through your body due to deprivation and through your mind due to shame of your situation.

This then turns every day into a struggle in order to find food for the family.

As for Ashura, even though her family background is still very poor, she had a lucky break and decided to seize it.

She had the motivation to hang in there, to get more education to open the way to future opportunities.

Today, Ashura is still working in the stone quarry.

However, little by little she gets more invested in other remunerated actions through TABOTE.

She is also a grandmother now.

She now aims to buy a house in order to be a host and to rent it.

She believes it will be a way for her to definitively move forward.

By then she hopes she will be able to stop her work in the stone quarry.

Despite her hard working life, Ashura Onesmo tries to convince young girls of her neighbourhood to stop with illegal activities such as prostitution and drug dealing.

For her, this amounts to a renunciation of morality and cannot lead to a happy life.

Thus, she believes that education can help people to overcome their poverty situation.