The Invisible Violence That Follows: The Effects of Drought on Children, Kinship, & Gender In Tanzania

Abstract

Tanzania is considered to be food self-sufficient at the national level, but in recent years, food deficits are becoming more apparent at regional and household levels. This can be attributed to an over reliance on rain-dependent agriculture while the country is experiencing recurring droughts. This over-reliance on rain-dependent agriculture coupled with climate change has been considered one of Tanzania’s greatest challenges in poverty reduction and alleviation. Yet, droughts do not affect all populations to the same degree. Because clinicians “medicalize” symptoms of malnutrition and food insecurity, we typically tend to think of young children and the elderly as being the most vulnerable to drought. I investigate how droughts impact adolescents in Tanzania and argue that they face a set of unique challenges influenced by kinship and gender-based power structures that devastatingly disrupt their childhood and socialization, which has consequences not only at the individual level but also at the societal level as well. I discover that droughts are inflicting slow violence in Tanzania, and boys and girls are being affected in different ways. Consequently children are adopting different survival strategies in hopes of resisting the hardship associated with droughts. This element of survival is a double sword that improves children’s economic situations immediately but makes them vulnerable simultaneously.