South Sudan's First Female Mechanics

from the Guardian UK

'My mechanic's overalls will make me a role model for other women'

Despite prejudice and opposition, four girls are training to become South Sudan's first female motor mechanics

Trainee female mechanics (left to right) Nura, Natalina and Gloria in the workshop. Photograph: Laura Powell for the Guardian

Laura Powell

The Guardian, Friday 15 July 2011

Nura Koleji rubs her toe in the ochre dust, hugs her knees to her stomach, and keeps her eyes firmly downcast – until we hit on the one topic she is bubbling to talk about. It is not how she fled her village of Lanya when AK47-wielding soldiers arrived from the north during the Sudanese civil war. Nor how they kidnapped her brother to train him as a child soldier; how she watched as they picked out victims and shot them; or how her two uncles were among those butchered in front of her.
It is not even the topic I am here to speak to her about – why she decided to train as a mechanic. What really riles Nura is men's dominance in the workplace. Last week South Sudan, became an independent country following a 22-year war that ended in 2005. And in this brand new country, women such as Nura are keen to see changes.
"We have a saying that one hand is not enough to clap. It's true," she tells me. "We need both sexes, not just one. There's an hereditary attitude in my village that women are weaker. I ignore those words and despise the people who say them because I have louder words in my heart telling me I am strong."
Nura is not an activist; she has never heard the word "feminist". She is a 20-year-old, softly spoken Sudanese girl, wearing oil-slicked blue mechanic's overalls. When she graduates next year she, along with three other female classmates, will have defied the odds to become the first women mechanics in South Sudan.
By the time we meet at 9am, I've dressed, had breakfast and negotiated the potholed roads of Juba, Southern Sudan's de facto capital, to reach the technical college, a secondary school where the 470 students (85% of whom are boys) train to become electricians, bricklayers, carpenters or mechanics. Nura, meanwhile, has collected water from a borehole, swept her family's compound, poured tea for her six younger siblings, revised, and picked mangoes before her two-hour walk to school. After classes finish at 3pm, she will sell the fruit at Juba market and put the earnings towards her £41-a-year school fees.
As her 16-year-old classmate Pamela Daniel says: "If you live here, everything is a struggle. But if you don't struggle, you may as well spend your life asleep because nothing will come to you."
Nura chose this profession partly because she loves cars, partly because she would love to drive (but has neither the money nor facilities to learn), and partly because she wanted technical skills and a trade, rather than a traditional academic education. One motive, however, supersedes the rest; Nura believes there are no female role models in Southern Sudan and her ambition is to become the first.
This is quite a task for a girl whose mother is absent (she was separated as they fled Lanya during the war), whose father has no job, and whose income from trading mangoes leaves her with just enough money to pay school fees and buy shoes, but not enough for an exercise book. Even so, Nura has already overcome obstacles that halt the education of the majority of her peers.
Though 87% of Southern Sudanese women are illiterate, Nura and her classmates can read. While they live with their parents, the majority of girls in South Sudan girls are married off at 13. "Parents value the dowry more than their girls' education and freedom," says English teacher Emelda Elizulai Melling. And with the average dowry around 200 cows (vast numbers of the population earn less than £97 a year and the cheapest cow costs £280), it is not hard to understand why.
Even menstruation is a challenge. "When a girl has her period, she does not attend classes because she doesn't have the appropriate facilities," says Angelina Alel Habib, spokeswoman for Plan International in Southern Sudan. Luckily for Nura and her classmates, their teacher spends part of her wage on sanitary towels for the girls.
Then there is the fact that as the only four female mechanics students in a class of 60 boys, they faced relentless teasing and family opposition. "My neighbours laughed [at] my overalls. They said girls should not be mechanics," says 17-year-old Natalina Kiden, who would like to be a chauffeur but "doesn't want to rely on men for anything" – not even fixing a car.
Pamela, who hopes to train as an aeroplane mechanic, spent three days persuading her mother to let her go to technical college. "She thought automechanics was a dangerous and dirty job for men," says Pamela.
Nura, meanwhile, likes her overalls, despite the ridicule they provoke. And she doesn't worry that men might find her independence unattractive, or that when she marries, her husband might ban her from working. "I'll talk to my husband in a polite way and make sure he accepts my work," she tells me. "He will not refuse. I am determined. I will keep talking until he lets me."
This, after all, is a society with stringent gender-based traditions. "When women pour water for their husbands, they must kneel as a sign of respect," says Habib. And while sharia law was not imposed in the south of Sudan as it is in the north, its strict code has still restricted women's behaviour; for instance women are not supposed to speak in public. "One of the exciting changes our independence will bring is that women will finally be able to speak freely," says Habib.
Other equalities, such as increasing numbers of women in the workforce from the current 30%, will inevitably take longer. "It is not easy for men to adjust to the new economic status of women," warns mechanics teacher Francis Osumba. Juba college, which was built in the 1950s, only began accepting female students in 2005 to study bricklaying, and automechanics in 2008.
So far the students have mastered welding and engine cleaning, learned the entire anatomy of a car and even been taught how to make tables and chairs using scrap sheets of zinc – despite a poorly equipped workshop.
Nura dismisses these obstacles with touching optimism. Does she worry that male owners of car repair firms will be reluctant to hire a girl? "No," she says, insisting she will instead be a walking role model when women see her on the street in mechanic's overalls.
Osumba agrees: "The girls want to disprove people who say mechanical work is just for boys. It is not easy for them but they've passed their first and second year exams so why shouldn't they be given the same chance as the males?" Why not, indeed.
• To hear more about Juba's students: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/interactive/2011/jan/11/southern-sudan-juba-students-audio-slideshow

Modern Muscle

Muscle Cars, No Midlife Crisis Required

Big Engines, Throwback Looks Lure Baby Boomers and Twentysomethings; But Rising Fuel Prices and Regulations Loom

By JOSEPH B. WHITE at the Wall Street Journal

Detroit muscle-car mania is back.
For the first time since the Carter administration, three big Detroit brands, Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge, all offer rear-wheel-drive coupes that boast a distinctively American blend of in-your-face styling and big horsepower numbers.
How big? Try a 444-horsepower Ford Mustang Boss 302, which can be ordered with a special "Laguna Seca" package that essentially makes it a street-legal race car. Or consider the forthcoming 2012 Chevy Camaro ZL1 that will deliver 550 horsepower from its supercharged V8. Meanwhile, Chrysler LLC offers a Dodge Challenger model with a 470-horsepower Hemi engine that can run from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under five seconds.
These monster engines are shoehorned into back-to-the-future body styles that telegraph the core target market for the cars: baby boomers who lusted for these cars in their teens and 20s, but settled for Japanese compacts, minivans and sport-utility vehicles. Equally important to Detroit marketers, though, is capturing the imagination of car enthusiasts who don't remember the '60s and '70s—they weren't born yet.

"It's the attitude of the customer," less than demographics, says Mustang brand manager Jim Owens, who has a customized Mustang of his own that packs 650 horsepower under the hood. It is an attitude that says, "Hey, look at me!" he adds.
For Detroit car makers that were struggling to survive just two years ago, the buzz generated by muscle cars provides a much-needed shot in the arm for their brands. The official Mustang Facebook page, for instance, has more than 1.5 million followers—about twice as many as the Ford Motor Co. Facebook page.
But similar to the mid-1970s, when fuel prices soared and new regulations forced auto makers to shift strategies, a cloud is gathering over the muscle-car party just as it is revs up. Amid gyrating gas prices, the Obama administration is pushing a proposal that could boost fuel-economy standards to 56 or 60 mpg by 2025, leaving muscle-car makers with some tough choices down the road.
The current revival "can last for a few more years until the fuel-economy standards become ever tougher," says retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, the patron of the Camaro's rebirth. To raise fuel economy, future muscle cars might feature the superefficient eight- or nine-speed transmissions beginning to appear in luxury cars, or have electric-hybrid systems, though these technologies would add thousands to the cost of the car, Mr. Lutz says.
High mileage standards could make V-8 engines an expensive rarity, says Jeff Schuster of the market research firm J.D. Power and Associates. But Mr. Schuster says muscle-car style could survive in more affordable cars that simply used smaller engines under the hood.

"You'd see V6 or even turbocharged four cylinders," he says. Buyers could get "a muscle shell, but not the muscle car."
For the time being, though, the new approach appears to be working. Sales of the Camaro and Challenger rose 13% and 10%, respectively, in June, outpacing growth in sales of all passenger cars, according to Autodata Corp. Mustang sales slipped 2%, but on average, customers paid more than $36,000 to buy one, up nearly 12% from a year earlier, according to data from AutoTrader.com.
"The performance per dollar was hard to beat," says Juan Barnett a 30-year-old Defense Department employee who drives a 412-horsepower, V8 Mustang GT around Washington, D.C., and maintains a blog for enthusiasts. Nostalgia for the late '60s Mustangs had little to do with his purchase, he says, since the Mustang GT is a fast, sporty car that can still accommodate a child seat for the baby he and his wife are expecting.
Car lovers of a certain age may like to reminisce about the glory days of American muscle, but buyers of today's muscle cars are getting better vehicles by every measure, beyond just room for a baby seat.
The 1967 Camaro Z28, for example, had a V-8 engine rated at 290 horsepower. That's less than the V6 version of the 2011 Camaro, rated at 312 horsepower and 29 mpg on the highway. About half of Mustangs and two-thirds of Camaros are rolling onto the street with efficient, but strikingly powerful V6 engines, as consumers hedge against high gas prices. Today's muscle cars also come with airbags, stability control and robust brakes, which were all lacking in the classics.
Chevrolet marketing executive John Fitzpatrick says Camaro buyers cluster in two age bands—20 to 30 years old, and 45 to 55.
"We definitely see more than a baby boomer audience," he says.
GM's successful tie-in with the popular "Transformer" movie series is one element of the auto maker's strategy for cultivating the next generation of enthusiasts. Chevy is launching a limited run "Bumblebee" Camaro, with a distinctive yellow paint job and bold black stripes, that looks like the Camaro that transforms into a fighting robot in the latest Transformers film.
Angela Naff of Henry, Va., says she bought her first Camaro in 1995. Now she's a collector and owns six of the new models, which she drives to gatherings at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina and other places where enthusiasts show off their cars and swap stories.
"It's just a passion," says Ms. Naff, a personal-fitness trainer who runs a website for Camaro fans. She keeps an eye out for Camaros with unusual colors or option packages to add to her collection. "They had an orange with white stripes," she says. "We jumped on that."
As for Dodge, the Challenger ran behind the Mustang and Camaro in sales years ago, and it does again today, selling about 3,300 a month, or less than half the Camaro's and Mustang's sales in June. Those sales figures have prompted speculation in the auto-industry press that the car and its strongly retro styling statement won't last.
Chrysler says it has worked to upgrade the car's performance, adding a new 305 horsepower V-6 engine that gets 27 mpg on the highway, up from 25 mpg for the previous V6. The Challenger SRT8's Hemi engine has a feature that shuts off four cylinders to save fuel on the highway, and the interior of the car has been reworked. Sales are up 14% so far this year.
And last year, Chrysler offered a "Furious Fuchsia" Challenger in a limited run of just 400 cars.
These low-volume variations of modern muscle cars have a shot at becoming collectors' items in 30 years, just as their 1960s and 1970s originals are today.
Write to Joseph B. White at joseph.white@wsj.com