Educating Lucia - Zimbabwe

March 2000
Twelve-year old Lucia goes to primary school; her dream is to go to secondary school, and go on to train as a pilot. Her older sister Barita wants to do computer studies, but she had to leave school when their parents died of AIDS. And Portia, the youngest in the family, wants to be a dressmaker, but she doesn't go to school at all. The three sisters are AIDS orphans being brought up by their grandmother. She can only afford school fees for one girl, Lucia, to attend primary school. Tragically for these three sisters from one of Zimbabwe's large scale commercial farms, in tobacco country 50 miles outside Harare, they're more likely to end up - as their mother before them - with no formal education, working as seasonal labourers on the farm. Across Africa, the odds are dramatically against girls getting an education. This Life episode examines why.