Yesterday Manolo died of thyroid cancer. He was in his forties. He leaves behind a lovely little girl named Mar who is about 7 years old. This little lady will never get the joy of growing up with the friendship and guidance of her father. She will never be given away at her wedding, waited for after a first date, taught to drive, given a first glass of beer by the man who gave her half her genes and who wil always form an intrinsic part of who she is. And she will not even be really aware of absence until later when she reflects and understands more the significance of death. At seven years old, it is clear that she can understand partially that her father is never coming back. But the permanence, the awful permanence of death is what takes a lifetime to learn.

Does any of us really understand death? We have a world crammed with philosophies and religions all trying to explain their version of what happens after we depart this earthly existence. Some tell us that wewill be reborn, adopt a new body, grow up, make mistakes, accumulate karma or slough it off and in the end look forward only to an unending repetition of the same cycle over and over again until we redeem our wretched souls until we are worthy of something less mundane and painful.

Others try to tell us that awaits us a paradise if only we abase and behave ourselves well enough in this one life that we have. They say the Saviour and the Saints await high above on a cloud of air to judge our misery and worth and allow us, or not, to enter. If permission is not granted, we wait for ever in limbo with the unchristened babies or plunge into the flames of the inferno of Hell to smolder forever in the sulphur air and repent at will our sins and transgressions.

Others say that there is nothing to look forward to, that we disintegrate like our body and never again exist. There is no good, no bad, no right, no wrong. There are no good grades to be achieved, no points to score and nothing to to guide us but our own morals and conscience.

Anyone could have it right. The point is that nobody knows. Not the miracle cases who travel through a dark tunnel towards the light, who hover abovetheir battered bodies and wave goodbye before being shocked in situ once again by a defibrillator or a shot of adrenaline. Not the preachers or priests or mullahs or shaman really know what happens when we die. We just…die. And everyone dies.

Ahuge part of being human is our unshakable faith in the future. Without knowing it we are all optimists because we believe that tomorrow exists. Regardless of the remorse or guilt or self-hatred that a depressive might feel, they too believe that tomorrow exists. Whether they think it worth it to live tomorrow is another story.

And so we go on living, reproducing, loving, grieving because that’s just how life is. Regardless of what creed you follow the actual acts of everyday life are mostly the same: we all take a shit in the morning, we all break wind if we eat too many beans, we all have crushes and fall in love, we all want to lay our head on a soft pillow at night and dream the night away in warmth and comfort.

I hope that little Mar will live her life fully and have all the joys and surprises that existence here on this earth entails. I hope that her father in his too-short life has left a legacy of beautiful young girl who will grow up cared for and loved and secure. Her mother, Luc

As I cradle my baby daughter in my arms, I reflect daily on how lucky both she and I are to be born European. Not only for education and central heating and abundant food but for the mere fact that here we are women free to live free, productive, self-directed lives. This right has been hard-won and thanks go out to the pioneers like Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette.

This week, Robert Pickton was convicted in Canada of 2nd degree murder of six women. He is on trial for the murder of 20 other women. Most of his victims were drug addicts and prostitutes from Canada’s poorest postcode, Downtown Eastside Vancouver. What has angered people more than just the murders is the lack of priority given to the large number of missing person cases in the late 1990’s. Women, sex-workers, drug- addicts are second-class citizens and their lives are worth less than those of the wealthy.

I have just finished reading an article in the International Herald Tribune detailing the voyage of a team of soldiers and medics, hunting the Taliban, and finding sick children by the score in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In every village they visited, the humble, poor villagers trundled out their sick, ill-clothed children begging for medical attention. We all know the plight of women in Taliban-controlled areas - no rights, second-class status, chattel - but we sometimes forget that children are always the victims of might-and-muscle regimes. What a tragedy to be born a girl in Afghanistan.

I then moved onto equally inspiring and uplifting news from Africa. Scourge of child sexual abuse takes toll on girls in sub-Saharan Africa says the headline and it’s right. Reporting huge numbers of child sexual abuse accusations, incompetent prosecution, backhanders and a culture whose inherent relegation of girls and women to second place, they post heart-rending photos of tiny girls abused by neighbours, employers and relatives.

Increasingly, African nations are openly acknowledging the problem, partly because AIDS has made children more likely to fall ill or die from abuse. Campaigns against child sexual abuse are under way in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

If there is anything positive to have come from AIDS, this must be it. I cannot accept that we share a world where this continues to take place. I feel sick and sad just thinking about it. Of course, there must be many parts of Africa where this does not go on, where women and girls have status and rights and control of their bodies and lives. Mustn’t there?

Finally, good old India’s dowry system makes north India the worst place to born a girl. Every girl child is born with the burden of the cost of a huge wedding and dowry on her tiny head. Wives and children are abandoned by husbands unable to face the financial obligation and the social stigma associated with fathering females. The wealth generated by the economic boom of India’s IT sector does not reach these miserable people. Dowry is illegal in India, but deeply ingrained in the culture. Determining the sex of unborn children is also illegal but widely practiced. If you can afford to have a sex-determination examination, can you not afford to raise a little girl? Is a girl only worth the money, bedsheets and baubles that her parents offer in order to get rid of her?

Among my friends, most of us in our child-bearing and child-rearing years, there appear to be a large number of girls being born. I reckon it’s in order to redress the imbalance caused by so many murdered baby girls in countries like India and China, and to fill our little world with the female energy which is, ultimately, going to be what get us out of this state of permanent war, waste and want.

So I kiss my lovely daughter goodnight and thank Goddess we are Europeans.