In honor of Dia de Mulher Mozambicana...

In Mozambique, every Friday is considered “Dia de Homen”. The first time I heard someone refer to this tradition, I was slightly shocked and a little confused. What exactly did that mean, “Man’s day”? And then, I realized that so called “Man’s day” really just gave men the liberty to go to the bar and drink, free of responsibilities or obligations. Well, what about Women’s Day? Yes, women have a day too. But, just one. April 7^th. Dia de Mulher Mozambicana. There is a day once a week in order to celebrate men, but women just have one day a year. What is wrong with this picture? As you can see, while there has been a lot of recent improvement with gender equality, there is still a long way to go. However, in honor of Dia de Mulher Mozambicana just around the corner, I wanted to honor just seven of the amazing women I have met throughout my service here in Moz. Who knows where I would be without them?  

Enia

I first met Enia just over a year ago at a Gender Based Violence training that the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) hosted for Peace Corps Volunteers and new fellows they were dispersing into the Gaza districts. The fellows were students from Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique’s biggest university.  Enia was the psychology fellow assigned to Xai Xai district and would be coming to work in Chicumbane. I remember being impressed by her caring, friendly disposition and her chic wardrobe. She wore a beautiful capalana tunic, had a matching headpiece, beaded necklace and earrings as well. We started talking and I felt my lack of Portuguese at the time as a hindrance. She spoke so fast and eloquently. She was so patient with me taking the time to slow down and explain what I did not understand at first. We have been working together ever since.

As the psychology fellow working at the hospital, Enia and I have been working together to organize Maes Para Maes, a support group for HIV+ pregnant women, and a pediatrics support group. We have experienced several setbacks and frustrations in organizing Maes Para Maes; however, we have a mutual understanding that we are in this together. We share many of the same frustrations working with the hospital staff. They say they are too busy to support patients more or do not follow through with ideas. I always tell her that I am glad to see her frustrated. I don’t really mean that, I just mean that it is nice to see that I am not the only one experiencing difficulties or frustrations. I used to sometimes think it was just me being the foreigner. Enia is punctual and works hard. She has an empathetic manner and she cares for all the patients she interacts with. I always enjoy sitting with Enia as she counsels patients before and after HIV tests because she really takes the time and consideration necessary to counsel people on such a sensitive topic. She also has a unique way of getting people to open up and really share with her what is going on.

We run a pediatric support group together every Thursday morning at the hospital for children who are taking ARV’s. In addition, we wrote and submitted a proposal together to create a Children’s Corner at the hospital. We are still waiting for the hospital to determine the appropriate space to use.

Enia and I are more than just colleagues. Over the past year working together, we have become friends as well. She invited me to her graduation party last November. She graduated with her psychology degree from Eduardo Mondlane University. I met her whole family and her father even dragged me out onto the dance floor. She has two kids and another one on the way. To me, Enia embraces a positive, confident, ambitious spirit that is often hard to find in women here.

Vovo Minda

“On a scale of 1-20 (the grading system used in Mozambique), I’d give you a 30,” Vovo Minda once told me. She then told me that I work too hard.  She reminds me of my deceased grandmother, Grandma Huysman. I think it is a combination of her stature, her “take charge” attitude and her almost brutally honest, but yet compassionate nature. “Oh Colleen, what is going on with your face? You have pimples all over it.” Thanks Vovo Minda, I know. But, she means well. She does.

Vovo Minda is the head nurse in Consults of Children at Risk (CCR). She sees all babies up to 18 months who have an HIV+ mother, are malnourished or are twins. She actually retired a few years ago, but the hospital asked her to come back to work. She’s that good. In my first few months shadowing at the hospital, I spent a few weeks with Vovo Minda in CCR. I remember how she wanted to teach me everything. She wanted me to fill out the paperwork while she talked with the mother and child she was attending. She even wanted me to give HIV tests. I explained to her how I was not a nurse. We eventually started making papas, porridge, together to teach mothers how to make it for their malnourished children. This time last year, every Wednesday we worked with a volunteer to make porridge. I loved doing this with Vovo Minda. I loved watching how she would explain to the mothers what they needed to do for their children. We had a good program going until the hospital ran out of ingredients and we have yet to start up again. We are currently waiting on charcoal.

I brought Vovo Minda with me to a Peace Corps conference on project design and management last April. I was hoping this would give us an opportunity to plan out the papas activities a little more and shape them into more support groups. The conference gave us the opportunity to sit and really discuss some ideas, but it has been difficult to get the ideas going since then. The conference was held at a conference center just outside of Maputo, pretty isolated and not really close to anything. When we got there, Vovo Minda said, “Colleen, I thought you were taking me to stroll around Maputo.” And that’s Vovo Minda for ya.  She dreams of someday having a cresh, a center just for babies who are sick and malnourished.   In the meantime, her home serves as such. She cares for her grandchildren and some of the neighborhood kids who are HIV+ and do not have anywhere else to go. She is 64 years old, but has the spitfire of a teenager.

Professora Tereza

“You have to change your shirt. You can’t wear that.” Tereza had just arrived at my house for my Portuguese/Changana lessons. But, as she arrived, she informed me that instead of having lessons, we had to go to my neighbor’s house because my neighbor’s baby had died that morning. So I wrapped a capalana around my waist, changed my shirt and we went to my neighbor’s house to sit on the straw mats and pay our respects. The next hour was spent listening to all the women gathered at the house singing in Changana. They hugged and embraced the grieving mother. Since that day over a year and a half ago, Tereza has continued to be a culture guide, if you will.

Professora Tereza and her daughter Kaka on Christmas Day. 

Professora Tereza started out as just my Portuguese and Changana tutor just two months after I arrived at site. After asking around for a tutor, one of the nurses I work with, Patricia, put me in touch with Tereza, a second grade school teacher. Maybe she thought my Portuguese was at a second grade level? I don’t know. Either way, it was a great match. Tereza started coming over my house two days a week for about an hour and a half. For the first hour, we practiced Portuguese and the last 30 minutes was Changana. The Changana usually ended up as her just yelling things at me and I would have to repeat it. I still remember, “Fula Matilu, Fala Matilu” (Open your eyes, shut your eyes). We practiced that one a lot.  Just before the holiday season 2012, I stopped tutoring. I was more confident with my Portuguese and I had decided that I wasn’t getting much of the Changana, I needed to do more practice on my own.

So we stopped having tutoring, but our friendship didn’t end there. I started going by her house either to or fro the hospital and we would have tea or lunch. Tereza lives with her two daughters, Magida (10) and Kaka (2). Kaka has an irrational fear of me and cries just about every time I enter into their yard. And I am now helping Magida with her English homework each week. The tables have turned and I am now the language tutor.

Tereza and her family have been so warm, generous and welcoming to me throughout my service. I went to a spiritual ceremony at her house last Easter, Tereza introduced me at the local Presbyterian church, I celebrated Christmas with her family in Xai-Xai and she always keeps me informed of gatherings or activities in the neighborhood.

What I appreciate most about Tereza is how she never treats me like a “mulungo” (white person). She expects the same from me as she does of her neighbors, friends and own family. I have been to a number of Mozambican parties where I am told to just sit in a chair with the men (women usually sit on straw mats), while everyone else I know will be running around preparing things. Tereza doesn’t do that. She hands me the soap and tells me to wash all the dishes in preparation for serving a meal, or passes me a knife to peel a 12.5 kg bag of potatoes. She then also makes sure I never miss when it is time to eat or rest. On Christmas, we made that 12.5 kg bag of potatoes into a vat of French fries. She was impressed how I seemed to know what I was doing. I told her how French fries here or “la” (there in America) are made the same way. Since then she has been telling me how I need to bring cassava, peanuts, pineapple, leaves of cassava home so I can make Mozambican food when I get back. We are still trying to figure out how I could get it all in my suitcase and through border control, but we have some time to figure that out.

Dona Rachel

I never imagined myself having a maid in Peace Corps. During training when visiting volunteers talked about their “empregadas” (maids) I always said I didn’t think I wanted to have one. Especially not in Peace Corps. And then I met Dona Rachel. She had been working for Peace Corps Volunteers for 12 years when I arrived in Chicumbane. In the past, she would cook and clean for volunteers. I wasn’t going to be the one to cut her off. So she started working as my maid. I still don’t like to think of her as a maid, but rather a neighbor/friend who just helps me out from time to time. She usually comes once a week to cart water from my neighbor’s yard to my house and wash my clothes. She then also takes care of Mel when I go away. She also helps me out with transporting my gas tank when I need to get that filled and with carrying a 25 kg bag of flour to make Mel’s food. She has never cooked for me, but recently we have talked about making some Mozambican dishes together, she said so I would know how to make them when I get back to America.

I will never forget the first day I moved into my house. Dona Rachel had come by at 5 a.m. to say good-bye to Vivienne and as Vivienne’s chapa drove away, Dona Rachel jumped right into helping me move my things into the house and rearranging them. We cleaned the entire house from floor to ceiling inside and out. She helped me make the house my house. Dona Rachel is so physically strong and works extremely hard. She is dedicated and knows what she has to do in order to feed her family at the end of the day.

Since November, Dona Rachel has also been working in the city so instead of her regular schedule of coming on Tuesday mornings, she has been coming once a week whenever she has a chance. Usually it is late afternoon Friday or Saturday. But, she still likes to keep tabs on me to see how I am doing. She will usually give me a call or just stop by on her way to or from the city just to say hi and chat for a bit. That is one thing I love about Mozambique. You never need a plan or invite to visit someone. It is accepted and even expected just to stop by people’s houses to check in, visit and bater papo (just chat).

Adelaide

I first met Adelaide last year when another volunteer told me about a lady in the market who had beans for just 25 mets. That’s less than a dollar. We had been in the routine of going to another lady in another market and getting beans for 40 mets, but now we had to check out the lady with 25 met beans. Nowhere in America can you get this much food for under a dollar. What a steal.

Adelaide, Maecina and Joana making peanut butter at her stand in the market. 

Meet Adelaide. She is a caring, generous mother from South Africa running a stand in the busy Xai-Xai market. She only speaks English and the local language Changana. So after our first lunch to check out the new place, we were hooked. Adelaide has the best beans in the Xai-Xai market. She does. The other day when I was there, she had already run out of beans by 1:30 p.m. Her beans are in high demand. And I have become one of her loyal customers. I usually try to make a trip at least once a week, but if I don’t show up for a while, Adelaide will text to check in. She runs the stand with her niece, who she took in after she lost her parents, and usually her two kids, Joana and Luis, are running around as well. Adelaide took in one of Mel’s puppies from the last litter. Unfortunately, it has since disappeared. I felt so bad when Adelaide called to tell me because she too was so upset about losing the dog. Last year, two other volunteers and I taught Adelaide how to make peanut butter right there in the market after we had eaten lunch. People in the market definitely got a kick out of the three white people using an alguidar (clay pot in picture) to mash up peanuts. Adelaide loved it and we have plans to make peanut butter again next weekend. Adelaide is such a genuine, caring and open woman. We will often talk about what is going on with her family or at home and just about life in general. And in return, she asks about my life and always likes to keep tabs on former volunteers who have already left. She has definitely gotten used to the volunteer invasions at her little stand in the market. It’s no wonder she runs out of beans.

Dona Persina

Dona Persina is my landlady. She also runs a charcoal stand in the market area of Chicumbane. And she sells corn. And she collects bottles to return for a deposit. Dona Persina knows how to make a buck or two. She is what I like to call a “chefe”, meaning that she knows what she wants and how to get it done. Here, that is sometimes a rare quality to see in women. She lives with her husband and their grandson Antonio, who lost both of his parents. The house I live in was actually owned by Antonio’s father so someday when he is older, it will hopefully be his.

Throughout the end of last year, Dona Persina was hurt her back and could not work. She could hardly walk and mainly stayed on a straw mat all day.  As you can imagine, this period was very frustrating for her, someone used to keeping busy and working her various jobs. So I got into the pattern of stopping by their house and visiting. I would sit and chat with her and her husband, have tea and some days even eat lunch together. Her husband, by the way, reminds me of my grandfather P-Pop. I don’t know if it is the way he tests me, always asking what I think about different things going on in the world that he has heard on the news; or the way he moseys around the neighborhood; or his eagerness to learn about anything and everything, especially English words, but something about him always reminds me of P-Pop. So I guess that is also why I always like to visit them. I love hearing their stories. About ‘how back in their day’, you were told who you would marry by your parents, or how Dona Persina used to walk all the way down to the river to wash her clothes or how a monkey came right up to a baby and took its food when they lived out in the bush.  Some stories I take with a grain of salt, but regardless, it is always a good laugh.

Antonieta

Antoineta is probably one of the strongest, most caring, empathetic women I have met here. She works as a volunteer for Tsembeka, one of the community based organizations here in Chicumbane. The organization is made up of volunteers, some HIV positive, who look after vulnerable children and orphans in the community and patients who have missed or abandoned treatment through home visits and searches. At the moment, Tsembeka does not have funding, but that is no barrier for Antoineta. I think if she could, single-handedly, she would make sure that no one in the area missed their treatment.

Antoineta and her puppy.

She lives in Chiconela, which is a 20 met chapa ride from Chicumbane, but that does not stop Antoineta from accompanying people to the hospital regularly to pick up their medication or just going to the hospital for them. She gives and gives and gives, when she herself lives on very little. Antoineta lives with her two sons and one of Mel’s puppies from the first litter. Her husband died a few years ago and now most of her family lives in South Africa. While I do not work directly with Tsembeka, last year I worked with Antonieta to organize teaching some of the volunteers how to make peanut butter. Since then, Antoineta has continued to make peanut butter at home and for the kids of her neighborhood.

She is motivated and willing to do so much for others. She also has an amazing optimistic spirit. She is infamous for always saying, “Tudo bem, nada mau” (Meaning all is well, nothing wrong). And I always believe her, but really she might be going through much more than you and I will ever experience. But, she would never lead you to believe that. She is always too busy looking out for everyone else. And everyone else knows to go to her for whatever they may need. She will find a will and a way to do what she can to help out.

I have been so lucky to have been able to get to know these amazing women throughout my service. They hardly receive any recognition for the things they do on a regular basis; for just being who they are. They are strong and genuine, selfless and intelligent, warm and compassionate. They have been an inspiration to me in so many ways. So on this April 7^th, Dia de Mulher Mozambicana here’s to them! To Enia, Vovo Minda, Professora Tereza, Dona Rachel, Dona Persina, Adelaide and Antoineta,  THANK YOU.