Cinderellie, Cinderellie

Our typical weekday begins around 5am.  We wake up with the sun and usually, our neighbors are already up taking baths, washing dishes, cooking breakfast, etc.  Around 6:15, Marisa, Veronica, and Tobias all dressed in their white shirt and black pants, join the herd of other students on their way to the secondary school.  My younger neighbors, dressed in white shirts and maroon skirts and pants, head off to the primary school.

            Rita stays behind.

            Rita’s father, supposedly living somewhere in Nampula province, is of some relation to our neighbor, Selemane.  Rita’s father was married but her mother was not the woman he was married to, but some other woman that he had on the side (unfortunately a practice ridiculously common in this country).  Rita grew up with her father and his wife, but his wife, in simple terms, refused to take care of her or treat her as one of her own.  As a result, Rita was never enrolled in school and too often not even fed.   Looking at her now, singing the latest popular song while finishing up her chores, you wouldn’t know.  She seems healthy and she seems happy now that she’s living with her uncle (maybe?), Selemane.

Our neighbor, Rita

            Unfortunately, food is about the only support she gets from my neighbor’s family.  It is common for Mozambican families to hire “empregadas” or maids, but the key word is hire.  Rita is essentially their maid, working for her keep.  In addition, as a result of being passed around the family before settling with my neighbors, Rita has never had the opportunity to go to school.  Given that she is living with a math teacher with the equivalent of a Masters degree and his wife who just graduated from the primary school teacher trainer institute, I find it strange that at her age, Rita cannot read or write.  Our neighbors claimed to have bought her a school uniform at some point but just never got around to enroll her.  Rita is now too embarassed to start school so late and I’m not sure she would go to school if she were given the opportunity because it would mean starting at the very beginning and her classmates would probably be only 7 or 8 years old.  Mireya started teaching her to read last year but eventually it just became too difficult to dedicate enough time.  She did make progress.  Rita can now, with difficulty, recognize and copy letters and write her name.

            We’ve since started a REDES (Raparigas em Desenvolvimento, Educação, e Saúde or Girls in Development, Education, and Health) group with most of our female neighbors, including Rita.  We focus on income generation and independence by teaching the girls to sew bags.  If this really were a fairytale, Rita would be some seamstress prodigy with an eye for fashion that would land her in Milan, but it isn’t and we struggle to get her to align the fabric and sew in a straight line… We have some work to do, but she is learning all the same.  This group has also given us more time to observe how Rita interacts with the other women in her family, in particular, her new “stepmother,” Paula.

            Paula does not hide her dislike of Rita well and while she doesn’t deny her food like her previous stepmother, she can be psychologically cruel.  This became painfully obvious when Mireya and I started planning for the annual REDES workshop.

            Like the JUNTOS workshop, REDES workshops teach the girls about leadership, health, and HIV/AIDS.  Also like JUNTOS, it is an opportunity for a bunch of girls from different cities to hang out and have fun.  Mireya and I knew that we had to invite Rita because she’d never get this kind of education or opportunity otherwise.  We approached Paula for her persmission.  Paula hesitated and said she’d have to talk to Selemane as the workshop was in Monapo, Nampula and Rita would be gone for an entire weekend.  We expected this since Rita really does do most of the housework.  A few days later we asked Paula if she had made a decision and she said she had spoken to Selemane and they were still thinking about it.  A week later, they still had not made up their mind.  We knew at that point that she probably hadn’t spoken to Selemane but had made up her own mind that Rita wouldn’t be allowed to travel; she just hadn’t found an excuse that didn’t make her seem like a, well, yeah.

            Fine, if she wanted to play dirty, so could we.  One afternoon, Mireya and I went over to talk to Selemane for ourselves, since that was the excuse that Paula was clinging to for not yet giving us an answer.  We couldn’t have timed it more perfectly.  Selemane and Paula were sitting alone in the house and Rita was washing dishes outside.  We told him that the workshop was completely paid for, that I’d be going with her along with our other adult neighbor, Esperança, and that this would be a good opportunity for her to learn about herself and meet other girls her age.  He agreed almost immediately as if we were idiots for even needing to ask permission.  All the while, Paula pretended to be asleep on the mattress on the floor until Selemane asked her opinion.  Since he’d already agreed and Paula had no REAL reasons for disagreeing, she just rolled over and said something like “sure, yeah, whatever.”

            It turns out Cinderella was going to the ball afterall and we didn’t even need a fairy godmother to kidnap her in a pumpkin.  Don’t get me wrong, we love Paula and 90% of the time she’s a likeable human being.  It just so happens she’s not a likeable person the rest of the time and she spends that rest of the time with Rita.

Our counterpart Esperanca, Veronica, and Rita at the workshop.

2013 Cabo Delgado/Nampula REDES workshop

            Rita had a blast at the workshop and is still talking about it and singing the songs she learned, but it was no royal ball.  With its workbooks, posters, and “read alouds,” it was full of reminders that she was the only one in the room who could not read.  During the self-esteem session, after an entire morning of reading about business plans and doing math for calculating revinue, her frusteration came to a head.  The facilitator of the session said she was going to throw a marker around the room, and if she threw it to you, you had to stand up and say something good about yourself.  She started.  She was smart and loved to read and study.  The first girl she threw it to was Rita.  Rita stood up and said “I don’t go to school, I can’t read, I don’t do anything.”  Not really sure what to do with that, the facilitator threw the marker to the next person. I was a little too shocked to say anything but luckily the counterpart for another group stood up and said, “She forgot something.  She’s pretty.”  I did some more damage control after the session that day but it’s never been so obvious just how far we still have to go with Rita.

            Now Mireya and I are always looking for ways to make Rita feel important.  A few weeks ago, we started talking about birthdays in our REDES meeting while we were sewing.  We’d known for a while that Rita didn’t know how old she was let alone what day she was born so when we got to her, we set out to give her a birthday.  First we asked if she like rainy season or cold season.  She liked cold season so we told her to pick her favorite month between May and September.  Then she picked a number between 1 and 30.  We celebrated her birthday this past Sunday, June 30^th.

            Most of our REDES girls came to the party, as well as some neighborhood children, and even Brito, our JUNTOS counterpart, showed up.  We decorated our alpendra with paper chains, put out drinks and snacks, and put on the music.  We brought out a brownie cake and sang happy birthday first in Portuguese, then in English.  In accordance with Mozambican tradition, Rita cut HER birthday cake and fed the first bite to her most valued guest at the party.  She chose Rodasa and Suel, the toddlers she spends most of her day caring for.  After cake, in accordance with American tradition, we made Rita open her present, a brand new capulana Mireya and I had picked out for her.  Then we played musical chairs, danced until it got dark, and had a generally great time.

            Happy Birthday, Rita! 

Farzana, Rita, Neuza (with nephew Helio) and Eunilde playing musical chairs.  Helio did not like this game.  He refused to let Neuza put him down but cried every time she went to grab a chair.

Rita feeding cake to her guest of honor, Suel

Presents!

Neuza, me, Farzana, Rita, Brito, Suel, Mireya, Paula, and Eunilde at Rita's 15th (?) birthday party.