AFRICAN WOMEN
BORN AND BRED UNDER AFRICAN CUSTOMS
LIFE A TOUGH JOUNEY
HUSBAND IN THE CITY LOOKING FOR JOB
OBEDIENT TO HUSBAND
SUPERIVISED BY FAMILY MEMBER
SURVIVING ON BORROWED SALT
MAKING DO IN WILD VEGETABLES
RAIN COMES IN FIELDS
WAITING TO PRODUCE GOD CROPS
WEARING A DIRTY TORN DRESS
BABY ON HER BACK
SCORCHINGS FROM HEAT OF THE SUN
CHRISTMAS COMES
STANDING ON A BUS STOP
A CLOUD OF DUST CAN BE SEEN
ON A NARROW ROAD
HERE COMES MY HUSBAND.
Here is a picture of Beauty with the other students in Luc´s computer class this trimester.
Life is pretty tough here for everyone, but especially for women. Most women here are dependent on the men in their lives for support. Beauty’s parents both died a few years ago, one year apart from each other. We don’t know if it was HIV that got them, but it is likely given their age and proximity in death. Beauty was sent from Zimbabwe to live with an aunt and uncle here in our town. She was looking sad and tired one morning, and when we asked, she said she didn’t sleep because her uncle came home drunk and was fighting with her aunt. She doesn’t speak any of the languages here, and is isolated socially. Also due to these linguistic issues, Luc had to give the entire computer course in English and Portuguese. As we mentioned in previous stories, our neighbor and landlady, Marcelina, lost her husband, Nelson, last year. She luckily got to stay in her house, but her lifestyle is much simpler now because her husband used to earn the money for the family. As a widow in our culture, the extended family would be supporting her in every way they can, but here, the extended family is trying to get things from her. Because it is so communal, they were also receiving money and help from her husband, so they feel entitled to ask her to share what her husband left. Her husband’s brother is in fact lobbying for her to move out of her house so he can have it since it is bigger. He would care for her five children and she would go live with her mother on the other side of town. This seems shocking to us, but it isn’t strange at all here. Marcelina bears her suffering pretty well, and has been increasing her activity in church to help her stay positive. She blasts her hymn CDs every morning, singing along for all her neighbors to hear. Our female students also have it tough. They are taught to be quiet and passive in this culture, which translates to not participating at all in classes. Getting a girl to ask a question in class is like pulling teeth. Not to mention the fact that only about one-third of our students are girls – others have dropped out to work at home, getting married and have babies. Women are also entirely responsible for household tasks and raising children, even the professional women. We are one of three married teacher couples at our school. The other two teacher wives cook, clean, go to the market and care for their children in addition to teaching a full course load, while their husbands teach but are free to hang out with their friends, play soccer and go to the bar when not in class. Again, this sometimes seems shocking to us, being from a country where women and men share so much more, but here it is normal. Women don’t resent their roles, they are proud to be mothers, to keep a clean house and yard and to have fat, happy husbands. But that doesn’t mean that we have changed the way we interact with each other. Lucas is quick to tell other teachers about how he does the dishes and cleans the latrine and Janet has explained many times that the fact that we don’t have kids is indeed a choice we have made as a couple to wait, not that we are barren, as they assume since that is the only reason married couples don’t have kids immediately here. We try our best to involve our female students in class and we won’t on gender issues with our theater groups as well, but it is difficult as outsiders to make a large difference in the lives of women here. We hope that just seeing us as an example of a different model of being a couple will at least plant some ideas.
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