Mães: Necessidades.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve shared some stories about my Mãe: she cooks great food, she takes great care of me, and she can get a pair of pants cleaner than a washing machine can. However, I have not yet taken the time to describe the value of the Mãe in Mozambican culture, so I’m going to do that now. 

My Mãe does absolutely everything. She wakes up early and starts each day by cleaning the entire house: Sweeping, mopping and making the sure kitchen is spotless. She makes the bed, ties up the mosquito net and ensures that everything in Mãe and Pai’s bedroom is exactly in its place. She also ensures that my Pai’s work clothes are clean and pressed. Then she prepares lunch/dinner. This takes about 3-4 hours. She eats breakfast (chá and pão—tea and bread) around 11am, and by noon lunch is ready for me when I get home from morning class. Imagine that. Half of every single one of your days is spent cleaning the house. Every. Single. One. She does it with bright eyes, a smile on her face, and usually humming a tune. While this sounds like, and from experience I can confirm is, very repetitive and mindless work, Mãe radiates positive energy while she carries out these tasks. She takes pride in having a clean house and a husband who looks sharp for work each day. She takes pride in the meals she makes and genuinely accepts each compliment I give about her cooking. 

The Mãe is also the person in the family who works the machamba (garden or farm depending on the size). Mães plant, tend to and harvest all the crops the family needs to eat and/or sell. Driving through Mozambique, you will see from the road huge machambas and many mães bent over doing the plant work. Families need crops for both income and nutrition and the mães ensure that they have it. They work the farm, secure fruits and vegetables and then sit in the market and sell the product of their hard work in order to earn supplemental income for their family. There are mães in the houses, mães in the machambas and mães in the market to ensure that their own families—and the entire community—has food to eat. 

I believe that my pai does not know how to cook. Like anything. Seriously. I have seen him in the kitchen twice—once to get a cup of water for his grandson and the other time to put a dirty dish on the counter. He probably felt very out of place both times, too, because the cozinha (kitchen) is a mãe’s workshop. Traditional mozambican dishes, such as Mboa and Matapa (or what I like to call green mush) require multistep processes to make, including manually crushing peanuts into powder and manually shredding coconut. These delicious dishes cannot be whipped up in an hour; more like 2 or 3. Mães make these multiple times a week, and considering many families don’t have a fridge, leftovers are not an option. Mães spend at least 3 hours per day preparing food for their families to eat. Without Mãe, Pai would starve. No if, ands or buts about it.

Mães are also the prime caretaker of their children and their husbands. They ensure that every member of their families has clean clothes to wear, a clean house to live in and a bed to sleep in. They make sure their children are healthy, go to school, and learn life skills. My host siblings are all grown up and are living/working/studying in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital; it’s rare that I get to see Mãe interact with her children. However, the past two weeks her grandson Lukinney or Lukey for short (my host nephew), who will turn 2 years old next month, has been staying with us for the past two weeks. Not only does Mãe continue to carry out her daily chores with a 2-year-old running around or tied to her back, but she also offers Lukey brain-building moments throughout her chores. She describes what she is doing, points out new words and repeats them until he says it correctly. She teaches him songs, offers him other household items to play with. He is never further than 5 feet from her, and there is always a conversation between the two of them being had. Lukey learns from her, depends on her for food and water, and you can tell by the way he looks at her that he truly adores his grandmother. And she finds great joy in watching his eyes light up while he learns and grows and plays. 

Mãe and Lukey

It’s pretty clear that a family would not have a healthy, necessary structure if it weren’t for the mães. However, the community as well depends on a Mãe’s strength in order to stay organized and productive.  I went to church a few weeks ago and the first 1.5 hours were Mães singing hymns. They all brought their hymnbooks and sang song after song after song in Changana (the local language). I didn’t understand any of it but it was beautiful and joyful nonetheless. There were four men sitting in front of the congregation and throughout the three hours of church, the four of them combined spoke for less than 10 minutes. Two mães of the church gave the sermon, and each talked passionately and animatedly to the congregation for 45 minutes each about something to do with God (this was also in Changana so I didn’t understand). The men were there seemingly as figureheads and the mães shared their words of love, Jesus and inspiration, which is what we were all there to hear. 

Mães plan and execute all types of ceremonies in which the community participates. This includes weddings, funerals, birthday celebrations, holiday celebrations, etc. Mães are charged with buying and cooking the food, making the dresses (for example for a wedding party), providing the music, preparing the space, and planning the agenda of the event. This weekend there was a two-day long wedding. My Mãe has been helping in the preparation of it for many weeks now, and both mornings this weekend she has woken up at 5 am to go to the house of the wedding and begin cooking. On Saturday they started cooking around 0600h and we didn’t eat until 1500h. That’s a whole lot of cooking if you ask me. I got to the wedding early and all the Mães were in the backyard cooking over fire and singing and gossiping and laughing and joking. While I would hate to cook a giant meal for over 50 people for 10 hours straight, the mães made the environment positive and joyful. I will also mention that later in the evening, they brought the singing and the dancing and the party would not have gone on without them. 

All this being said, the Mozambican world would struggle to function without the Mães. They cook, clean, care, work, sell and plan. It’s hard work. It’s long work. It’s repetitive work. But they do it with light in their eyes and smiles on their faces. They take great pride in providing for their families and for the community. And they find the most joy in seeing the ones they love benefit from their hard work. These women are among some of the strongest and most loving women I have ever met. I am blessed to have lived with and learned from my Mãe over the past 8 weeks and am so excited to continue to forge relationships with the Mães in my community.