Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number

“I was thinking about it, and I want to live with you when you move away,” my host sister told me yesterday. We always talk in the kitchen after dinner when we are clearing the plates together. It is one of the only places we are outside of the earshot of my host mom. Joulietta is a beautiful and bright 14 year old girl. She is finishing the 7^th grade this year and will be starting high school in January. From my side, I was shocked. What on earth would a 23 year old, recent college grad be doing taking care of a teenager??? But then I realized, here it probably wouldn’t be so weird. In this context, it often works out that someone lives with their older sister, especially if she has a stable job, a good degree and a nice house like the one I will be moving into in 2 weeks.

                Joulietta lives here in Namaacha with her aunt. Her mother works in Swaziland where it is too expensive for her to study. So in exchange for doing a lot of the house chores and selling snacks by the road, she lives with my host family and goes to school here in town. She will move next year anyway to go to secondary school, where she will probably live in the Internato, the Moz equivalent of dorms.

In many ways Joulietta is way more mature by Mozambique standards than I am. She can carry a full 5 gallon jug of water on her head while carrying another with one arm, all while going uphill. She cleans the whole house before 6 am then gets to school to study. She can mash peanuts, shred coconut, light a charcoal stove, and work a machete way better than I ever dare hope to. She guts fish and chickens without a flinch. I, on the other hand, am struggling with most of these things. These are the tasks a woman needs to be able to do here, which would put me at the level of a 5 year old girl.

But don’t get me wrong, the 5 year old girls have their responsibilities here too. It is not uncommon to see little kids taking care of babies here. Many kids are free to go off and play by themselves, as long as they are within earshot of their mothers when they call for them (but that’s still pretty far because the moms here can yell loudly).  But they are still taught from that age how to wash dishes, how to wash their clothes, and are expected to help mop and sweep the houses and the yards (yes, they sweep the yards). While in the US, childhood is expected to be a time for fun and carefree days, here it is full of responsibilities. With age comes more respect and more downtime. At least that seems to be the pattern with my family. This is a notable difference for me, coming from a place where the older you are, the more responsibilities both in work and at home you are expected to have.

Most of the time Joulietta is the one trying to take care of me. If my mãe (mother in Portuguese) isn’t home, Joulietta is the one making sure I take my baths, making my snack, getting me an umbrella, and making me meals. It makes me so uncomfortable to be fussed over and I try my best to do everything myself before she has the chance to do it for me. But at the same time, she is very proud to show me how responsible she can be and that shows. Plus, as noted before, I am a baby on the Mozambican survival scale. No one can believe that we’ve lived on our own if we can’t even make cove com amadoim e coco (Collard greens stew with peanuts and coconut milk, sooo good).

But although Joulietta’s life is by no means easy, she does have a lot going for her. She has a family that cares enough about her education to put her where she can pursue it. She has dreams of studying math and working in a bank. She has motivation to do well in school. She has friends that spend time with her after school while she is selling soda and chips.

                So while I can’t take her with me up north to my site, I will always have her in mind while I am teaching the soft spoken girls in my math classes who might get to school late because they were cleaning the house that morning. I will try to come back and visit to see how she is doing in school and she can see how I’m doing at mashing those peanuts. But 2 years might not be enough for me to master that.