Mozambique: protection against domestic violence for children
The best way to walk to Luis Cabral, a district of the Mozambican capital Maputo, is: the streets are not paved and full of potholes. When it rains, large puddles form. The poor gather here barely five kilometers from the chic villas of the rich, the expensive restaurants and the luxury hotels - many of them have immigrated from the rural regions, where droughts and floods make the harvents lean and life difficult. If you have a job at all, then often as a "guarda". They guard the houses of the rich for three or four euros a day.
Luis Cabral mainly consists of small houses, huts and garbage, which are close to close standing. But in the middle of it: The children's and youth center of »Meninos de Mozambique« (MDM), which is supported by Terre des Hommes. Loud cries of children sound out of the courtyard, around 20 women are sitting under the roof, an exhibition entitled "Este corpo é meu!" - My body belongs to me on the walls.
"About a hundred children come here every day," explains psychologist Camila Rodrigo. »Some play and some receive tutoring classes so that they can get along better at school and do not break them off. For example, the older people talk about their images of women and men in different groups and they think about how they can contain domestic violence in the quarter. They develop plays and perform them. You write and publish reports and reports in the local media. And they are contact persons for the neighborhood if cases of abuse and violence are determined or suspected. "
Patriarchal mutual ways of thinking play an important role
Camila and her ten colleagues also work with lawyers who are at the side of the victims of violence. And once a week, the team inquires about cases that have been re -registered there in the nearby police station. Often it is about sexualized violence and physical violence, but also about abandoned or neglected children. Alcohol and patriarchal ways of thinking play an important role.
Many girls from Luis Cabral are pregnant before they are 18. The fathers often get out of dust when they learn about it. Abortions are legal, but often too expensive and too bureaucratic for girls from Luis Cabral, because they have to explain their motifs in writing and to investigations. That is why many of them go to unintentional women and risk their lives - or they get the child. Camila reports of a typical case: »We are taking care of a 16-year-old girl who was pregnant by her 21-year-old friend. After telling him that, he fled. She got twins and nobody helped her. The parents have no money. The father is physically disabled and the mother makes small cakes and tries to sell her. You can hardly live on that. "
"I don't want to have a new man at first"
MDM wants to support the girl with a short training and some start -up capital so that she can open a small business and take care of her children. Twenty other girls in a similar situation have already received such help. We visit one of them in her little hairdresser shop, where she is doing her hair for a girl: "My neighbor knew that my children's father left me," she says. “Back then I couldn't buy anything to eat and not pay rent. My neighbor then told me that MDM supports women like me. You helped me open my little hairdresser shop. I now live with my children alone. I don't want a new man at first. "
On the way through the narrow streets of the quarter we meet Mauricio. He is 16 years old and has been to the MDM center since he was 14. "I'm in the media group and in the theater group," he says proudly. “We have already made several pieces and mostly it is about violence. There is a lot of violence here in Luis Cabral. But I think it has become less since we are active here. We show our pieces and sensitize people. You should understand: This is not good! Yes, a lot has changed. "