Maman Flor

Last week maman Flor came to our office. She was at our gate with a baby in her arm and asked me some water. I let her come in, she sat in the veranda and I brought her the water. The child, 17-month old, is visibly sick, his eyes suffer from a very strong squint, he constantly rubs his eyes as if to return the irises in their natural position, but those are always seeking refuge and go and hide into to the nose cavity.
Flor explains that her child, Jefti, is sick since when he was born: for the first three months he has always kept his eyes closed. She led him to a doctor, probably too late, and he didn’t give her big hopes.
While I bring some milk and biscuits to Jefti, Flor starts to tell her story. She was born in a village near Pointe Noire, the economic capital of the country, and then she met her husband. From there he led her to Brazzaville. They had three children, then one day his husband disappeared, fled with a kinoise woman, from Kinshasa. Unfortunately, here it is fairly common the case of men who abandon their families for other women. Overnight, Flor found itself completely alone and with three children to attend to. She explained that she was selling to the market the foufou, a kind of raw bread obtained by mixing manioc flour and boiling water. Then the costs of treatment of Jefti did not allow her to re-invest the capital necessary to buy the manioc flour, and her trade stopped. For two months she’s not paying the rent, her house is a 16 squared meters room of masonry, in the rest of the house lives the owner, waiting impatiently for the balance of the debt. Flor doesn’t have a bed, and she sleeps with two of his three sons on the floor, where she stretch a blanket out, to avoid at least the direct contact with the cold surface. But the problems of Flor don’t end there. The older of his three sons, Merveil, is thirteen years old and for 8 months he has become a street child. He lives on the street, in the nearby of Marché Total, with a small gang of kids who spend their time to beg and commit small theft. She wants him to come home, she went and looked for him several times, once he came back home, but he even stole a few coins on a table, and returned to the street.
After Flor told us her story, my colleagues and I decide to help her. This is never an easy decision: our NGO works on four projects, and the available funds can not be diverted elsewhere. To help those who come to seek help, then, is to do by our pocket. It is never question of a lot of money, but the problem we face is different: here the voices turn very fast, and if the rumor is spread, that we help with money or buy the necessary materials to someone that we have never seen and who came simply to ask, we risk to be overwhelmed by requests of any kind in a short time. With the result that it becomes impossible to continue our work here peacefully. In less than two months, already at least a dozen people came to ask for money. Unfortunately we have no other available information if not listening to their stories and follow our confidence, that we can just perceive, with no other rational means: this is the only compass we can use. We self regulated, deciding to never give money, that they could spend wherever, and after a few days the problem would reoccur again. For maman Flor then we decided to buy a sack of manioc flour, and we arranged to meet her to go and buy it together. So we also met her second son, Emmanuel, a handsome 4 years old child, with a smart face and a curious glance. Emmanuel is already a little man: he helps his mother obediently and he can get away with himself, as for most of the day he is with his friends near the house.
What strikes me most of Flor is her dignity and the ability to carry his cross without any discouragement. She is 32, but the vicissitudes through which she passed gave some year more o her body, giving in exchange a rare force of spirit and temperament.


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On the day of to buy the sack of flour, we leave from the house of Flor, who brings on her shoulders Jefti, and we go to the market of Makelekele to buy the goods. The markets here are a melting pot of smells, colours and people. The stalls are small, stacked together; the mass of people, things and smells makes the air heavy. Sometimes you have to walk in little gimcanas between stalls and pools of water to avoid walking in mud.
After a long negotiation, we agree with the seller the price of the bag: it costs 20 thousand francs, about 30 euros, and weighs around twenty kilos. Hence we have to carry it to the mill to refine this still raw flour. One of the many carriers that run on the markets with their wheelbarrow takes the bag without pleasantries. He goes so fast that gives us no time to agree on a price, and when we get him, after two or three hundred meters, Flor says she will pay 500 francs that transport, which is the usual cost. The problem, however, is me and Alice, or rather, our skin colour. The carrier begins a rant saying that he demand a thousand francs, because the distance is long and the bag very heavy. Flor does not bend, and within few minutes we are all surrounded by a crowd of people who were just passing by, all of them have their say, some agree with us, others with the carrier. It’s a chaos of voices, a competition to see who has the louder voice; the carrier is adamant in his claims but Flor doesn’t want to yield to such an act of dishonesty. Suddenly, from the gate in front of which we are standing, a man comes out, takes the bag of flour and beckons us to join him. We are now in a little courtyard, 2 meters large for 20 meters of length, in the shadow of the house wall. In a few also his wife comes and asks us what's happening. We explain him the situation and he immediately offers to pay for transport up to that point, and then to drive Flor and us home. We would not want him to pay but he insists, then we thank him and we let him do. He tells us that this is a shame, that Europeans should not be treated like that and that he feels ashamed even to himself. I try to sketch something, I would say that does not matter that we are white, that nobody should ever behave like the carrier, but the agitation of the moment doesn’t helps me to express my thoughts.
A quarter of an hour later we are already on his jeep. Alice and I think back to what happened, I tell her that the carrier has behaved that way because we are white, and this kind gentleman is doing so for the very same reason. Here we are primarily white, for better or for worse. On certain occasions, the skin colour is a unperforable screen, a distance of codes, uses and possibilities that can’t be bridged. Probably it couldn’t be otherwise, that’s not our fault but the economic abyss that exists between the rich and the poor world.