Story of a woman

A few days ago I went to my friend Alicia’s very simple wooden house, to confirm that she, her husband, and her daughters would come to eat the Italian dinner I had promised them. I knocked and opened the door (which doesn’t close and is tied with a string to a metal wire doorknob), calling her name. Her 7 and 9-year-old daughters came running to me from the little shop next door, saying their mother was gone and so was their father. They told me their parents had fought that morning, their father had beaten their mother, and then they had both left and hadn’t been back all day. They said their mother was hurt and they she was at the hospital; I knew she wasn’t because I’d spent the afternoon there with Simone, repainting the wall. The two girls Kaitlyn and Vivanda proceeded to tell me that their father is bad, bad, and he always beats their mother and had tried to beat them too. Their father is a guy my age with a smile permanently set on his lips, who works for Maricarmen and struts around Pilcopata in a bright red motorcycle. They said their father doesn’t want to eat what their mother cooks and makes them throw it away [one of women’s primary role is to take care of their husbands, refusing the wife’s food is a great offence, especially in families, like this one, where it is scarce]. The girls then told me their mother had come back the previous night soaking wet, they didn’t know from where, and that she often tells them she wants to die, and a few weeks before she’s drunk gasoline and ended up in hospital very sick. I asked them about school (and found out the younger daughter will start kindergarden as soon as her parents buy her the 5 notebooks she is required), and if they had food for dinner. They said no and I said I’d go back and bring them some food. When I returned to their house half an hour later, I knew from one of the workers that Alicia and her husband would be there. I arrived and asked Alicia to come out and go for a little walk. She came out wearing a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt and long pants (clearly the right clothes for this weather), saying: “I’m fine…why? Of course I’m fine, nothing happened”, as she limped and massaged her shoulder blade. [A week later she still had bruises on her arm]. Turns out she's reported the beatings to the police station repeatedly, with no result, and she wants to move out with her daughters and start running a little shop...but where? how? HOW?

And painting the fence of the health centre with Simone, talking about this and that, an idea began to develop for a project targeted to women victims of domestic violence...

In the mean time my journalistic carreer started, check out my first article on Diverse Traveller (click to open).