A Recycling Program in Mozambique Is Reducing Waste and Empowering Women

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/10/19/amor-mozambique

After wandering around the endless alleys of Maxaquene B, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique, we finally approached the meeting point—the home of Dona Cacilda, the leader of the women’s empowerment group we were visiting. It was easy to know which of the small houses we should enter. We just needed to follow the voices that were singing in Shangaan, the language of the predominant ethnic group in Maputo. The search ended in a dirt yard, where about 20 women sang and danced excitedly. Two men in the background watched from afar. Even without knowing a word of Shangaan, it was easy to understand what the group was singing about as each woman proudly held a white bottle in her hands.

Inside each bottle was hope for the future for each woman: the retroviral drugs she must take three times a day as part of her HIV treatment.
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One of the women, Nuvunga Margaret, 28, says she decided to take the HIV exam because she was constantly sick. “When I got home and told my husband that the results were positive, he did not want to believe it and refused to take the test. Days later, he left me with two daughters and gave no sign of life ever again.” Without a job, she had to return to her parents’ house to live and is still not working.

Margaret is not the only woman suffering economic problems. Dona Cacilda Fumo, a housewife and the leader of the group, says the majority of the women in the group do not work. “One of the main factors for the spread of the disease in us women is the social status of Mozambican women,” she says. According to Fumo, the vast majority of women depend solely on the income of men, who often use their economic superiority to impose certain rules. “When women ask their husbands to use a condom during sexual intercourse, many of them say that since they are the ones working, the wife must accept relations without a condom. Because of their economic needs, women end up accepting it,” she says.