She casually perched her 5’4” stocky frame high on pointed boulder at the edge of the dirt road and waived her arms above her head to get our attention. She wore her new bright red t-shirt with the word UNITE printed in bold white lettering across her ample busom and a coral-colored hand-made skirt that revealed two swollen ankles and dust-covered bare feet.
With no street signs, house numbers or even clear roads in this sprawling neighborhood on the outskirts of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city of more than 4 million people constructed along the shores of the Indian Ocean, we would never have found Mama Murassa has she not ventured out to the edge of this dense human squalor to flag us down.
I had been in Tanzania for less than 32 hours this trip and visiting Margaret, or Mama Murassa as she is referred to in the Tanzanian tradition of calling every mother Mama followed by name of her first born child, at her home was at the top of my agenda. The day before I had finally met Margaret in person, alongside the other widows who have received grants from our Unite The World With Africa Foundation’s Mjane Jasiri “Brave Widow” program to launch small businesses.
With Unite teammates and two of the women enrolled in our Widow Women’s Program. Margaret, a.k.a. Mama Murassa, is on the far right.
As the founder director of Unite The World With Africa Foundation and co-creator of this Brave Widows program with my teammates, I had of course already read about Margaret and each of our 10 “Brave Widow” women. They had been interviewed extensively by Anty Marche and Rhoda Lugazia, Unite’s Brave Widow’s program director and manager. Each applicant to this program required close and careful consideration, and choosing these initial “winners” was not easy: All widows in Tanzania face extraordinary hardships. Most are ostracized by their communities and left totally isolated. A widespread belief in witchcraft and voodoo perpetuates the ignorant idea that the women themselves are responsible for their husbands’ deaths. Any family property is immediately claimed by the husbands’ relatives after his passing leaving the women alone with their children and no home, no employment, no rights and no recourse to reclaim their land or property. So while I shouldn’t have been surprised when Mama Murassa began to speak, I still could not maintain my composure as I listened to her quietly share her story. Tears streamed down my face, and hers, and every face in our circle.
As a teenager Margaret had dropped from school due to her family’s inability to afford school fees, and she was married off to a man who was a terrible drunkard and extremely abusive. She suffered regular rapes and beatings, and yet successfully delivered two of his children. Over the years Mama Murassa tried her best to keep the peace and protect her children from their father’s explosive rage and fury. However one day when the children were young, he locked Margaret and the children inside their home, poured kerosene around the building’s exterior, and lit the house on fire. Miraculously Mama Murassa and her children were rescued by neighbors who heard their screams. They may have survived their physical injuries from that fire, yet it was in the hospital the next day when Margaret learned that she was HIV+. A few weeks later her husband, the same man who tried to burn Margaret and their children alive, took his own life.
***
On this day, upon seeing Margaret gesticulating wildly to our car from her stance up upon her rock, our driver Moody jerked his rusty old mini-van towards her and without warning dropped the vehicle’s left side, my passenger side, deep into a ditch of standing water. Mama Murassa leapt forward, sunk her bare feet deep into the muddy water, leaned into my window, grabbed my sweaty white face in her calloused black hands, and planted a huge kiss on my check. “KARIBU SANA!!!” She said loudly. “You are most welcome.“
“Asante sana Mama,” I replied with a giggle. “Thank you so much Mama.”
I opened my passenger door, steadied myself and leapt over the vast malaria breeding ground into the crowd of gawking strangers who were gathering around our stuck vehicle. I grabbed Margaret’s hand in mine, and together we started to climb the path, over rocks and gulleys, snaking our way in-between homes made of cement, mud and dung, passing cows tied to trees, steering clear of barking watch dogs and being careful not to trip over the many chickens that kept skirting back and forth across our path. My five teammates clamored along behind us.
Our trek took only about 20 minutes but in the 100 degree heat and 80% humidity it felt like hours. Finally, Mama Murassa stopped, smiled big and said “tuwa hapa.” “We are here.” She then reached her hand deep into her brassiere to pull out a key to unlock the padlock securing her tin gate. “Asante” we chimed one by one as we followed Mama Murassa through her gate and into the tiny compound where she and her two children and three grandchildren live alongside one other family. Outside the block home was a single pit latrine surrounded by three cement walls erected for privacy and no roofing, just open sky. By the latrine, on the side of the house was a single door that opened to a inside standing area flanked by two more doors, each of which were covered with colorful kanga materials. One door for each family.
Inside, Mama Murassa’s door was one small room. A full-sized bed filled most of the space. At the foot of the bed were two small sofas alongside a tiny table on which was a doilie and a waterless vase stuffed with plastic flowers. The small strip of walking space between the bed and the side wall was clean and well swept. The couches were covered with sparkly silver plastic material. Margaret had clearly prepared for our arrival.
The ceiling roof was made of metal sheets, and looking up I could see streams of light from the afternoon equatorial sun shining between cracks and openings. What did she do when it rained I wondered? The monsoon showers had been flooding these villages for weeks.
My team and I had, in keeping with the Tanzanian tradition of gift giving, brought Mama Murassa kilos of maize, rice and beans; long bars of multipurpose soap; and litres of cooking oil. We also brought her box of elegant batik materials which she could use to make clothes to sell in her shop, a shop she started with grant money awarded to her from Unite’s Brave Widows program. With each item she pulled from our oversized shopping bags, we all sang a traditional Swahili gift-giving song and Mama Murassa danced around in place with delight, holding each gift above her head and kissing its packaging at least once.
With Mama Murassa and one of the new batik fabrics we brought her as a gift.
Finally I decided that our visit was over, but when I stood to launch our exit procession Mama Murassa held up her hand motioning me to stop. She then smiled bright and leaned down to the floor to pull out from under her bed a thermos and six brand new glasses. She proceeded to pour for each of us a full glass of fresh fruit juice that she had made that morning using papaya, mango, banana and pinapple. We all “oohed” and “aaahed” over how delicious her juice tasted, and she beamed with pride. Our Brave Widows Program Manager Rhoda had told me Margaret’s famous juice and how she was successfully hustling it all over town.
Our afternoon thirst quencher was a critical element of Margaret’s livelihood, and I knew that these new glasses cost her more than she would make in a month. Even though we as Unite will continue to support Mama Murassa with grants, interest-free loans and educational programs to help her grow her fledgling juice business and tiny seamstress shop, I desperately wanted to open my wallet to repay her for the glasses, to purchase more, to give her money to repair her roof, to build a proper cover for her outdoor latrine, to purchase a storeroom full of fruits for her to use make her amazing juice for months to come, and so SO much more. But not only would such a move be unfair to all the other women enrolled in our Brave Widow’s Program (and to the scholars enrolled in our Unite Scholars & Mentorship Program — all of whom have their own world’s of crushing needs), that is not what Unite is all about. Unite’s work is to work alongside and with extraordinary individuals to help them make it on their own and achieve independence and self reliance. So, instead of handing Margaret a wad of cash in hopes of easing a bit of her seemingly endless burdens, I just embraced her one last time and repeated “asante sana, asante sana” “thank you, thank you” over and over, again and again.
I left that amazing woman’s home feeling inspired, humbled and a bit guilty.
Mama Murassa’s gifts had far exceeded my own.
