I am a mother of five kids and grandmother of a granddaughter. When thinking about freedom, my concern is that – as a migrant and a mother – I go have to through several difficulties, including financially. People will say, ‘you just need to get a formal job’, but when you have kids and there is no care for them, the difficulty goes beyond having a formal job or not. My children are very young, and I have teenagers too. I want to take good care of them, but I can’t do it if I leave early in the morning and come back late in the night. There is no one to look after them. That is why I often have to work as self-employed – it gives me time to be able to look after my family. My life has been very difficult in Brazil, because I don’t always get financial support here.
The situation is also much more critical and burdensome for us Africans. I will be honest to you, there is a differentiation here regarding the way they treat immigrants here. For example, when I see Venezuelan or Syrian families, they receive much more support here. Some may even say that this is because, historically, Syrians have larger communities in Brazil and that they help each other. But no! I have Syrian friends and I talk to them. It is not always because they have larger communities – they receive help from Brazilians who accept them, who ‘adopt’ them, saying, ‘I will be your godmother,’ or ‘I will be your godfather’. I'm not saying that I want people to be godparents to Africans too. But I think that the way of treating people should be the same, for everyone.
In my culture, I am not supposed to expose myself – dancing for work, as I do. Men can say: ‘This is a worthless woman,’ but I have to do this. I need to bring bread home. Those who don't know me, they will criticise me. But that's how it is. You need to do everything to be able to raise your children. And there is a lot of hypocrisy with some Brazilians, who say they are fighting and working for immigrants’ rights, who say they are there for immigrants. When it comes to African families and women, we don’t receive that much support. There is a difference in the way they treat us. You see yourself alone, just you and your kids, and think ‘my God, I don’t believe it.’
