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AFRICAN WOMAN
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There's the African woman one day. One day, for the whole world to look at its immense difficulties. One day, to review the aid and solidarity programs with which the world seeks to protect it. One day, for everyone to realize, that in addition to the facilities and waste of the first world, there is a hungry continent, where misfortune dawns every day of the year. Everywhere, a woman has only the duty to be a woman: a good daughter, a good citizen, a good professional, a good wife and a good mother.
In Africa, the woman has the obligation to be everything: taking care of the children, as long as this means finding food where hunger spreads, fetching water where thirst reigns, digging wood for the meager fire she needs, worrying about her shorts or dress, blanket or coat, where nudity reigns and the cold presses.
In Africa, it is the woman who takes care of the family, when the disadvantages of drought or war place on her shoulders the burden of caring for the elderly, looking after the children and fleeing with everyone, when misfortune diasporizes peoples and throws them into the only and last hope - to survive, at whatever cost.
In Africa, it is the woman who supports, guides and takes responsibility for her own, although she always knows how to listen to the opinion of her elders, just because she respects old age and listens to her husband's reasons, just because tradition makes him the head of the family. .
In Africa, women, overwhelmed by the urgency of immediate needs, do not know and have never demanded the rights they have. In times of famine, what rights can you know to exist, apart from the bread of degradation and misery in which you live?
In Africa, the woman, with no other horizon than to resist to make her family survive, has no dreams beyond tiny desires - plenty of fuba and fire, plenty of peace and dust from the dug fields, plenty of water and love - water that comes from heaven and descends to earth, love that makes her womb bear children - her most precious treasure to continue the family, beyond the ever-present inevitability of death..
Because in Africa, it is the woman who bury her dead, it is the woman who most feels the decline of her family: the father who fades away, the husband who disappears, the son who was killed by hunger or who was taken away by the war.
Will the African woman still have tears of joy when another child is born, in addition to the many she has?
The African woman, when she abandons a child for not having bread to give him, when she throws him out on the street so that he learns not to starve, she has from the society that we are all, understanding, understanding, solidarity and above all - not criticism - but the commitment to improve his life?
Oh, how easy it is to cast the first stone, when prosperity (although small, but beyond the scope of hunger) removes from our path all the stones that could make us stumble!
Oh how easy it is to moralize, to feel Christian feelings and to theorize with the pride of the publican in the temple: "Thank you, Lord, because you made me righteous and not a sinner like this poor woman..."
.../...
There is one day for the African woman, so that she can meditate on her difficulties and a whole year with every day, so that she can feel and suffer and live with her sufferings.
Yesterday, a girl without a childhood, working, she barely started to walk; today, a symbol of resignation, a hand extended to the charity of the world, if she suffers, if she persists, if she waits, it is because she feels herself as the only support of her own - as a daughter of misfortune, as a wife of lack of love many times, but always and above all, as the mother of continuity and hope.
THE AFRICAN WOMAN IN THE CENTURY, IN THE MILLENNIUM, IN DOOM
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We are on the verge of changing the century, we have arrived at the time when we will change the millennium. That is to say: that if a hundred years from now we change century, only in a thousand years (if there are still people who live and land to inhabit) will we change millennium.
And what seems to be a simple truth of unnecessary remembrance, because we all know how to do these schoolboy math, serves to say that men are unimported of small memories and everyday - that's why we have a day of commemoration to remember the woman.
We invented the unimaginable - from the car to the plane, from the computer to the satellite, from transplants to cloning, but we also, like no one else, invented war, as never before, destructive and deadly, keeping the fate of the world at the mercy of the bad mood of a atomic, hydrogen, or neutron bomb.
This century had two horror milestones: the 1st and 2nd World Wars. At the end of each one, the men gathered to say "never again..." And there was no more war on their territory. They were almost immediately exported to other distant lands: in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa. Men of goodwill cemented "their" peace, changing the geography of suffering.
Of these wars in Africa, it is up to the woman to suffer the greatest share of the misfortunes. She who is a woman, who should be, and is not, a woman like any other... She has war and drought against her. She has her family: children, her own husband and the elders, waiting for her.
In the field, he works in scarce and little sand that produces nothing. In the city, she is the one who asks, who extends her hand to charity, who disenchants help, who invents expedients, who moves and moves so as not to let her own perish.
In return for so much work and so much pain, the African woman earns the disrespect of the man, the tears for the son that the war took, the poignancy of loneliness for the companion who disappeared, the cussing for the death of the family members who died.
The African woman who is born a girl like any other child is not like any other child. While playing, he works: sweeps the floor, collects water, takes care of the brothers, puts the pot on the fire. He rarely sings, rarely goes to school, rarely speaks a language well (his mother tongue is the rudimentary language his mother teaches him between two orders, the "other" is the simple one or two words he learns on the street). Culture is the warning to run away from where the war comes from, and to think, constantly think, about food, because it never satiated hunger.
In Angola, the African Woman is forced into an adventure that few people realize. The urbanization adventure to which it is forced and where it loses the best it has: solidarity that is not only family, but community; The joy of work that dies, in exchange for anything done out of need of money; Family security, where everyone was related because the memory took them to a common great-grandfather, and is now confined, to those he brought with him, in the disorderly flight of misfortune.
And so much pain, so much fear, so much suffering and anguish, so much death and so much hunger, at the door of the next century, almost around the corner of the new millennium. We who seemed to be in the century of Peace and Miracles...
And the man who communicates between continents, the man who goes to the moon, who penetrates the depths of the universe, has not yet discovered this simple and small word, with which you write Woman, with which you say Mother, with which you pronounce Love.
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THE WOMAN AND THE ORDINARY
Years ago, there were those who invented, in support of equality between men and women, that husbands should pay a salary to their wives, when they were domestic workers.
Not so much so that they would feel paid as servants, but so that the men would weigh up what the ladies' work was worth. Not so much so that they would earn what they were owed, but more so that they would know how much they saved with their work. Not so much (but also) so that they would have some money of their own, and what a feeling of wanting to buy whatever it was, not having to justify, lie, invent explanations, when they, in the same circumstances, spent where they seemed to be without give satisfaction to anyone.
This is all to combat the common belief that women at home, while doing something, do not work, because they only fulfill an obligation. And since obligation is not work, those who don't work don't win, nor do they deserve the expense of what they eat - they are there in favor, having as their function, taking care of the house and raising the children.
The newspapers spoke, hearts trembled and, little by little, it all ended there, between the tender smiles of lovers: "because one day you'll see, when you have to pay me". And pay what? only the service of a maid and cook, or the other one, which, although it is of common satisfaction, if everything has to be paid, let the man pay too?
Interestingly, at that time (I don't know if even today) the Law provided for cases like this: a man who lived in marriage with a woman from whom he had no children, when he died intestate, his legitimate heirs, or agreed with the lady a benefit that satisfy her, or they were obliged to pay her a maid's salary for those many years of youth.
It was an unfairly fair formula, because the law was made to protect a woman, it was still in the maid's room that they placed her. Only as a maid did she find herself a way out for a love affair that excused the man, always penalized the woman. I don't know the law would provide for cases in which the "boy" was the man, to be paid as a servant.
Then, or because someone discovered what a mess it would be, to pay your own wife for the housework, the invention of wages was forgotten and everything fell into the list of uncomfortable oblivion.
However, from here to there, after a good forty years, little progress has been made. The woman studied, the woman got a job, the woman lives more freely with the husband she chose and nobody imposed it. Nobody wants the woman at home anymore, because all the money is not enough to face the difficulties of everyday life. No one prepares their daughters anymore, exclusively for the spices in the kitchen. Nobody thinks it's wrong for the husband to help, either in the preparation of food, or in the diapers of the children.
And we would all be glad if it had not been invented, or resurrected as a tradition, the spoliation of the widow when the husband dies, the theft of children when the father disappears, the extortion of the weakest "under the silent gaze" of the authorities who know perfectly that this happens, that they even think it's normal for this to happen and do nothing to put an end to this ruthless theft that is being carried out.
And the interesting thing is that even the churches are silent. They, always so ready to defend the destitute, to protect the unfortunate, to give way to poverty and misery.
And all in the name of what?
In the name of tradition, when the husband dies, the family of the deceased comes and the widow is left without support and the orphans without a future.
It would be interesting to know how houses are legalized, with minors who are the only and legitimate heirs with their mother. What about cars and other goods? How is ownership transferred?
My dear Mendes de Carvalho: we need to hear your voice to protect widows and defend tradition. Because this one does not plunder, does not withdraw, does not steal, does not subtract, does not take possession, does not take over, does not steal, on the contrary, it seeks to be fair and protect.
Let it not be said that "under the silent gaze" (Lenine's yesterday, Neto's today) theft is certain, and the widow be damned.
THE LAST JUSTICE
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With Pinochet's release, because he was old, because he was sick, because he wouldn't be in a psychic condition so that his trial wouldn't stop being a violence, it came to me to think like this:
Starting here at home: if He-Whose-Name-Is-Not-Said is caught, possibly human rights will come to ask them not to judge him. They will say that with Pinochet a precedent of humanitarianism was opened that does not allow judging who erred in a good cause.
Passing a little to the side, by a sister house: if Fidel were judged one day, whether he was eighty, ninety or a hundred years old, sick, senile, crippled and so mute that he could not defend himself, he would be condemned for what he did, for what he did not do and for what others determined he would have done.
It is that Fidel is not the One-Whose-Name-Not-One-Said, nor is his name Pinochet, nor how they acted for a good cause - the cause of freedom, of democracy, of Christianity against the Marxist atheism of the Reds.
Passing by other houses: if Hitler were resurrected, if Saddam-Hussein or Milosovitch were arrested and imprisoned, they could be eighty, ninety or a hundred years old and they would be very justly condemned, for having arrested and made disappear, for having killed and having them killed, for for having muzzled liberty, for having violated peace, for having despised justice.
And it wouldn't do him any good to be old or to be shivering with senile diseases in a wheelchair. It's just that any of them is not He-Whose-Name-Not-One-Said, nor is his name Pinochet, nor how they made him murder for a good cause - the cause of freedom, democracy, Christianity, although not always against atheism. Red Marxist.
Because this is how it is: to rape, to make orgiastic shows of multiple rapes in front of parents, husbands and minor children, with the intention of serving Christianity well, is to purify the souls of sinners through suffering. To kill out of necessity for the sake of democracy, is to defend the rights of future generations, is to proceed for a good cause - the cause of freedom, democracy, Christianity, against the Marxist atheism of the Reds.
Precisely for this reason, He-Whose-Name-Not-One-Said and Pinochet did nothing more than defend the Fatherland, against the unenlightened will of a People who democratically erred, voting for presidents who were not of their will.
Although knowing that a bad vessel does not break, if both were judged and died for that, what would happen?
Undoubtedly: the world would be cleaner, justice would be less polluted and, above all, it would have helped to do God's will. It's just that God can't always do justice when he wants to. The greater the sinner, the more He hopes, in His Most Holy Mercy, that the candidate for death will have the lucidity to repent and gain heaven.
God willing (even if he doesn't want to) that they don't repent, because we only have Hell left to punish the crimes that go around the world with impunity, even though they are practiced for a good cause - the cause of freedom, democracy and Christianity.
ABORTION - YES OR NO?
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Controversial - and very - is this problem, the legalization of abortion. For most, if not all, churches, abortion is an intolerable crime against a defenseless innocent. For a large part of non-religious people, it is not only an extreme resource for an unwanted pregnancy, but also a way of protecting women against clandestine abortion, which almost always leaves sequelae and often takes lives.
Legalized or not, the practice of abortion seems to be current in our society, although it is almost always in a situation of inevitable disaster. If it is certain that its ban will not bring any reduction to its practice, it is also certain that its legalization may come, at least, to reduce the catastrophic death and disablement.
In this diffused light in which abortion remains in Angola, without knowing whether it is prohibited or not, it almost seems like an unimportant problem. Controversy only arises and tempers only rise when someone raises the possibility of its legalization. Other than that, it's like there's no problem at all.
There are those who believe, even as a matter of justice, that it should be legalized. And justice why? Because if the legalization of abortion does not oblige religious women to do so, its prohibition imposes that non-religious women have the child they do not want. Abortion is seen here as a problem of individual conscience.
The churches say that abortion is not a problem of individual conscience (religious or not) but social, just like euthanasia, if it were allowed for incurable patients, senile old age, disabled children and so many other cases.
On the other hand, believers believe that there is a transcendent dimension in pain and suffering that does not diminish man's dignity - on the contrary, it gives him a greatness that cannot be rejected. In any case, the churches continue to assert, you cannot legalize an act that is pure and simple murder.
Some say - the fetus neither feels nor suffers; the fetus is not yet the child it will be. Others answer: the fetus is already in itself, not the child, but the man who will be, bearer of an immortal soul that he gains at conception and not at birth. And while it has not been shown (quite the contrary) that the fetus does not feel or suffer, the problem here is a matter of principle - any murder, even if the victim does not suffer, is a crime.
Some ask - and bringing an unwanted child into the world is not a crime? And forcing a young girl, still a child, to the weight of irresponsibility for the whole life of a child (which is not always hers) is it not a crime? And the condemnation to misery of one more child, in mothers who already have so many? Is it not the most numerous and most miserable families that give society the greatest of marginals?
Any church will tell you: the unwanted child in a woman who is almost a child is just as likely to be a burden as not. Especially in Africa, where the stigma of the single mother (which already fades in Europe) is practically non-existent. It is, however, a lie that poor and miserable families, because they are numerous, give a greater number of children to the marginalized. In conditions of equal living, a seventh will be marginal as well as an only child. However, they will add, abortion is not therapy to improve situations of social misery.
However, and in a country like ours, where the man rejoices in having many children, what last resort is left for the woman? All the more knowing that the one who "carries" them from the moment she conceives them is the woman, who in part supports and creates them is the woman; who, by abandoning the home, stays with them, is still the woman?...
Who even, in this matter of abortion, goes to the bars of the court, and is judged, and suffers the due punishment, is the woman, not the man. What is missing, then, for the woman, being considered a responsible citizen, to have equal rights to the father, in this case considered without any fault?
Abortion, a problem on which we reflect without concluding, waiting for other reflections. Yes or No?
LITERACY AGAIN
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It is worthy that the Government seeks a solution - and in this case through the Ministry of the Family - for female illiteracy. Not only because women represent the most socially active layer of society, but also because it is well known that whoever educates a man favors only one person and whoever teaches a woman benefits an entire generation.
Although there is great merit in this concern of educating women, looking for specific projects that give them priority (and possibly using methods that meet the specificity of their condition) there are doubts that I must raise:
One would be to know if, beyond the balance that has been made at the end of so many years of teaching, any conclusion has been reached regarding functional illiteracy: percentages and proposals for improvement.
We all know the causes - lack of use of what has been learned, due to the lack (or even non-existence) of books, newspapers and other reading materials, indispensable for a convenient post-literacy.
And this is important. Because if we don't have school continuity materials that allow a normal, immediate and continuous post-literacy, we will be spending, purely and simply (and once again) the money for nothing and, what is more serious, deceiving a population to we offer you nothing.
Another problem: there is an important and indispensable phase - the sensitization phase.
Anyone who has followed the previous literacy campaigns more or less closely knows that, although classes were given during working hours, there were students (mainly female students) who, out of lack of interest, after two or three years, knew as much as in the start. They dragged themselves through classes, enjoying the ease of not being forced to work, excusing themselves that no one would pay them better for knowing how to read or write. Literacy was, in his view, an unnecessary effort, without interest or benefit. Without each of the women feeling that they really want to learn - time is wasted, money is spent and work is only done to pretend that something is being done.
In order not to repeat the mistake of trying to teach those who are not interested in literacy, it would be worth asking: do we already have the methods and people to carry out this awareness? do we already have an in-depth knowledge of the causes of absenteeism and dropouts? Have we already cataloged all the obstacles (social, moral, cultural) that cement this attitude of disinterest?
It would seem interesting to me, at this time when it is not possible to eradicate illiteracy among the youngest, that any campaign for adults should have, as an absolute priority, the literacy of the younger strata.
To receive a girl aged 15 or 18 and a woman aged sixty with the same availability is to export the problem of eradicating illiteracy to future years.
Necessarily that we all have the same rights. However, when the possibilities are insufficient and not solvable in the short and medium term, the older generations must be sacrificed. Ending the vicious cycle of always having a young woman who cannot read (or who has learned something and has not completed it) waiting to be older to learn later.
What is accomplished today will determine the success of what happens tomorrow. And everything that is not designed to serve the future is not suitable for a country that has already lost time, money, good will and holy intentions, in order, from experience to experience, to try once again to do nothing.
HUSBAND'S NAME
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With all the defects that can be attributed to the single party that was the MPLA and the so-called Mass Organizations subordinate to it, one fact seems unquestionable: the OMA has achieved some important victories, in the context of the struggle for the emancipation of women.
The eighties were decisive. Especially when people of recognized intellectual capacity enter into positions of responsibility, leaving aside a certain customary and peasant obligation to give age - even illiterate - the primacy of authority and command.
It was a time of some turmoil that sometimes brought into confrontation, on the one hand, the knowledgeable and cultured woman, on the other, the ill-disposed and reactionary machismo of any leader, who, although without reason, decided as he saw fit.
One thing that was achieved in this field of equality was that the groom was also asked, at the time of the wedding, if he would like to choose his wife's family name.
Apparently they were left - the man and the woman - with equal rights, even though he always and systematically refused her surname and she, almost always and naturally accepted his nickname. Tradition, custom, religious upbringing, the weight of society's opinion, have such a force that it will not be enough to give the two equal options, but to force them to recognize these same rights.
And when, due to all these constraints, women tend to opt for a family name that is not theirs, finding it fair and natural that, at the same time, the partner does precisely the opposite, one thing seems certain: it is that the spouses should each have their own surname, without the possibility of any change.
What other right were not mentioned here, one would suffice: marriage does not make one the property of the other, in such a way that it is necessary for him to change his name, like someone changing a branded iron to an animal.
Advantages would be these:
Diplomas and other documents, if issued in favor of an unmarried woman, would not cease to correspond to her name after she was married, nor would they revert to the same name if widowed or divorced, nor would they take another one if remarried.
I suppose that in these cases, it is even necessary to present proof that Dr. Albertina Medeiros Bernardo, was Bernardo by her marriage with Mr António Bernardo, and is now Medeiros Felisberto by second marriage with Mr. The conclusion will be that Dr. Albertina Bernardo, alias Felisberto, is pure, simple and uniquely Albertina Medeiros.
Thousands of hours would be saved from recording in notes and adding to state that she took the name of her husband So-and-so.
It would be avoided that, with their own effort, who, having gained fame on the radio, in the newspaper, in the arts, in literature under the name of a married woman (there is, as I know, more than one case in Angola) would be forced to choose , for the sake of divorce, by her maiden name that no one knows who she is. And in these radio, newspapers, arts, literature deals (not so much the television that is associated with the image) if the effort is important and the talent is decisive, the name is a prestige "brand" that, once removed, can take years to redo.
It is the case, therefore, of an equality that was equally unequal and today, more than ever, because women lost strength and much of their influence, equally unequal for many years to come.
Can the Ministry of Women (why not that of the family?*) do something?
Power could, if man were not prepared in advance to refuse, in a country where he is still the only one who commands, who decides, who separates the wheat that suits him from the chaff that doesn't interest him.
THE MANAGER'S CAP
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The peaked cap is fashionable today. A cap that no one buys because it is offered to them. Offer made at every step by the company such, by the hípsilon organization, by the product xis.
You accept and thank you. Not a lot. Just a little so as not to be rude and unappreciative. Sometimes he reluctantly takes the caps and the kids at home to put them on, to distribute them among themselves, to do the vanity banga with them.
Once again, or because the sun is burning and you have become a gardener, you put a hat on your head. Once again, the family goes to the beach and needs a cap - the daughter has one, the son the other, the wife you've already got a third one and you're looking for the last and most rumpled copy - but what the heck! What do you need to get rid of the heatwave?
And you, who didn't even look at what the cap advertised, there you go advertising to that company, your wife to another and your children to a third.
It was worth reflecting here on the real benefits of this advertisement, one that says it's good, the other one that says it's better, and the last one that also guarantees that it's like that, like excellent. Does advertising exist to force you to buy, or is it just a first step, so you don't forget?
Well then, we're all wearing caps on our heads, I'll say...
… while I, who am nobody, can give myself the freedom and the luxury of having on my head the propaganda cap that I want, what will people think of a minister, a governor, a personality, in short, who appear on television (on the beach or in public) with a cap like this?
At the very least, Mr. Tal appears to be a partner (or owner) of the Company that the cap advertises. The difference between being a partner and being an owner is only in the size of the Company. There are enterprises that are too big for such a small owner, or too small for such big bosses.
If the cap belongs to a multinational that has no boss to be seen, although it has the money to buy everything, even what it shouldn't - as you are a ruler, you are already given as well bought and best sold the favors of your conscience.
Be that as it may, minister, governor, deputy, important people of this country - when you go to the beach, or to a rally, or to some apparently unimportant chatter, you shouldn't go so dressed up and dressed up that make others feel distant from you, not so comfortable that it may seem that the public doesn't deserve any consideration and that for such an audience any cap is enough...
THE FIRST SIN
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It always seemed strange to me that pride was the first of the deadly sins. This is because, with the pride of whoever it is, I can do well and it doesn't seem to make much difference whether there is one more or less proud in this world.
This even, because it seems to me that pride is a useless idiocy of an unintelligent individual. He is only full of himself, he is only arrogant, he only judges himself above others, the one who in reality, to be above anyone, needs the insecure walks of vanity, because the shallow leap of accepting himself as he is is not enough. .
Thinking a little, I take care that the arrogance that doesn't bother anyone today, had its aura of great sin in the European Middle Ages, when people were born, some by work and grace already daughters of God, and others, without any work and for your disgrace, daughters with no other father than a poor devil.
Indeed, when an individual was born a king because he was a prince, he was born a nobleman because he was a viscount, he was born an archbishop because he was the son of something, this, as it were, God's choice, this, little less than divine right, would make any heart proud.
See, then, what it would be like to think that God Our Lord, in the midst of his multiple tasks of ruler of the Universe and of souls, leaned over the cradle of our future to choose this or that for us, to the detriment of another who, without any fault, would pass to be our water-bearer, or the keeper of our pigs.
Because they? The ill-born would ask, if we didn't already know the answer... because they are made of better material; because molded more to the Creator's satisfaction; because lords of perfections enough to be children of who they were... Understand then how we would naturally feel the best, the best loved, those of merit that God had not attributed to any other.
Hence they looked at the rest over the donkey. Make them feel inferior. Your coming into the world to serve you. Theirs, put on earth, to say yes to whatever they demanded: opinions, women, torture, or death. No one to contradict. No one to say no.
Only the Church, which is beginning to lose control of civil society and even of itself, resorts to mortal sins to moderate the actions of each one - the first of which is this, because it was the main one - who does not contain the pride , get along with everything else.
It is evident that this sin, so harmless today, was at the time the beginning of much discord. Kings could kill if their dignity was injured; the nobles could take the life of anyone who discredited them in their honor; Clerics could excommunicate (which was a more absolute form of killing, taking away eternal salvation) whoever mistreated them in their
vanity. Therefore, sin was supreme and its contrary virtue - humility - was never too highly praised.
It is interesting to think, as with the passage of time, sins and virtues alternate in importance. And to ask, if of the seven ancient sins, which would be the greatest today: if pride treated here, if avarice, if lust, if anger, if gluttony, if envy or laziness.
Pride no longer aggravates, for being rich is a virtue; lust has no problem, because today it is medicated as balance therapy; anger is just a scream that is given and another that is forgotten; gluttony, with the lack of money, when there is one, those who don't "burden" are stupid; envy can't even be a sin anymore - it's an escape of the soul, of those who are and don't have, against those who have and are; Laziness has become such a personal and intimate defect that even in developed countries it is paid to continue doing nothing.
What eighth sin is there in the world today that we don't know about? The sin of unbelief - being able to have such a faith, not incurring the seven sins mentioned here and being sure, that with three fingers dipped in holy water, all the others will naturally be washed away.
THE THIRD SIN
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There were, as is well known, the seven mortal sins, and seven, likewise, their contrary virtues. In the order of memorization that they forced us to do, the most serious would be the pride that was the first, then the avarice that came next and in the third place, the lust that was the sin with the most beautiful word I had ever heard. to say.
I thought, in the innocence of my six or seven years, that lust was a sin of the rich, of those who are too well dressed, of those who show off their luxuries. As my father was not rich, nor could we dress like that, I always felt far from this sin.
As you will remember, we were at the time of the catechesis of prohibitions. The sin was caught, it was explained in words, sometimes it was photographed with images and, after it was well shown, it was said: don't do this, which is a sin.
And what would lust be at that time, and thus explained at the level of our age? What could we do to avoid this sin if we didn't know what sin it was?
Now, see how difficult it was to explain to such young children the sin of lust that they should not practice.
The most graceful and exemplary departure I know, I heard it one day, many years later, from the mouth of a lady who was going to primary school to teach catechesis. When lust arrived, he said:
- Boys should not look at each other, either from the neck down or from the knees up.
Imagine what thirty children will be like when they come home, look at each other, to see (just once) the luxury they would have between their knees and their necks.
Fortunately, nowadays lust has ceased to be a sin and has come to exist in the market as a very profitable and excellent dividend trade.
Good times were when one could be chaste or lustful, be virtuous or sinful, in the depths of each one. In the modesty of our own shame and shame. Now don't sin, get news. One does not fill one's face with the ashes of penance, but one gives one's face to the shameless vanity.
Good times when lust was just the luxury of dressing and not, like today, the science of undressing or walking naked.
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CACIMBO INSPECTORS
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There are expressions that with time are forgotten, even though they are very well put and very purposefully invented. This is the case of the Cacimbo Inspectors who had their heyday when Angola, in the rainy season, was a bundle of swampy and muddy roads, uninviting those who wanted to travel inland.
Hence, the so-called "inspectors" only traveled in dry weather, when the temperature was also less torrid and more pleasant, especially for those who did not need a suit and tie.
But who were the cacimbo inspectors anyway?
Let us go back a little to explain that there were two types of Portuguese: those who had been here for many years, who knew the land and its difficulties well, who thought they would spend their lives here and the others - those Portuguese even from Portugal - who did not they didn't know anything about the colonies and that, friends or relatives of a minister, they came on vacation with all the perks, allowances that they "pocketed" in full since they didn't pay anything.
With brothers and sisters and friends, they arranged a ride to come to Angola to see, investigate, or verify anything that justified the trip, the expenses they incurred and the report they wrote and no one read.
Well received by directors, governors and other authorities, they visited this and that: factories, farms, businesses, cities, towns and villages. Sometimes they forgot that they were just there to "pretend". And even though in some fields Angola was more developed than the "metropolis", they always felt they had the right to belittle this or that undertaking, suggesting changes and giving opinions, even if they didn't understand anything about the subject they were talking about.
Finally, they said nonsense with a convinced and doctoral air, which the others didn't even dispute: they let us talk, they let us say and between beer and another (the whiskey had not yet emigrated here) they vented to each other: "Inspectors of Cacimbo".
And advising here and there, they returned there with the feeling of accomplishment: they had contributed with their counseling work to the development of this territory. What's more, thanks to that trip, they became specialists in colonial policy.
Well, it's remembering these useless "cacimbo inspectors" that I start to think if some left, we wouldn't have imported others. Especially when we accept, without any criteria, everything that the NGOs propose to us, with that old mentality that says "don't be poor and ungrateful".
That we need help, and good wills, and hundreds of arms and knowledge ready to help us, we need it. That we give ourselves, because of this precision, to the initiative of others, as if we had neither experience, nor knowledge, nor opinion is what seems to me to be profoundly wrong.
Let's talk in practical terms: after many years, "Primary Magisteriums" have now appeared, which will train teachers. However, "The School of Teachers of the Future", with the same qualifications, trains rural teachers.
The first question is this: does the Ministry of Education consider the courses to be equivalent, given that the admission requirements are similar?
The second question is to know, if the courses have the same value, how many teachers will be masochistic enough to, being able to teach in the city, go to a school in the bush, without a home, without transport, without security, without food they are used to , without salary on time...
To know, as a third concern, if the mentors of the Escola do Futuro know what happened in colonial times when the school garden was allowed to be done - the garden became the teacher's and the students, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, necessarily worked on them.
Will it be different now? Or am I, like any "cacimbo inspector" giving an opinion on what I don't know or master.
chronicles
THE REACTIONARY
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In other times, there was a figure that we all feared: that of the reactionary. We didn't really know who it was, but it could be hiding anywhere. We didn't really know what it was doing, or would have done, but we thought it wouldn't do any good.
The reactionary was therefore a diffuse, poorly known figure who could be one, anyone, or almost everyone. It was the negative of another negative that Salazar had imposed on us until then: the communist. Communists could be all, or none. Only Salazar and S.José Lopes who ran the Pide weren't communists. Everything else could be, even if it wasn't.
And we were quite astonished at some communists who appeared in the light of the twenty-fifth of April. They were nothing like the criminals who drew us, with the country salesmen at the service of the Soviet Union, with the serfs commanded by foreigners to deliver the Portuguese heritage, not only physical, but also historical-moral.
Whatever it was, we would also have, years later, the reactionary - the cake-picker of the Nation's physical integrity, the lackey paid in dollars and at the behest of Imperialism, which is a label that changes over time: yesterday, because it was the North American imperialism, today because it is (or was) the Russo-Cuban.
Well, the reactionary who roamed all over Angola, it seems, has emigrated. Unless it's so common that you don't even notice it. Sometimes I see the reactionary fighters, the anti-riots of ideology, not in the Russian embassy (which is now also reactionary by the measure of the old table) but drinking their glass with the imperialists.
In a land where all the streets are "eis" - the ex-D.Dinis Street that is Sebastião This Vez, the ex-António Barroso that is Marien N'guabi - we lacked this ex-imperialist figure who, with the former reactionary, seems to conform to the ideological purity (and readiness) of our country. Some will call it democratic versatility.
But then what did all the reactionaries do? Did they die of malaria? Did they throw us into the bay? Not included. The most certain is that they have been recycled. The bottle is well washed, the Whiskey tastes just as good as it tastes, in a bottle of vodka.
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DEADLY SINS
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In my time of catechesis - in the nostalgic and historic Church of Nª Senhor do Pópulo de Benguela - the seven deadly sins were learned. If I cannot enumerate them all, there will be some that I still remember and others that, if they remain in force, will have been lowered in a category in the hierarchical order of sins. In transformed venial sins, they are stains of very little interest and almost no use. That is to say, no one uses them anymore, no one sins anymore.
One of them would have been that of Avarice, erected today, with one or another arrangement of detail, due to great profit and esteem.
Avarice can no longer be imagined in that figure of a Jew, old and dirty, with a spiky beard who forced himself to starve in order to enrich himself better and drew unsuspected satisfactions from the strange entertainment of counting coins. Today's Miser doesn't hoard, moves shares on the stock market, has income that he doesn't put to mold in the chest of his greed. It's just that hoarding took on another dynamic. Saving, retaining, conserving, now means losing money. You don't save saving - you earn more, making it circulate better...
Yesterday's miser is today's capitalist - good suit, good food, good mansions, good women, because these are all "savings" that help you make more money. Just by showing your good taste, your fine manners, others trust you in terms of business and matters of profit and money.
The catechism said that against the avarice that was to withhold, there was the virtue of liberality, which would be like taking what one has too much, to spread it among those who have too little.
However, even in this, the catechism of life has changed. Today, the poor are no longer the finger pointed at the conscience of each one, but an appreciable strip in a market of incomprehensible surpluses, in addition to being the mainstay of the cheap labor that we know.
Nobody gives the fish anymore, but it is wise to teach them how to fish. This is what Mau Tse Tung used to say, a little late in time, who today, if I may say: "No one teaches to fish anymore. The poor must be made to eat the fish that others catch, so that there is an effective return of the taxes we pay to the social benefit rates to which they are entitled".
It is in the spending of some, and in the receiving of others, that in a democracy without differences, the equal rights of all are cemented.
That is why liberality is an unvirtuous promoter of social vices. It creates dependencies on those who receive it, it breaks the initiative of those who have to do for life, it takes away the dignity of the man who was not born to be a beggar.
Liberality makes it impossible for the most vivid expression of human voluntarism, the self-made-man, to develop. Liberality does not believe in the miracle of men who, from an apple saved and sold, manage to buy the entire orchard.
This is how the avarice of the one who hoards is today of much greater esteem than the liberality of the one who gives. One possesses, retains and multiplies, the other presents, offers and squanders. One because it is shrewd and rational, it increases and improves; the other because it is stupid and unintelligent, it diminishes and it gets worse. One is virtuous because it saves with intelligence - it is avarice; the other is sinful, because it dissipates without reason - it is liberality.
Good times were those of my catechesis, when avarice was even the second of the great mortal sins and liberality its opposite virtue. Good times when there was still something to give and it was a sin to possess without precision and withhold without purpose.
Good times are today too, when everything is the same, but precisely the opposite. In which liberality may constitute a moral investment, but it is not, in terms of social morality, a defensible project. Because now with the morals we had, and there was only one, there are morals that we don't have and there are many.
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THE SUN AND THE SIEVE
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There are people who strongly annoy me. They say bad about this and that. They keep the flame of envy alive. Keep all the senses of gossip alert. They do not speak without rancor, nor call to memory any saint, except to point out faults.
For them everyone steals: leaders or not. For them all rulers misgovern. For them, of their own knowledge, they only believe in their honesty without aggravation or blemish, in their good will without interest, in their purposes without other intentions.
A few days ago, I was talking to one of them and already exasperated at seeing myself surrounded by so many stories of corruption, theft, self-interest, I asked him:
- And you, why don't you steal?
He replied immediately:
- Possibly because I lack imagination to invent opportunities, or family to protect me from mistakes. Now the fashion is this: are you a director? Does your company have properties not yet registered in your name? Put one of the buildings in your hands, spend five or ten thousand on soda for the papers to go faster and rent everything to a foreign company, which in the second month has already paid your expenses. Then just bill...
- But isn't that theft?
- How do you want it to be theft?! The building was there without an owner: you paid the I don't know how many months' rent, then you paid what you were asked for it, after all, who did you steal from, if you are within the law? You did take advantage of a property that was half abandoned and useless that otherwise would have collapsed. Something that undid the city and that now it's even a pleasure to see.
And continuing, as if he had more to say:
- ...are you a teacher? Do you want to give explanations, courses and don't have facilities? Rent rooms to any school in the supposed hours when they are vacant, which then, little by little, people get used to and you stay.
And coming back as if to deal with another matter:
- Do you know what a laboratory manager can do with a plastic bag?
And I didn't know. And he continued:
-... today a microscope, tomorrow another, now a vial of reagent, then three or four, depending on the bag you bring... Hire a truck and ten men and send (with the plastic bag) to buy ten beers well icy. The guard gets drunk and the men charge without opposition. He returns with television and radio and shows that they even stole what, and what else, and that the guard was drunk and didn't keep anything, as confirmed by the images taken at the time and in the place...
- And then? What do you think we should do?
And he with a despondent air:
- Anything. Some will continue to steal...
- Others, like you, talking bad.
- And all together, like the two of us, doing nothing, covering up the sun of the obvious with the sieve of don't get into that shit.