Barbara Hofmann, the Maman of street children in Mozambique

“TO early 2001 I got sick of the worst form of celebraral malaria which has 70 percent mortality and leaves 90 percent of the survivors with physical and mental disabilities for the rest of life. During the month I was in a coma, I had an experience of press. I have not crossed the tunnel that many talk about, I found myself directly in the light, in a peace that cannot be described in words. There was an immense arc, white on white, and we were waiting to enter. I was the number four, the other three were like bags of flour on the ground and I knew they were men. At a certain point a woman with a large cloak and black hood took my arm and pushed me down, making me wake up. My brother, whom I found near my bed, a very rational person, told me that he knew it, because in the intensive care we were four, and the other three, men, had died ».

Barbara Hofmann tells her story in her home in Busha wild and semi -desert region close to the village of Vilankulo, a quarter of an hour from a turquoise ocean where tourists go to photograph the whales. But even more surprising than his otherworldly journey is the ground.

Born 63 years ago in internal Switzerland by German mother of noble origin and Swiss dad luteio and musician, Barbara, After working seven years in financial management, he finds himself “by chance”, for an international institution, in Mozambique.

It is 1989 and the Civil War rages in the country, which will end in 1992. The young Switzerland discovers children soldier, war orphans, street children and makes a great decision: «There was a lot of talk about doing, but in reality very little was done. So I decided to act ».

The soup program

In order for a support project to obtain the approval of the government is needed an organization. As Barbara, who returned to Switzerland, leaves her work and founded AsemAssociation in support of the Mozambican childhood. After selling all his goods he returns to Beira, the second city of Mozambique. In addition to war, there is a terrible drought, and as always children pay the most expensive price.

He begins his work with the “soup program”: He asks private aid, in Switzerland and Mozambique. He asks to participate even by giving a tomato or half a handful of riceand the availability of the well of a mosque. Thus manages to guarantee a plate of soups per day and water to drink and to wash 300 children up to six months after the end of the war.

“When I asked the children” What would you like? “,” What is your dream? “, The answer was always the same: being able to eat without rummaging in the trash or having to prostitute me. And go to school, “he says. Then, after obtaining a land from the government with a long battle, With the help of the older boys and the Alpine troops of the Peacekeeping Onumoz mission (the United Nations operations in Mozambique) builds the first center.

Now there are four centers: two in Beira, one in Vilankulo and one in Gorongosa. Asem is also based in Italy, Canada and the USA. For his commitment Barbara has won prestigious international prizes such as “The One International Humanitarian Award” in 2014. But The most important reward for her is to be recognized as Maman by the 200 thousand children who removed from the streethaving educated and reintegrating into communities.

How did you do it as a foreigner, from Bianca, to a woman, in a country where children are commodities for organ traffickers, for prostitution and drug dealing? “I still ask myself and I don’t know,” he admits. “I received several death threats from local and international. One night I was with my three children, at the time very young, and entered the house of the strangers armed with Machete. I asked them how much they were paid, they told me four dollars, I offered him four and a half and we have momentarily become “friends”. Another time they tried to kill me while I was driving. “

And how could three children, today 44, 41 and 36 years old, be a maman of thousands of children, raise funds, manage the centers with the work that this entails? “My children were born” from my heart, and not from my belly ”. They always accompanied me in my activities and were part of our great family. When they became great, they moved to Maputo to finish their studies in pharmaceuticals, psychology and trade, and begin their life as adults. In the hardest periods I slept for an hour and a half to three per night and ate three times a week. But how do you say that you can’t take it anymore and that you go to children who compete for food with stray dogs in the landfills, to the 18 -year -old girl who prostitutes herself since she has you and who tells you that they no longer hurt her? Or to the child, also of six, who accepted sexual violence for a plate of polenta? Anger is useless because it makes irrational. I try to do the arm wrestling with injustice and change things, to help. “

The future in a straw hut

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this story is that Maman lives like St. Francis and is not afraid of anything, “because fear is linked to possession”. It is not religious even if he has a very strong spirituality based on the union with Mother Earth. While working in the board of Asem, he chose to live on donations, without salary or annuity. He loves cats and has many, he calls them all chat, cat in French. And, therefore, he always has a cat.

The house in which she lives for nine years has the straw roof from which a lot of dust enters. The bathroom is outdoorsa semicircular incannuchy fence, with a hole in the sand. There is no running water or electricity but of the old solar panels that made me think to recharge the computer battery. The terrace/veranda, built around the crown of a tree, has a view of a pond and on the trapped sky by the Milky Way and the stars.

Barbara’s poverty is full of wealth, which leaves without a spare part to go to collect a prize or to make a conference abroad and returns with four suitcases full of clothes donated for children and much more. Equally unique is his plan to go even more in Bush in the age in which you generally want a good pension and the hospital nearby: «I will go to live in a paglotete (the traditional straw hut), I will cultivate a piece of land, and my pension will be my 200 thousand children who are the wealth of Africa. I will help those who come to solve their problems, because that’s what I can do ».

No altar

However, he warns us not to sanctify it: «When I make presentations, conferences, meetings, many people tell me that I am very good, exceptional, and they put me on a high pedestal where they cannot go up. In reality I am not a heroine, this is just an excuse to justify their not to do. To be good, there is no need to go to Africa. You can love the unwelcome neighbormake him smile and ask him if he can help him. But to get there, the first step is to begin to respect, to forgive, to love yourself. This is the root of the tree that will then grow ».

A last surprising detail, because the stories are also made of details. Maman is beautiful, smiling and well -kept, of a femininity fully made and happyvery different from how you would imagine. After a month of coexistence, he agreed to be photographed during a 12 -hour trip between Beira and Vilankulo, 537 kilometers of slalom between holes and voracins in clouds full of dust, behind the wheel, she. “When we arrive,” he proposed to me. But it was dark. We postponed the shooting in the morning of my flight to Italy after a short rest. And we had fun.

Find dignity

Asem (Association in support of the Mozambican childhood) is a non -profit founded by Barbara Hofmann in 1991 to help Mozambique’s children in conditions of extreme poverty, victims of AIDS, orphans and abandoned, to find a life from human beings with dignity.
To get to know the association better: asemitalia.org