Meeting Maguette
Extract from the Diary
by Elisabeth Ullmann
The SOS Children's Village is laid out beautifully. The houses are earthen coloured and not too big. They are arranged in a circle around the "casse", a stone-built, communal hut. There are also an SOS Kindergarten, an SOS Hermann Gmeiner School and a medical centre on the same site. We have our first tentative meeting with Maguette. We visit her SOS family where the children are expecting us and are dressed in their Sunday best.
Maguette is very nervous at the beginning of the interview. Later on I ask a question about her marriages and hit a raw nerve. She bursts into tears when she talks about her separation from her second husband and all the memories come flooding back. I think she has suffered terribly in the past. Maguette says that she is happy to have found work in the SOS Children's Village. She thanks God for that and makes the "sacrifice" to dedicate herself entirely to these children. I believe that this way of thinking stems from the Islamic body of thought, but nevertheless an uneasy feeling creeps over me when I think that the SOS Children's Village work is based on women who "sacrifice themselves". I wonder what sort of children come to the SOS Children's Village when the extended family takes on the care of other members. Hanne, our colleague and translator, explains that in some cultures children whose mothers have died giving birth to them are abandoned or rejected because they are considered to be "bringers of evil". SOS Children's Villages is making efforts to re-establish contact with the families in order to instil in them that these children are no different to any others. There are also orphans whose extended families are no more or whose members have distanced themselves from their social roots. It is particularly difficult to reintegrate these children into society. That is why SOS Children's Villages is trying to build a social network for the children by using so-called "guest families". Guest families are also being sought for children born out of wedlock and for disabled children.
We visit Maguette's family. She lives very close to the SOS Children's Village. Maguette's mother has had to go into hospital in Dakar and the step-mother has gone with her, so only her sister, her children and Maguette's own children are at home. We are given a warm greeting and treated to lemonade. I show them my postcards from home and Fred takes a lot of photographs. The atmosphere is relaxed and happy. Maguette's unmarried sister, who is the head of the household, promises to send us over couscous for dinner. She does so and it tastes wonderful!
Maquette's Story
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
All these mother's stories come from SOS Children's Village Hermann Gmeiner Academy. Copyright is reserved and no unauthorized use permitted. Use for non-commercial purposes may be requested. The interviews telling about the lives of some SOS Mothers form part of an interesting study on being a replacement Mother to children in need in SOS Children's communities worldwide.