FLORENTINA’S STORY

Florentina is a new Mama to our MAP Program at Neema Village.  She is 31 years old, a mother of 3 kids, who are 12, 8 and 2 years old. She had her first born at the age of 17, but the child was taken by his grandmother. She came to Arusha in 2015 when she was 18 yrs old and was working in a factory that makes mosquito nets and plastics.

She met a man who was her co-worker, they fell in love and started dating and not long after she became pregnant.   She told the man about her pregnancy, and the man told her to get an abortion because he was not ready to marry her or be a father at that time. She refused to get an abortion, and the man left her without any support. She managed to take care of herself until she delivered her baby, but she had complications during childbirth and the doctors told her that the baby would have challenges growing up because of cerebral palsy.

She continued to work in the factory until the baby was a year and six-months-old, then she had to quit working because the lady that was taking care of the baby said she could no longer take care of the baby because he is special needs and needs a lot of care. She went to different hospitals and clinics to look for her son’s treatment but could not afford to pay the bills. Then she decided to go back to her village to live with her parents who were very old. But her parents and other family members did not like her son, they said it’s not good for their family to have a baby like that because he was considered a curse on the family and even connected his birth with witchcraft, so they wanted her to leave.

She decided to find a man and get married just to get out of her family’s house. She stayed in the man’s house for a few months and then she became pregnant again with her third child.  After she became pregnant the husband asked her to take her handicapped son back to her family because he could no longer take care of him.  He insisted if she wanted the marriage she must take the son back to her family.  Florentina could not bring herself to do that so she decided to leave her husband’s house and went to stay with another family member. In that house the treatment was the same so she left and went to another family member until soon she had no more family members to go to.  She decided to come back to Arusha where she stayed in a friends house for two weeks and the friend decided to rent a mud house for her and paid two months rent.

Soon after she moved into her mud house, she began using alcohol to release stress, and she became an alcohol addict. She and her two kids were sleeping on pieces of a boxes on a muddy floor.

A social worker from an organization where she was taking her son for therapy asked Neema Village for help.

We went to interview her and found Florentian and her kids in a mud house without a bed, mattress or food to eat.

Neema rescued her and brought her and her two kids to the MAP Apartments, where she is now attending counseling sessions to help her heal from the past trauma but also recover from her alcohol addiction, she has started attending sewing classes as well.

She has been at Neema for three weeks now. She still needs much counseling and growth before thinking about a business. We thank GOD for bringing her to Neema where she is surrounded by people who love her and she will be able to get the help she needs.