29-04-2010 om 23:29 by Sueli Brodin

The milk didn’t taste spoiled and I wasn’t happy to see my children making such a fuss about its appearance. They were refusing to drink it because it didn’t look “evenly white”. Despite my repeated assurances they kept making faces and wouldn’t touch it.

I looked at them and my thoughts wandered off once again to my encounter the previous evening at Maastricht Debates with the two guest speakers of the event, Mrs Luisa Diogo, the former Prime Minister of Mozambique, and Mrs Sylvia Borren, the co-chairman of the World Connectors think tank and former director of Dutch aid organisation Oxfam Novib.



Mrs Luisa Diogo, Mrs Sylvia Borren, Mrs Aissa Chitara and the Maastricht Debates team at the Selexyz Dominicanen bookshop in Maastricht

During dinner before the debate, I had conversed in Portuguese with Mrs Diogo and her personal assistant Mrs Chitara and had been pleasantly surprised to hear how similar Mozambican Portuguese sounds to Brazilian Portuguese, much more in fact than to European Portuguese.

As we walked towards the Selexyz Dominicanen bookshop where the debate was taking place, I asked them about their impressions of Maastricht and Mrs Diogo said: “Very nice, very historical… but at what time do the Dutch wake up?”

Then she explained that she and her assistant had left the Kruisheren Hotel at 11 am that morning to take a stroll in the city and had found the streets completely deserted. “Where is everyone?” they had wondered. “This place looks abandoned.” Then at 1.30 pm, the picture had changed. “It was so strange, people started appearing all at once from all sides out of nowhere, as if they had just woken up,” Mrs Diogo commented.

Mrs Chitara added that by comparison the streets of Maputo started filling up as early as 5 am and that offices would open around 7.30 am.



Maputo, the capital of Mozambique

Throughout the evening, and certainly during the debate with Mrs Borren, which took more the form of an exchange of experiences and insights, Mrs Diogo came across as a strong woman on a mission, an energetic and astute politician with a strategy and a clear vision for her country, and a passionate advocate for the cause of women.

“How did I become Prime Minister of my country? The answer is simple. Through hard work, by performing well, by proving that I could do ten times better than the other – male - candidates, by leaving the managers and leaders without any other option... Simply by being seen as the natural successor of someone.”

Mrs Luisa Diogo, former Prime Minister of Mozambique speaking at Maastricht Debates

Listening to her, I could easily understand why large crowds of women started gathering every day under her office windows when she became Prime Minister. Through their songs they wanted to express their gratitude for the inspiration she gave them and for being a role model for them.

Mrs Diogo spoke of her country’s achievements but also of its challenges - poverty, illiteracy, AIDS, gender inequality - and pleaded for a stronger civil society, the implementation of more innovative policies and a revision of the traditional definition of success. Her personal motto: “Do more and better”. Who can beat that?



Colours of Maputo by Nuno Ibra, via Flickr

When later in the evening I joined the Maastricht Debates team for a drink with Mrs Borren on the Vrijthof square, a story she shared made a powerful impression on me and stayed in my mind.

Mrs Borren told us of a taxi driver in Kenya who upon learning that she came from the Netherlands, had exclaimed, excited and full of anticipation: “May I ask you something? It’s something I’ve always wanted to know. My father has been toiling all his life to grow flowers for the Netherlands. But… what do the Dutch do with the flowers?”



Selexyz Dominicanen bookshop in Maastricht

When he found out that the flowers were used to decorate Dutch living rooms, his face dropped and he said that he had always envisioned a more meaningful purpose for them, such as “the dyeing of textile fabrics”. The image of his father’s flowers slowly and uselessly withering away in Dutch vases had come to him as a terrible shock and he had even described it as “decadent”.

My children must have read through my mind and sensed how futile I thought they were being, because the next thing they said was: “All right then maman, we’ll drink the milk.”

Photographs by Sonja Schiffers

Related article: The spirit of Mottanai

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