Paulina Chiziane, the first African writer to win the Camões Prize, continues to celebrate this award with the people. In an interview with Lusa, she talks about her beliefs, her experience with women in prisons in Africa, and the impact that the pandemic has had on the continent.

The writer reveals, in an interview with the news agency, in Lisbon, that the experiences that several inmates in Mozambique -some murderers of fellow aggressors- shared with her reinforced her idea that “God is a woman, and black”.

The first contact, in partnership with Dionísio Bahule, resulted in the award-winning writer’s new book: A voz do cárcere.

One of the lessons I have learned from women in prison is that, first, they are not listened to; and we, who are not in prison, who are free, sometimes we invent awareness campaigns, to fight against domestic violence and other evils, but we do not listen to those who suffered directly or in prison”.

Most of the women Paulina heard about killed their husbands or ex-partners. “They said: I was always raised to be weak. I thought that she was fragile and I thought that she was a good woman, that woman who does not hurt anyone. I was amazed at my power and my strength. But did I find out who I was at the fatal moment? My husband is a strong man, but he died at my hands.”

the writer advocates teaching women “to know their true strength”so that they learn to handle it and do not wait for this force to “emerge at the fatal moment”.

“One of them said: If I had known that I have more strength than my husband, I would not be in jail today, I would have taken another path to fight for the lives of my children,” she continued.

Being a woman in prison, the writer found that gender differences are abysmal.

“The husband leaves, the parents leave, the brothers go the first few days to find out something about them and in the end it is a total abandonment.. Even on visits this is visible. Women have fewer visits than men,” she said.

On the contrary, there is a greater following: “when a man is in prison, the mother is always present, the wife always goes, the children visit. So, the family is much more relaxed and gives more support to the man in prison, because the woman is completely abandoned and then with this regret”.

This difference is also felt when leaving prison where, according to the writer, for most women they go through terrible suffering, since they were absent and many times their children had to fend for themselves.

The writer believes that “all societies could grow a little more if they had time to listen to the stories and stories of women, women in prison or people who live in prison, because men too, there are many men who suffer.”

This experience of listening to incarcerated women reinforced his idea that “God is a woman”.

“For me, after God is the mother. Looking at this prison experience, the different types of families, when the mother is absent, the children are lost (…) There is an invisible God, who is said to be the one who created everything. But on earth there is a goddess who watches over the survival of all species. And that God is a woman,” Chiziane explained.

“Now, God is black and for a simple reason: if human beings were made in the image and likeness of God, then God, I’m sorry, looks a lot like me. He is black and he is a woman, ”he stressed.

Paulina Chiziane celebrates award with people while the “wise men” recover

The writer continues to celebrate the conquest of the Camões Prize among the people, even among those who do not know how to read, while those “who think they are wiser” are still recovering from the shock.

“A good part of those who believe they are the wisest, the wisest, always looked at me like that with that air of a little doctor, they were on the pedestal and I was always on the ground, I always liked to put my feet on the ground – and it was a surprise, a shock for some of them, but I’m glad it happened that way, because I actually write in Portuguese”, he explained.

The author acknowledged that I never imagined there would be so many people who are so interested in hearing and reading or who write and only regret their arms to “embrace you all”, those who live in Africa, Portugal, Brazil and other countries that do not they speak Portuguese.

What surprised her the most was “the popular party” and even the people who can’t read, explaining that people have always looked at the Camões Award as something far removed from Africans.

“I am the first person of the black race, black Bantu, to receive the award,” he recalls, adding that “people have always looked at this award with a distance”, as “the prize of others”.

“Yes [o vencedor] he is not a white man, he will be a mulatto, but a black man and a woman on top… (…) Now, on every walk, we meet those tough guys who think they are masters of the Portuguese language and are the masters. of wisdom”.

Paulina explains that although she studied Portuguese, which is her second language, she belongs to a Bantu culture. Unlike the purists, who think that a “good Portuguese language” has to be spoken “in Portuguese”, the author prefers the mixture of both languages, which she receives from the mixture of cultures.

“And the structure of my Bantu language, where is it? Bantu aesthetics, where is it? I will not throw away my inheritances. I am a product of the Bantu culture and I am a product of this culture that came with Europe and was imposed on my land. The Portuguese language is mine and I will use it however I want”, he underlined.

He says that “the Portuguese language, which has its origin in Europe and which brings with it the culture of Europe”, is in Africa, where it “was imposed”.

“We accept it because it is a very useful and very important instrument. But this language does not penetrate so well in our world. That is, we can communicate, but there are some aspects of our essence, our fauna, our flora and our seas”.

The writer highlights as positive the linguistic heritage of the African people, who begin by learning their mother tongue and often learn Portuguese, English, French or other languages ​​to communicate with others and work.

“Africans, in terms of languages, have a heritage that is sometimes greater than the heritage of Portugal or Europe.because almost all Africans are obliged to know more than one language”.

In the next themes of her work, Paulina promises to insist on what she loves most: life and existence.

“I think that we, as human beings, are outside of our own humanity.”

And she sets her example: “I am African, but I am far from Africa, despite living in Africa; it is as if some law prohibited or forbade me to be African. I was born at a time when I couldn’t speak my own language. I’m living in a society that looks at Africa as this place, I don’t know, hell or non-existent. I live in a world where an African cannot express his religiosity and sometimes is ashamed of his own race, his hair and his way of being. This is the world that we have inherited from these conflicts and from these pyramids that the world understands that it must build to classify human beings.”

The writer wants to contribute to a reflection on all this and try to understand the reasons why the world is so unbalanced.

“Africa has always lived in a pandemic” since colonial times

The Covid-19 pandemic did not scare the writer who says that “Africa has always lived in a pandemic, since the times of colonial penetration”.

If it wasn’t the pandemic of wars and terrors, of horrors, it was diseases. We Africans have always been in a circle of hell. That’s why this pandemic didn’t scare me.”

The writer considers that it is necessary to recognize that in Africa death is free, remembering that it is a poor continent, with many problems to be solved.

“My country, what I was able to experience, was the war of national liberation, with its deaths, massacres and everything, both Portuguese and Mozambicans, dead and dead, I don’t know why, then we had the civil war, which was another pandemic and it lasted 16 years, then there were those wars in support of Zimbabwe, South Africa, etc.”

“And in the middle of it all, if it’s not cholera in the center of the country, it’s plague in the north of the country and malaria throughout the country. Now Covid… Covid is one more”, he declared.

The writer believes that these historical difficulties were one of the aspects that made Africa “very calm” in the fight against the pandemic. Another aspect that he highlights is that people experience a more natural life because they are less crowded, walk more and are more exposed to the sun.

“Of course we suffer and continue to suffer, but the African is used to suffering. What a pity!”.

In relation to the rich countries, Paulina observes that “some Western countries and some American countries felt they owned the world, possessors of great science. But the Covid has shown the limitations of the human being and the limitations of all science and technology.

The writer liked to see a certain return to her origins in her homeland, Mozambique.

“I remember that the streets of the city of Maputo were full of people selling eucalyptus leaves, selling a series of other leaves that are good for the treatment of Covid,” he said, adding: “Covid made us stop to show that being human was made to live with the nature of nature, because he is nature.