Gaining confidence

 A few weeks ago, our new intern Adria posted a blog about our employee who was beaten and kicked out from her house. Since then, this woman has been living with me and going to work. At first, it was shocking to both me and my Spanish roommate how traumatized she was. Since she was raised in a strict Muslim family, she was totally submissive. She believed it was improper to be in the same room as Carlos, my roommate, since he is an unmarried male. We told her that we have no such issues, and eventually she felt comfortable being in the same room as Carlos as long as I too was present. She also refused to eat with us, but would take her food, cover her face with the hijab, and hide in the corner as she ate. I begged her to eat with us, and only after conveying that Carlos and I really wanted her company would she take meals with us. She still wears the hijab when she eats, because her family told her that was a rule written in the Koran.

After a few days, she started opening up a little and becoming more relaxed in our house. She is teaching me how to cook Indian food, and she is an awesome cook! She also asked me to teach her English so we read National Geographic articles every night and go over the new vocabulary words. It is absolutely incredible how intelligent she is! She studied up to grade 8, but was taken out of school by her family because they are quite poor and needed her to start working. But even with that education, she is able to understand the science behing geysers, or how wooly mammoth fossils were preserved in ice for thousands of years. I can't imagine where she would be now had she been able to complete her secondary education. 

She's been staying with me for about two weeks now, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. We've had conversations about women in her community, and how many of them suffer from domestic abuse. But we've also talked about her wishes. She says in her first life, she was oppressed, abused, not allowed to attend school, and not allowed to spend her own money. But now, she says, she has a new life. In this life she will be strong, independent, and retain her family honor. She says in her new life she will learn English, finish her school, and open her own NGO to help other women from her community. All of this, she prays, will be done with Allah's blessings.