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Alina: Husband and wife
June 1999

by By: Luders Victor, Radio Echo, Pilate
(Adaptation and editing: Ives Marie Chanel)

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Alina Cajuste, 37 years and mother of three children, lives with her husband in Martissant, a residential area in the southwest of Port-au-Prince. For 10 years, Alina has been a member of a women association, Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen (SOFA) (Solidarity of Haitian Women). She has learnt there how to read and write. It is there also that she has been able to find work, thanks to a sewing shop that was started three years ago.

In 1993, during the military Coup d'etat, she was raped. She's nicknamed 'Bebe'. She is the breadwinner for her family. In the shop, she is the saleswoman of the products. She's paid on a pieces-sold basis and per fortnight she earns about 500 gourdes (17 gourdes = US$ 1.00).

"They call me 'Bebe', because I am the real life and soul of the group. It is me who brings joy when people in the group are sad. I am the group's animator. I myself have problems but I help in relieving those of others", she said.

Alina thinks that the women of her neighbourhood are very often victims of violence. Women are often raped.

"From nightfall on, around eight o'clock, young ladies can not go out. Here in Martissant, the majority of the women are street vendors, some others work in factories or as maids."

"Here we work in a 'factory', but it is not the same thing. In the factories, workers are obliged to sleep with the bosses or the managers in order to have better treatment", she stated.

"The organization has helped me. I was illiterate. I am not a very intelligent person, but today I can manage to survive. I have been treated in secret by a doctor of SOFA during the period of the coup, when I became a victim of rape."

"I have a husband. However, in Haiti, there is the system, quite unknown to the public, that it is the woman who plays both roles. She's at the same time wife and husband. If your husband loses his job, you cannot quit him. The organization has changed my life. I have learned that there is no difference within a group. We are socially at the same level."

Alina Cajuste recognizes that the presence of the organization in the area has helped reduce the rate of illiteracy among women. The women should organize themselves, she stated.

[396 words]

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