Noémia Sousa. The accomplice mother “sufficiently close” and “far away”

“ Acalls this admirable in it, because it is a very difficult balance”, confesses Virginia Soares, or Gina, the only daughter of Noémia de Sousa, in an interview with Lusa in the year that, on September 20, marks the centenary of the birth of the author of poems that marked the blackness movement from Mozambique.

Of his poetry, Noahmia spoke little. In fact, it devalued: “I had no idea of the importance [of his poems] – ‘a things I wrote and now I don’t like so much’”, he recalls.

Only later, when she began to be invited to events, did she realize the impact it had on the black movement.

As a child, he read some poems, but also Gina “did not care at all”.

Only as an adult, when cousin Isabel Noronha used parts of her mother’s poems in one of her documentaries she realized what she was “so current”.

Also the nieces-granddaughters Lara and Camila de Sousa resorted to the poetry of Noémia for documentaries that made, in another example of how their poems, published mainly in the African Brado between 1949 and 1951, play several generations.

Although she chose Portugal to live with, a country with which she maintained a “peaceful” relationship, she always assumed herself as a Mozambican: “on her boat trip to Portugal [in 1951], someone asked her if she was a third-party Portuguese,” she replied: “but a first-rate Mozambican,” Gina says.

“ As soon as the independence [of Mozambique] was declared, he made the Mozambican passport and identity card”. But he only returned to the country in the 1980s, at the time accompanied by his daughter and sister Camila, at the invitation of national authorities.

When he arrived at the airport, he cried when he saw the track full of black people, because he never thought he would see, in his homeland, “black people walking proudly, with their heads held high”.

I would return once again in 1996 to the tribute they paid him at the age of 70.

“I always talked about Mozambique. He didn't want me to forget where I came from. He sang me Mozambican songs” and some stories of his youth. He still thought about coming back, but he ended up staying, reports.

It was in the neighborhood of Mafala, where he moved as a child, who became aware of the situation in which the Mozambicans lived.

Poetry and involvement, especially with his great friend José Craveirinha, in the ideals of the black movement, created around him an environment that led her to leave.

“There were people who questioned, how did a person with Indian blood, Portuguese blood, identify so much with black blood?” (Noémia’s mother had German and Mozambican origin and Goesa’s father, Portuguese and Mozambican).

In Portugal, where he had his brothers, Noémia met Gina's father, also coming from the then Lourenço Marques (Maputo), in the House of Students of the Empire.

As he had done, in 1964 the two headed for Paris.

Gina, about 2 years old, accompanied her mother in the “jump”: At the border, the “passer” took the money and did not show up. The anguished mother, but Gina placed complete trust in her: “he arranged another way,” she says.

They arrived in Italy, passed “over several places”, they counted on “the help of people from Algeria” – “they gave me Yasmina’s name to pass”, for the fake passport – until they could reach Paris, where Gina physically knew her father.

They lived on the outskirts of Paris until they moved to the French capital in the middle of the turbulence of May 68, with a general strike and no place where food could be bought: “she was distressed and I was happy, because I did not go to school”.

Noémia worked at the Moroccan Embassy in Paris: “When I had nowhere to stay, she would take me to work and, to entertain me, I would type with the machine,” she recalls.

But the salary wasn't enough to rent a house. Noemia got along well with her ex-husband, but they were separated and wanted a house for you. An invitation to work in Lisbon left her hesitant, because Portugal was still living under fascism.

Started sending Gina on vacation to her sister Camila's home in Lisbon, until she was able to regain her passport and in 1973, a year before the April Revolution 1974, one day she traveled with her.

“ She felt a little guilty about bringing her daughter into a fascist country. I said ‘you can’t tell anyone that we have Yves Montand records’ and I was very scandalized because May Day wasn’t a holiday,” he says.

In Portugal, Noémia de Sousa worked at ANI and then at Reuters and ANOP, culminating in his career as a journalist at Lusa.

“He talked a lot about journalism and ethics, about Africa’s problems. We shared this a lot,” recalls Gina, recalling the article that Noémia signed because she could not hide the indignation at the acceptance by Guinea-Bissau in 1988 of a considerable amount in exchange for importing millions of tons of toxic waste from Europe: “It was scandalized”. The business didn't come true, given the international reaction it generated.

Asked about the best memory she keeps from her mother, she replies: “Our complicity” and recalls the day they put on music, it was hot, and went to the balcony of the house in Algés dancing.