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Dejection and unhappiness are at the heart of two families whose lives are submerged beneath poverty and human misery. MICHAELA MUSCAT visits Birgu’s Mandragg
Walking around the Mandragg area in Birgu, the deprivation here is palpable. Like the eponymous working-class district in Valletta, the poverty-stricken neighbourhood was rebuilt in the 1970s by the then Labour government, a housing project that gave reprieve to the squalor.
Accompanied by a priest who works in the locality, we wait for the front door to open. Sue enthusiastically greets the both of us. Climbing up the stairs, I am blinded by Christmas decorations. The flat is impeccably clean, probably even by a Maltese housewife’s standards. But Sue, the mother of five, is severely depressed. And she is a compulsive cleaner as well.
She sobs as she explains her predicament. “No one from my family speaks to me. My mother didn’t want me so my grandmother looked after me. Nevertheless when I got older she used to come to grandma’s house and beg me to go live with her and my sisters. One day I relented. It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Her silent sobbing turns into loud crying. Her husband Stephen apologises: “it’s not her fault, she often gets upset and she is scared that I will stop loving her as well.”
She continues: “My mum used to beat me black and blue, pull my hair and burn me with cigarettes. Stephen and I decided to have a baby so that we could get married and leave because the situation was unbearable.” Since then Sue has not seen her mother or her sister.
Both Stephen and his wife don’t know who their father is. Stephen was told by his mother that she got impregnated by a member of the American navy. “No, back then the girls used to like the American navy, they used to show them a good time,” he says when asked if his mother was a prostitute.
Taken on a tour of the flat, they obviously make the most of the little that they have got. The rooms have been intricately decorated by Stephen, “as I don’t have much else to do.”
Yet when they open the fridge the door collapses to the floor. A miniscule fridge, it barely has any food in it. They take good care of their belonging, however this fridge is past its use by date.
This family of seven live on Lm212 a month. With this paltry sum they have to pay rent, electricity, water, food and the other necessities in life. Stephen is unable to find a job. A shoe-shop had employed him on contract for a while but he was not needed anymore after that. The police force and army are two options that he considered and applied for, but he was not accepted. “I am desperate but no one wants me.”
Sue is obviously not fit for work. Her depression deepened when she gave birth to her fifth child, unplanned. Currently on strong antidepressants, she is paranoid about her children’s health, fearing the worst.
At Lm6 a pop, her pills are not cheap. Sue is able to obtain them for free. The catch? She has to visit a psychiatrist in a private clinic to obtain the application that will entitle her to free pills. Psychiatrists charge at least Lm10 to 15 a visit, unaffordable by their standards.
They live hand to mouth, no chance of ever being able to save up for any luxury. Their only form of entertainment is their television. Cinemas, eating out, or spur of the moment shopping is a no-go area for a family that does not always have the couple of pounds necessary to feed the brood.
Single mother Lara rarely gets out of the house as well. Living on the other side of Birgu, in a house provided by the Housing Authority, she bluntly states that the man who fathered her three children gets furious when she mentions the kids. “He never wants to see his children, he never gives us any money but he stalks me every now and again.”
Lara is unable to work because she is the mother of a four, six and nine-year-old. “People tell me you must have been a prostitute to father three children by him. The first one just happened and then the others followed because I was too scared of him.”
It’s not the first time that Chris shows up at odd hours of the night and destroys a window or two. He threatens that if he ever sees her with another man he will kill her.
Lm128 must be wisely spent on the family of four and her mother who helps her out with her miserly pension. The house consists of a kitchen, a tiny bathroom and one bedroom which they all have to share. “I don’t know what I am going to do when they get older. When the two boys get older I would like them to share a room together without the girl.” But the Housing Authority are not willing to give her a flat of her own so her mother is obliged to share her bedroom with a daughter and three grandchildren.
Why didn’t Lara use contraceptives? Appearing surprised by my question she pauses before answering. “He never wanted to and warned me not take the pill as I had thought of taking it.”
Chris doesn’t give a damn about his children. He deigns to take out his eldest son only when he wants to sleep with the mother, irrespective of whether she wants to or not. Her eldest pipes in: “He’s not my father, he doesn’t care about me.”
Chris is unemployed. Irrespectively, his cars are changed frequently and they have ranged from a new Mercedes to a Fiat. Lara doesn’t see an exit out of this way of life. She is fatalistic but clear. “Before he dies I will not be able to live decently.”
Names of people have been changed to protect their identity
mmuscat@mediatoday.com.mt
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