From childhood, I was captivated by Africa. When I finally had the chance as an adult, I spent a short vacation there. It was a tourist-village kind of holiday—sheltered, like looking out from inside a glass dome—but through that glass I could glimpse the real world. I came home desperate to return, to know this continent better, to meet its people, to live alongside them.
So I reached out to Stefano, a friend I'd met in Rome and who had moved to Mozambique to start an exciting new work. We reconnected.
Stefano and Ivete—a Mozambican couple without children—lived daily surrounded by poverty, deprivation, and injustice. They had to ask themselves a fundamental question: would they step into that suffering, or look away? They chose to open their home. They looked at the reality pressing against their walls and decided they could not isolate themselves from the neighbor, the poor, the orphan. Over time, shaped by certain decisive moments, they came to see that help alone was not enough. For some of these children, crossing the threshold of their house had to mean entering their lives. So they made a radical choice: to bring orphans into their home—some among the countless thousands that AIDS had orphaned across Mozambique, children who at best ended up in state orphanages.
From this came the vision of a family house. Not simply a roof and food for orphans, but a real family and a real future. This meant thinking small—a handful of children—and creating a space modeled on a normal Mozambican home, a "ndangwini": a word in the local language meaning a home where family exists.
The Ndangwini family house project took shape. Children began to arrive—welcomed in different ways, at different paces, according to their needs.
Through my friendship with Stefano, I traveled to Mozambique for the first time in April 2007 and saw their work with my own eyes. I began supporting the project then. Since that first visit, I have returned four more times, staying for months at a stretch. Now I feel part of the family.
The house currently has ten children—some living there full-time, others daily visitors—plus three young women. Two of them were the first orphans Stefano and Ivete took in, children who had lost both parents. Those two arrivals were among the decisive moments I mentioned. Beyond this, they support twenty-two more children from the neighborhood by helping their families.
From my first stay, I sought a place in the household, a role that would be mine. The children themselves answered by calling me "madrina"—godmother—a term for close friends and people dear to the family, but not bound by blood. In that simple word, they welcomed me and made me feel I belonged.
Life in the house flows quietly. The children go to school, play together, do small daily chores.
But the constant demands of caring for a large family on very limited resources leave little room for structured, stimulating play. During my stays, I seize the chance to offer activities that draw everyone in. Drawing, painting, group games, movement activities, team play—I bring what I can from my experience with children and teaching. The response is always enthusiastic. The children discover things they've never encountered: markers, balloons, storytelling, the joy of working together on a game.
Beyond playtime, I help the younger children with their schoolwork. Some of them I accompany to school. Many need extra attention; several need real tutoring.
Given all these challenges, I do what I can. I bring supplies from Italy—stationery, pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, colored pencils. But flying these things in is expensive, and I can only manage it when a sympathetic flight attendant helps me slip through without declaring the weight. It's not much, but it helps.
Since 2002, when the Ndangwini project began, much has grown. More and more children have been welcomed. Only recently did the Mozambican Ministry of Social Action formally recognize Ndangwini as a foster family—an important legal milestone, though it brings no government funding.
Since 2009, Ndangwini has been part of SETEM, the Third World Service organization. So my commitment continues throughout the year. With SETEM, I organize events to help people know about Ndangwini and to raise economic support.
I set out the first time full of enthusiasm, wanting only to meet children from a continent that fascinated me. I never thought beyond that. Their response to what I try to do has been—and remains—so genuinely joyful that it repays every bit of tiredness. These children all carry stories of pain and want, yet their eyes shine. They have learned to be content with little, to marvel at small novelties. They are happy when I am there. I manage not only to entertain them with games and activities, but to astonish them with joy—even simple colored balloons can do it. I have watched children who did not know how to play begin to dance with the others. And because of this, the house is always full of laughter.
Every year I return, eager to be there, to do what I can, to show up. In a few days, I leave again. But there is another reason I keep coming back. Beyond the walls of Ndangwini, the world is harsh. People still die of AIDS. Poverty still crushes so many. It is impossible not to feel the injustice of it. Like Stefano and Ivete, I have to think about those still outside the house.
I hope this situation will improve as much as possible, and I hope my witness might help others understand what is happening there. I want to move everyone I meet to support Stefano and Ivete—two people who work daily with love and dedication to give children the chance to grow healthy, with parents at their side, in a home of peace. They have opened their doors and their family to children who have no family of their own.
Elisabetta Aglianò, 2011
