Help a Mother to restart life with her 2 children

Dear world,

I am a mother of two boys;

I need to leave the abusive household where I am currently living;

I need your support to leave the father of my two children and restart my life in another city.

My name is Ana Saldanha; I'm 35 years old. I am Mozambican and I have live in Portugal since 2010 to live with my partner and his family. Here, I got married and here I became the mother of two boys, one 7 years old and the other 15 months old. My whole family lives in Mozambique and I am an orphan of both my father and mother. So, there are very few people who could support me.

A few months after I arrived and more seriously during my pregnancy, my partner’s family became racially abusive towards me. After my first son turned 2 I found a job and I was hopeful that having financial independence could reduce the humiliations I was subjected to but unfortunately that didn't happen. In July 2020 I got pregnant again and had a risky pregnancy but I was still being forced to work without rest and even while bleeding because according to them “Portuguese women are good housewives so I should work harder for being black because in fact I should be a maid not a housewife…and that black people don't like to work and so on… I continued working and having faith in God's hands to hold my pregnancy that thankfully did and in 2020 I had my second child;

After the birth of my second child the racist mistreatment and abuse just got worse. As a mother it has been very painful to see my children being mistreated and called names like black, conguito, African hyperactive… to the point that my son felt sad and started asking questions; he is already at the stage where he starts to understand things. I don't want him to be a child who feels rejected and inferior for being black because we are all human beings.

I am often threatened for giving my opinion, they tell me that I can't say anything because I speak “pretogues” or because I understand everything wrong... Anyway, the abuses are many and of various types, so many that I cannot even share in this text;

At the moment I have both my children who are sick and in need of specialized care and it hurts a lot not to be able to do anything for them. I decided to do this campaign hoping to have support to get out of this situation. I want to start a new life, find a job and give my children a decent and stable life.

For security reasons, to avoid that the father of my sons and his family gets to know that I am looking for support to leave them I cannot use face pictures of me or my children in this campaign. However, I share here few pictures of one of the multiple times he have beaten me.

With the money I receive here I expect to support me and my two sons in the first 6 months/1 year of adaptation in a new city;

It will cover the following expenses:

Traveling tickets to a different city;

1 year housing rent;

School enrollment, materials and transport for my 2 children while I am looking for a job;

Food and basic suppliers for the three of us;

Health assistance for my children who are sick;

To anyone who can contribute to support me in this new stage of my life I will be eternally grateful!

Ana