I went to the first movie of the Human Rights Film Festival, “Rafea: Sola Mama.” From the description, I wasn’t sure how interesting this movie would be but I actually really enjoyed it. This documentary is about a group of women from various impoverished countries who are given the opportunity to travel to India for six months to be trained in solar power. They will be able to return to their home villages and solar power their own houses as well as others in the village, earn a salary to support themselves and train others in the village to do the same. The organization says that it wants to train women because they are connected to their villages, children and families and will not up and run off to the city once they are educated, whereas men may have the tendency to do so more so than women. In particular, it followed a woman from Jordan named Rafea.
Rafea is invited to travel to India and she complies, along with two other members of her extended family. She is hesitant to leave and it is very emotional for her to say goodbye to her children, whom she loves dearly, but she knows it’s for their good and the good of the whole village. After she’s been there a month, she calls the program coordinator and begs him to send her home, saying that she has no choice because her daughter is sick and her family needs her. She doesn’t tell him this but she reveals to the audience that her husband, of whom she is the second wife, threatened to divorce her and take her kids so she will never see them again if she doesn’t come home immediately. After some amount of time, she decides that she wants to return. She is tired of sitting around all day, doing the same cleaning and cooking tasks and “wasting her life.” It’s a complicated process, but she returns once again to India to finish her training. When she returns after the final exam, her and her two other family members are able to add lights via solar power in 80 homes in their village. She can also own and live in a house now with her children. Her husband was imprisoned soon after her return for smuggling, because he got involved in illegal sales as a way to prove that he is capable of supplying for the family too, just like Rafea.
One of the biggest contrasts in the movie was Rafea’s life in her village in Jordan and her life in India for those few months with the other women. Although I could tell she loves her family and her home, she displayed very different attitudes and emotions in the two places. It was very sad to see how in Jordan it seemed that everyone was discouraging her from doing anything. Her mother, husband, children and others did everything in their power to convince her not to go to India, even though it would be better for all of them in the long run. Maybe they just didn’t understand what was going to happen or the purpose or maybe just didn’t believe that it would actually follow through, since they had been living in poverty all of their lives. In India, Rafea was encouraged by the other women and greeted very warmly when she returned for the second time. She smiled and laughed a lot and it seemed like all of the women supported each other and were very proud of their work and the education they were receiving. Obviously she had to return home and I’m sure she missed her kids, but it was kind of sad to see her return to a more negative life. It seemed like she was much more joyful and had a greater sense of self-worth while she was in India.
Another eye opening aspect was the role of her husband. It is customary for men to work and supply money for the household and women to take care of the children and do the cooking and cleaning, but he was the biggest threat against her receiving an education and earning a salary for herself. He was clearly lazy by the way he just laid around all day and very selfish in the way that he didn’t help care for the kids while she was away and basically discouraged her from doing anything good or productive in every way possible. It was obvious to us as the audience members that this was not fair and a very sad situation but it’s very common in other countries where women do not have the opportunities to learn or work. They are even shamed if they attend school. This displayed a culture very different from our own, but it was inspiring to see how Rafea made up her mind that she was going to go to India to learn and she was going to work and no one was going to stop her.