So-and-so's Mom

Mozambicans often address women as the mother of their child, instead of using the woman's name. For example, another teacher who I'm really good friends with, Lidia, has a daughter named Edilenia. At school people use her real name, but at her house her husband and friends call her "mae de Edilenia," (Edilenia's mom). When I first heard this it was at the house of a male colleague who was asking his wife to bring us some drinks. And then later in the conversation he told me that his wife got pregnant (not phrased as he got her pregnant) so he had to marry her, making it clear that he wasn't really planning on that. I thought it was awful that he just thuoght of her as his daughter's mother, and not as his wife, not as a real person with her own name. But lately I've been realising that the women all address each other like that. A few weeks ago we were cooking for a Teacher's Day party (an interesting experience of cultural gender issues, I might add a post about that) and the women who didn't know each other would ask what the other women's kid's names were, and then call each other Mae de Dao, Mae de Mara, Mae de Edi, and they really didn't know or ask what each other's real names were. I was exchanging numbers with one of them later, and when I started to put her name in my phone she was like, "No, put Mae de Mara."