«My brother was murdered when he was 15 years old and the fear of losing someone while being far away is very great»

Maynara Cristina de Oliveira is 28 years old, this Monday she will turn one older. 29 years that in her case have gone a long way. Too many unpleasantries that left her soul in tatters. From her city, Uberlandia, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, she talks about riches, large plantations, natural beauties, but also miseries and one of the most terribly sad moments she has had to face. . It was 2009 and a year before she had come to Spain to study and look for work. Her idea was to stay, but her return to her country was rushed. Her brother died. He was 15 years old and was murdered in cold blood, in the most miserable way possible. She took the first plane to be with her family as soon as possible.

After that, his Spanish dream cooled at least for a few years because “the fear of losing someone while being far away was very great.” He resumed his studies in Administration, but his thing was cooking. He worked for a good company, he was important and he cooked at numerous events, carnivals and big celebrations all over the country. Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro…

In 2014, at the age of 19, “I became a mother for the first time” and continued working. Her mother took care of her little girl and she continued dreaming of Spain. Now even more so, because she wanted her little girl to study and enjoy the social well-being of this country. In 2019 the opportunity arose, she bought the ticket and showed up in the Burgos town of Miranda de Ebro. A year later, for love, she moved to the capital of Rioja. She was born in March 2020 and in 2021 she had her second child. The relationship did not work out and in November of that same year they officially became a single-parent family.

I didn’t work then. These were pandemic times and everything was too complicated. The country was beginning to return to relative normality so it began searching for courses, employment and support. At that time they told him about the ‘yellow house’ – the social services of the Logroño City Council – and it was there where the word Cáritas was mentioned to him for the first time. He called and they put him in touch with his parish, his Carmelite parish. That was providential. He met Nati, a volunteer with capital letters. Maynara’s eyes glaze over when he talks about her. “She is a great woman and a great support for me,” she says, because she not only cared about her financial situation, but also about whether she had support. «It was like having a mother or a grandmother. She cared about me and wrote to me practically every day.

Then Maynara lived in a rented room and worked black. It was all very hard for a woman alone with her children and with few possibilities of conciliation. “They take advantage of the fact that you work in the black and have no rights.”

Nati told him about the Cáritas housing program and since “I am a person of great faith, I believe a lot in God, when he told me that there was this program, from the first moment I told him that God was going to bless us.” Everything happened very quickly, in a week she got the appointment. They treated her very well and “when I arrived I was able to talk about my problems, that being a single mother is very hard and with them (Marina) it was not only housing support, but also social support, getting ahead with my children, worrying about how was it”. “They didn’t see me as just another number and they made me feel like I was an essential part of her family.” Shortly after she had her home. From that point on everything was better, she began to get out of the hole she was in and found a job as an operator in a factory. They not only attended to her basic needs, those that can be alleviated with financial help, but also her emotional needs with psychological support and therapy.

On June 28, it will be a year since he entered the Cáritas apartment and his life has turned around like a glove. Now, he dedicates the weekends to his children, even during the week she has much more time for them than before. In Brazil, he says, “I participated in many very important events, but I lost the most important thing, which was my children.”