21/03/11

I have read that in some cultures where virginity is very highly prized, if a man wants a woman but doesn’t think the woman or her family will accept him, he will kidnap and rape her. After this, the family will often agree to marry her to him, since she is now tainted and no other man will have her. I have never heard of this happening here and frankly virginity doesn’t seem to be a big deal here, so I didn’t imagine it would. In Inharrime very recently a similar situation happened, where a girl was kidnapped for a few days, and afterwards the fathers convened and decided she would marry him. And the man is someone I know fairly well.
The littlest munchkin at the orphanage (the one who I said was afraid of white people) is slowing warming to me, now sometimes she’ll wave to me (I don’t think she speaks much Portuguese). Yesterday she came running up to me and stopped a few feet away from me. Then she slowly approached me and I wasn’t quite sure what she was going for, so I held out a hand. But instead she slowly toddled up to me and hugged my legs. Then she gave me a half-smile and ran away again.