17th birthday for tree baby Rosita
NORMAL: ‘IT’S JUST A DIFFERENT WAY OF BEING BORN’
She and her family raised millions of dollars in international aid.
Rosita Mabuiango’s birth in a tree above swirling waters 17 years ago thrust her into instant stardom, drawing global attention to the worst floods to hit Mozambique in recent memory.
The images of Rosita draped in dirty linen, moments after she and her mother were hoisted to safety by a helicopter, touched the world, helping raise funds for tens of thousands of flood victims.
But these days, the teenager doesn’t consider herself special.
“I’m normal, it’s just a different way of being born,” she says with a broad smile.
Rosita was born on March 1, 2000, four days after her marooned mother clambered into a tree to escape deadly floods ripping through southern Mozambique.
Torrential floods had forced a heavily pregnant Carolina Chirindza and other family members into a tree with no food or water.
Clinging onto tree branches, Chirindza – previously named in the media as Sofia Pedro – also went into labour.
Her mother-in-law held a capulana – a long sarong – under her to catch the baby and prevent it from falling into the muddy, crocodile-infested flood waters.
The baby was named Rosita, after Chirindza’s mother-in-law.
“I was not prepared for this, but that’s what God wanted,” Chirindza, 39, said while sitting outside her house in Chibuto, 280km northeast of Maputo.
An AFP journalist witnessed her and the newly-born baby being winched away by a South African defence force helicopter just after the birth.
As Rosita approached her 17th birthday, her mother said their survival was a “miracle for sure”.
“Yes, it changed my life, because now I have a house. I also have a job,” said Chirindza, speaking in front of a three-bedroom house donated to the family by the local municipality.
She was also given a post as cleaner by the district administrator, lifting her out of dire poverty.
Four-and-a-half months after she was born, Rosita and her mother travelled to Washington to lobby the US Congress for expanded aid to help tens of thousands of Mozambicans affected by the catastrophe in which 800 people died.
She became a rallying point for securing millions of dollars in international aid, both to help those affected and to improve flood protection schemes that have prevented a repeat of the huge death toll. –