Amanda van Scoyoc

This week I’ve been doing a lot more work than usual. I’ve been trying to track down the last few girls that I have taken photos of but haven’t interviewed. It has been frustrating because some of the girls are near impossible to get in touch with. Jennifer lost her cell phone. Monique’s baby threw the cell phone in the toilet. Yesenia works and is never at home. It’s been frustrating and I feel so pressed for time now that I am calling them with stalker like frequency.

Eli and I are leaving for Michigan in about a week. His family lives there and on the way we are going to spend a couple of days in Montreal and Toronto. I am very excited. I have been so overwhelmed trying to get all of the last pieces done and figuring out the exhibit that I really need this break. When we get back we will have a week and a half to pack our apartment into a car (which means sell most everything on craigslist), put up and take down a gallery show, and say goodbye to everyone here.

Because I am down to my last couple of weeks, I have been enjoying every moment of work. I finished up my last photo shoot on Tuesday with Zeinab and Oliya who are both from Somalia. I ended up at Zeinab’s house for a couple of hours hanging out with her son Ali while we tried to calm him down for the shoot.

The interviews with Zeinab and Oliya have been very interesting because their views about pregnancy and motherhood are very different than those of the other girls that I work with. Oliya is 21 and married. She was engaged for a year before they married and after they married she became pregnant a few months later. A lot of the questions I always ask were irrelevant to her. For instance, when I asked how her relationship with her husband had changed during the pregnancy and after she responded that they were already married so it hadn’t. When I asked how many children she wanted in the future, she responded as many as she will have.

Yesterday Damaris came over with Andrea and we spent the afternoon looking through photos and playing back the video tapes from Damaris’ pregnancy and Andrea’s birth. It is amazing how much they both have changed in the past three months. Damaris has transitioned into a stay at home mom and Andrea is more and more awake and responsive every time I see her. Damaris and I talked for a while about her taking one or two college classes this fall. I can’t even imagine college with a baby. It is so much easier to go through school without stopping or really even thinking about not being there. From everything I have read about young motherhood, the one marker that can really change your income, living situation… for the better is education. Even though Roca is such a nurturing place for young mothers, I support Damaris’ decision to work towards further education rather than to continue to work at Roca.