In the heart of Costa da Caparica, there’s a street called R. dos Pescadores, where an elderly lady has been singing traditional Portuguese fado songs for years. No one knows her story or her name, only that she’s been there as long as anyone can remember.
A woman of short stature is one of those people many of us avoid seeing. She disappears in our always busy lives and only appears on the days when we stop for a moment and truly listen from within. But even then, we see this woman only for a few seconds, and without truly realising what kind of feelings she just brought with her song to our surface, we throw her a few cents or euros to comfort ourselves that we did something genuine that day and instantly forget. The woman says ‘obrigada’ with a smile on her face, and we feel relieved. We feel better each time we put money in her little wooden box. We convince ourselves that we do care, but do we really?
I have to admit, I’m no better than anyone else. I was doing exactly the same until some weeks ago, one evening, I saw her very, very slowly going down the street with a young man helping to carry her bags. It was a weekend, and the street was like an overcrowded anthill, and the two of them, with their slow movements, looked like they could be completely frozen in time.
I came closer and asked if the young man knew the elderly lady. He said yes, a little, and he usually helps her get dinner in the nearby restaurant after she finishes singing. I instantly got a stone in my throat: the guy was really young, somewhere around his twenties, and instead of having a drink with his friends (it was the weekend!), he was there walking one super slow step at a time with the elderly lady he barely knew. Once I truly understood that, I couldn’t hold back my tears. After all this time putting some euros in her box, I realised I didn’t even know the woman’s name.. What I felt that evening was so strong that it was hard to put into words. Yet, I decided to meet the elderly lady on one of the upcoming days and to know her story better.
Days passed, but I couldn’t find the time to meet her. While doing my evening runs, I would pass by and cheerfully wave to her. Yet, she would never wave back to me, and I couldn’t understand why until this Sunday when I finally met her and got to hear about her life.
Her name is Rosa Francelina Dias Martins. She has been completely blind (!) since childhood (that’s why she wouldn’t wave me back…). She doesn’t live in Costa da Caparica; she lives in Almada, close to the train station, alone. Yet each day, she comes here to Costa or to Lisbon to sing. She does it all by herself with such heavy bags that when I tried to help, my hands went numb in a few minutes…
I met Rosa at 11h30 on the 16th of June at a restaurant called ‘O Pipo’, where she likes to have her dinner. The woman came almost an hour earlier and was super happy about meeting me. When I was scheduling our meeting, she asked me to make our interview a bit later, but I insisted on meeting in the morning. At the time, I didn’t know that the elderly lady was blind and lived far away. Still, she just said ‘I will come then in the morning the time you need’, without any further explanations or complaints about her life…
Since the first minutes we met, she has been so happy and smiling all the time. I was supposed to take photos of her closer to the ocean, so I took her bag, and we headed towards the beach. The short road that would take me less than a minute to make felt like an eternity since the woman had real difficulties walking. On our way, we met one of her friends from Chile, and he helped us with Rosa’s heavy bag.
The ocean was still a bit far, but Rosa already said she could hear it and feel the salt on her face: “Ahhh, so nice, this fresh salty wind and the sound of the waves! I missed the ocean so much! This year, I haven’t been close to it yet; it’s my first time!” Rosa shared with so much joy in her voice.
Slowly, we enjoyed every minute of reaching Tarquinio Beach, with the concrete bench facing the ocean. I tried to describe everything that surrounded us in the most detailed and vivid way I could, and Rosa seemed so happy!
“I’m from Porto, yet I spent most of my life in Lisbon since I went there to school as a kid,” Rosa started our interview. “Now, for a long time, I lived in Almada, but very often come to Costa da Caparica or Lisbon,” she shared.
“Due to very poor conditions in my family, by the age of 4, I got meningitis, which caused my vision loss together with the ability to walk. Thanks to God, I started walking and can do it not so badly today. And, as I often like to say, if you have both – the ability to walk and the ability to see – it’s better. However, if you can only choose to have one of them, it’s still better to be able to walk. I cannot see, but at least I can go anywhere I want,” Rosa said.
The woman doesn’t remember anything about the time she spent in the hospital after losing her sight and ability to walk. “A psychologist once told me that even if I don’t remember anything in real life, it’s all written somewhere deep in my consciousness; that’s why it all comes through my dreams,” the elderly woman explained.
I wondered how colourful her dreams are, and she said that, interestingly enough, she dreams in colours and imagines the world as very colourful, too. “I would always dream of something very, very beautiful, and then for many years, I would be mentally struggling so much with waking up and accepting that all of it was only a dream,” Rosa shared. In terms of colours, she doesn’t like red but loves white, black and yellow; therefore, whenever she buys something, she always asks them to tell her what colour it is.
When asked when Rosa started to sing, the woman said she had been doing it since she was a little kid. Her family couldn’t support a blind kid, so they forced her to go to the streets to beg for money for survival, and that’s how street singing became her way of earning a living in Portugal.
On February 1st this year, Rosa celebrated her 67th birthday, yet despite her age and disabilities, she’s already planning her new concert in November in Norway. “Here in Portugal, people know me as a fado singer in the streets, but outside my home country, I have concerts for huge audiences,” the woman shared.
Rosa’s life took an international turn when the Austrian multimedia artist André Heller spotted her singing in Lisbon streets and encouraged her to participate in a television program called ‘Voices of the World.’ Her first concert outside Portugal was in Marrakesh, Morocco, and she has never stopped travelling and singing ever since. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Italy, China, Thailand – Rosa left me speechless by naming so many countries she has already been to.
Soon after Rosa gained international attention, a German publisher helped her release three music albums: Histórias da Rua (Stories of the Street) (2000), Segredos (Secrets) (2003), and Alma Livre (2007), which even reached 9th place on the European World Music Chart.
In Portugal, Rosa has already performed in the auditoriums of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Centro Cultural de Belém, as well as at the Café-Teatro Santiago Alquimista, yet her daily life hasn’t changed much. She’s still coping with the unbearably heavy loneliness that has been part of her from an early age.
When our conversation took a turn about care and love, she said to me very firmly: “I don’t believe in true love. Maybe because I never had a chance to have it in my life. Every time I loved someone, they didn’t love me back,” the woman smiled, but you could feel the heaviness of pain in her words. “I have a huge family in Portugal but live completely alone. During all these years, I received much more empathy from complete strangers than from my own family members,” she added.
Singing in the streets became Rosa’s way to avoid loneliness. “I appreciate it so much when people help me with money, but money is not everything in life. It’s so nice when someone comes to me and asks about my day or just says a kind word. Seems a little gesture but means so much to me,” the woman shared and then explained that she had a very close friend who would always check on her, hug her, make a phone call and always cheer her up. Yet, recently, this woman passed away, and Rosa is still deeply suffering from her absence.
It took me a couple of days to ‘process’ what I’d just experienced and what I’d heard from an elderly woman who didn’t even complain about her life. Instead, she was full of joy and gratefulness and constantly made jokes to make me smile.
I promised Rosa that I would keep her company now more often, that we would go to hear the ocean with a cup of coffee or just meet to talk about life.
With this article, I wanted to raise awareness of how important it is to show empathy by giving a hug, saying a nice word, or simply truly being there for a person. All these tiny, genuine gestures of kindness can bring so much joy and make the days less lonely.
For those people who are willing to help Rosa:
the day we met was very hot, yet she wore a big winter jacket. She explained that the jacket had big pockets for all her important things. Therefore, it would be very helpful if someone could get her a lighterjacket for summer that would have big pockets;
since the woman is completely blind, she is using a cane, but the one she has is very poor quality with plastic at the end instead of rubber; therefore, it would be so great to find her a good cane;
I’ve discovered that there’s an application calledBe My Eyes, which was created to help people who are blind or low-vision: blind or visually impaired users can request help from a sighted volunteer, who will be notified on their phone and once they accept the request for help, a live audio-video connection will be set up between the two parts. The assistance request can be made in over 180 languages, including Portuguese. Yet, to download such an application, Rosa needs a proper mobile phone;
a lighter chair that is easy to transport and sit on while she’s singing would help her as well because the one she has right now has metal parts and is super heavy to carry;
you can also help her by purchasing her music CDs.
Please contact through me by email: tenikyte.egle@gmail.com or just help her directly once you see her.
And besides any of these material things she needs more than anything:
Thank you for your article and sharing Rosa’s story.
My grandma is almost blind too so I know how hard it is for an elderly person to navigate through life but how amazing is it how Rosa is never giving up.
This story is a beautiful reminder to stop our busy lives sometimes and to spread more love.
Thank you for making this world a little bit better. Makes me tear up. What an inspiration. ❤️
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Interview • DONA ROSA
In the heart of Costa da Caparica, there’s a street called R. dos Pescadores, where an elderly lady has been singing traditional Portuguese fado songs for years. No one knows her story or her name, only that she’s been there as long as anyone can remember.
A woman of short stature is one of those people many of us avoid seeing. She disappears in our always busy lives and only appears on the days when we stop for a moment and truly listen from within. But even then, we see this woman only for a few seconds, and without truly realising what kind of feelings she just brought with her song to our surface, we throw her a few cents or euros to comfort ourselves that we did something genuine that day and instantly forget. The woman says ‘obrigada’ with a smile on her face, and we feel relieved. We feel better each time we put money in her little wooden box. We convince ourselves that we do care, but do we really?
I have to admit, I’m no better than anyone else. I was doing exactly the same until some weeks ago, one evening, I saw her very, very slowly going down the street with a young man helping to carry her bags. It was a weekend, and the street was like an overcrowded anthill, and the two of them, with their slow movements, looked like they could be completely frozen in time.
I came closer and asked if the young man knew the elderly lady. He said yes, a little, and he usually helps her get dinner in the nearby restaurant after she finishes singing. I instantly got a stone in my throat: the guy was really young, somewhere around his twenties, and instead of having a drink with his friends (it was the weekend!), he was there walking one super slow step at a time with the elderly lady he barely knew. Once I truly understood that, I couldn’t hold back my tears. After all this time putting some euros in her box, I realised I didn’t even know the woman’s name.. What I felt that evening was so strong that it was hard to put into words. Yet, I decided to meet the elderly lady on one of the upcoming days and to know her story better.
Days passed, but I couldn’t find the time to meet her. While doing my evening runs, I would pass by and cheerfully wave to her. Yet, she would never wave back to me, and I couldn’t understand why until this Sunday when I finally met her and got to hear about her life.
Her name is Rosa Francelina Dias Martins. She has been completely blind (!) since childhood (that’s why she wouldn’t wave me back…). She doesn’t live in Costa da Caparica; she lives in Almada, close to the train station, alone. Yet each day, she comes here to Costa or to Lisbon to sing. She does it all by herself with such heavy bags that when I tried to help, my hands went numb in a few minutes…
I met Rosa at 11h30 on the 16th of June at a restaurant called ‘O Pipo’, where she likes to have her dinner. The woman came almost an hour earlier and was super happy about meeting me. When I was scheduling our meeting, she asked me to make our interview a bit later, but I insisted on meeting in the morning. At the time, I didn’t know that the elderly lady was blind and lived far away. Still, she just said ‘I will come then in the morning the time you need’, without any further explanations or complaints about her life…
Since the first minutes we met, she has been so happy and smiling all the time. I was supposed to take photos of her closer to the ocean, so I took her bag, and we headed towards the beach. The short road that would take me less than a minute to make felt like an eternity since the woman had real difficulties walking. On our way, we met one of her friends from Chile, and he helped us with Rosa’s heavy bag.
The ocean was still a bit far, but Rosa already said she could hear it and feel the salt on her face: “Ahhh, so nice, this fresh salty wind and the sound of the waves! I missed the ocean so much! This year, I haven’t been close to it yet; it’s my first time!” Rosa shared with so much joy in her voice.
Slowly, we enjoyed every minute of reaching Tarquinio Beach, with the concrete bench facing the ocean. I tried to describe everything that surrounded us in the most detailed and vivid way I could, and Rosa seemed so happy!
“I’m from Porto, yet I spent most of my life in Lisbon since I went there to school as a kid,” Rosa started our interview. “Now, for a long time, I lived in Almada, but very often come to Costa da Caparica or Lisbon,” she shared.
“Due to very poor conditions in my family, by the age of 4, I got meningitis, which caused my vision loss together with the ability to walk. Thanks to God, I started walking and can do it not so badly today. And, as I often like to say, if you have both – the ability to walk and the ability to see – it’s better. However, if you can only choose to have one of them, it’s still better to be able to walk. I cannot see, but at least I can go anywhere I want,” Rosa said.
The woman doesn’t remember anything about the time she spent in the hospital after losing her sight and ability to walk. “A psychologist once told me that even if I don’t remember anything in real life, it’s all written somewhere deep in my consciousness; that’s why it all comes through my dreams,” the elderly woman explained.
I wondered how colourful her dreams are, and she said that, interestingly enough, she dreams in colours and imagines the world as very colourful, too. “I would always dream of something very, very beautiful, and then for many years, I would be mentally struggling so much with waking up and accepting that all of it was only a dream,” Rosa shared. In terms of colours, she doesn’t like red but loves white, black and yellow; therefore, whenever she buys something, she always asks them to tell her what colour it is.
When asked when Rosa started to sing, the woman said she had been doing it since she was a little kid. Her family couldn’t support a blind kid, so they forced her to go to the streets to beg for money for survival, and that’s how street singing became her way of earning a living in Portugal.
On February 1st this year, Rosa celebrated her 67th birthday, yet despite her age and disabilities, she’s already planning her new concert in November in Norway. “Here in Portugal, people know me as a fado singer in the streets, but outside my home country, I have concerts for huge audiences,” the woman shared.
Rosa’s life took an international turn when the Austrian multimedia artist André Heller spotted her singing in Lisbon streets and encouraged her to participate in a television program called ‘Voices of the World.’ Her first concert outside Portugal was in Marrakesh, Morocco, and she has never stopped travelling and singing ever since. Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Italy, China, Thailand – Rosa left me speechless by naming so many countries she has already been to.
Soon after Rosa gained international attention, a German publisher helped her release three music albums: Histórias da Rua (Stories of the Street) (2000), Segredos (Secrets) (2003), and Alma Livre (2007), which even reached 9th place on the European World Music Chart.
In Portugal, Rosa has already performed in the auditoriums of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Centro Cultural de Belém, as well as at the Café-Teatro Santiago Alquimista, yet her daily life hasn’t changed much. She’s still coping with the unbearably heavy loneliness that has been part of her from an early age.
When our conversation took a turn about care and love, she said to me very firmly: “I don’t believe in true love. Maybe because I never had a chance to have it in my life. Every time I loved someone, they didn’t love me back,” the woman smiled, but you could feel the heaviness of pain in her words. “I have a huge family in Portugal but live completely alone. During all these years, I received much more empathy from complete strangers than from my own family members,” she added.
Singing in the streets became Rosa’s way to avoid loneliness. “I appreciate it so much when people help me with money, but money is not everything in life. It’s so nice when someone comes to me and asks about my day or just says a kind word. Seems a little gesture but means so much to me,” the woman shared and then explained that she had a very close friend who would always check on her, hug her, make a phone call and always cheer her up. Yet, recently, this woman passed away, and Rosa is still deeply suffering from her absence.
It took me a couple of days to ‘process’ what I’d just experienced and what I’d heard from an elderly woman who didn’t even complain about her life. Instead, she was full of joy and gratefulness and constantly made jokes to make me smile.
I promised Rosa that I would keep her company now more often, that we would go to hear the ocean with a cup of coffee or just meet to talk about life.
With this article, I wanted to raise awareness of how important it is to show empathy by giving a hug, saying a nice word, or simply truly being there for a person. All these tiny, genuine gestures of kindness can bring so much joy and make the days less lonely.
For those people who are willing to help Rosa:
Please contact through me by email: tenikyte.egle@gmail.com or just help her directly once you see her.
And besides any of these material things she needs more than anything:
One reply to “Interview • DONA ROSA”
Hannah
Thank you for your article and sharing Rosa’s story.
My grandma is almost blind too so I know how hard it is for an elderly person to navigate through life but how amazing is it how Rosa is never giving up.
This story is a beautiful reminder to stop our busy lives sometimes and to spread more love.
Thank you for making this world a little bit better. Makes me tear up. What an inspiration. ❤️