Without saying a word, Fatou Mané sits in her living room in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau, and uses her fingers to speak the language of a different time.

“Tap, tap, tap.” Her hand moves with rapid muscle memory, even though 47 years have passed since the country’s liberation war ended with victory over the Portuguese.

“What did you say?”

“Comrade,” Mané replies softly. For nearly four years during the 11-year war for independence she served as the Morse code operator for Guinea-Bissau’s revolutionary leader, Amilcar Cabral.

After a war is won, history builds monuments to men, vaulting the contribution of the male soldier onto a pedestal as the most valued work and the key to victory.

During Guinea-Bissau’s fight for liberation, much of the movement’s ammunition was smuggled across the border from Guinea-Conakry by women, who hid the bullets in the fruit and fish they carried in baskets on their heads. After independence, it was mostly men who filled positions of power and were celebrated in the new names of the liberated streets. As for the women who carried the bullets, it is left to the trees that grew from the fallen seeds of the fruit they carried to whisper their names.

As the battlefields shifted during the war, the liberators depended on the liberated. To confront the better-equipped Portuguese, freedom fighters from the African Party for the Independence for Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) needed the support of local residents, allowing the soldiers to launch sabotage and secret attacks from their forest bases.

According to Cabral, one of the best ways to win and keep the people’s support was to show them how their daily lives would be better under the liberation forces than under Portuguese rule. “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head,” he said. “They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”

A United Nations delegation visited the liberated zones in 1972 and noted that while the guerrillas’ ability to wrest control from the Portuguese was admirable, “even more admirable is the work being done by PAIGC to organize the civil life of the community, and, while in the throes of the struggle, to create a new society, with its own institutions, suited to the characteristics of the Guinean people rather than foreign cultures forcibly imposed.” Although few women fought alongside the male soldiers on the front lines, many more were charged with the tasks that would do what Cabral prescribed—help the residents “live better”—by serving as healthcare providers, teachers, political officers, and more.

In present-day Guinea Bissau, where schools and the health system fall woefully short of the promise to “guarantee the future” of the children, one wonders if there is a correlation between the current condition and the way that the role of educators, health providers, and other “caretakers” during the revolution is a historical afterthought.

Though much of this work fell on the shoulders of women during the liberation war, after victory women’s work became again devalued, reduced to a given—something to take advantage of, not reward.

Recently, four women who took part in this revolutionary work reflected on their time in the struggle and contributions to the cause.