Our street is completely dug up because the Mayor started a project to get plumbing in houses in the community that don’t yet have it. It is a great project because it not only wil do its job, but it is also providing jobs and bringing departmental money into the community.
Yesterday, they started digging to enter our house. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they would do this because we have a hole that takes away waste when you dump a bucket over it. Doña Juana comes to me and askes, “Did you tell them to dig here.” “No, I didn’t say anything.” Then she runs outside to stop them. I am thinking, “this never happens, shouldn’t we take advantage of the opportunity, have them install plumbing at the front of the house, and then when the family can afford it (and maybe I can help) we can put in a sink (for laundry, dishes, etc). Right now there is just a faucet, and a tire tub underneath that catches the water while we are using it. Then we dump it, and the water muddies the front entrance to the house and the street outside.
When Roxana got home from school I said, sure that she would agree, “You need to talk to your parents before it is too late and we lose our chance. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sink?” Then, my darling Roxana, who is my lifeforce here, my brilliant inspiration and support, she who heals me threw me across the patio in one fale swoop, “But then it wouldn’t be like it was before.”
Figuratively I threw my hands up in the air , “Im done.” repeated over and over in my head. “I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done.”
Why do I struggle to bring funding and programs here when they scream poverty if they aren’t even going to attempt to make their lives more efficient and productive so they can pay for things themselves?
Is it possible they shouldn’t change? Is it possible that it would be better to conserve their culture the way it is, and just bring them funding for what they can’t afford from their local government (medicine, fruits and vegetables, drinkable water)?
I had this same conversation with some of the teachers last night. Doña juana expressed a hug concern with me, so I brought that to the teachers I have “confianza” with. We sat in Meche’s dim room lit by a crank light. “Elvis parents took him back to the ranch.” Which means they pulled him out of school for weeks yet again. And I, like a fool, had just bought him socks, underwear, and more school supplies for doing so well in his studies.
With the week-long drunkenness his parents demonstrated recently.
With the black eye his mother carried because her husband beat her for sleeping with another man.
For leaving their three-year-old with a 90-year-old woman on the ranch while they partied.
For not feeding or attending to their children like any responsible adult.
The teachers and I decided it was time.
“OK, so if we report everything that we have seen this year, and his attendance rates to school, what will happen?”
“The police will go to the ranch, see the living situation, find them drunk, and take the kids back down the mountain with them. Swoop” Meche said.
“But do we want that? Are there other options that would be better? What is the orphanage situation like? Will he get an education there? Will he be properly fed and attended to?”
Hirma, “Yes, they have substitute moms that he will live with until he is 18. Then he can decide to stay there and work like a host parent, or he can go look for work if he wants. Sometimes, they get adopted too.”
Knowing Hirma has been looking to adopt for years, “You want Elvis and Ronni?” we all joked with her. “Why not?” she half jokingly responds, then with her next few words she picks me up off the ground where I had been tossed and brushes me off, “if I can provide for them, and they have a need, why not?”
They told me to walk over to the police station and find out what the proper steps would be to report what is happening, and then get back to them, and the school will help with any formal paperwork needed (grades, attendance records, etc).
The police officer with whom I have trust is on break in the city, so I decided I would rather wait a week until he comes back, than take a chance talking to the officers whose intelligence and macho-ness levels I am not aware of.
I took my computer to the police station because they have a generator and worked on the translated version of the curriculum for a couple hours, then tip-toed back into the house with no phone, no electricity, and no water, lit a candle, and read myself to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment