Here is a story I wrote a few days ago. I don´t really have much time for an update but it is beautiful here and I like it a lot. It´s a long one so don´t feel obligated to read the whole thing. It gives kindof a glimpse of what I´m up to but I´ll write more later.
Amor,
Andreita
Odilia´s voice changed when she spoke to Doña Carmen on the phone. She transformed from the confident, tough midwife who specialized in either scaring the crap out of you or soothing the baby out of you, to victimized mother of twelve who forgot all words but two, muchas and gracias, and of course Doña Carmen’s name. Carmen serves who knows what function at the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging. She had some how come across Odilia´s house as the perfect source of 6-10 year-old orphaned children attending school and capable of making candles and other handicrafts to send to well-meaning Americans with check books and bleeding hearts. Doña Odilia has 12 children, 10 still living with her in her home in a village outside of Tecpán, Guatemala and in January of this year acquired 5 additional mouths to feed after the death of her sister, who oddly, or better, eerily enough, may have died in the bed in which I am now lying. The father is long gone and Odilia remains the only one with the means to take them in. The house of her sister and the children is still standing, and by house I mean crumbling cinderblock frame stripped of its laminate roof, about 500 meters from here. The kids are 15, 13, 6, 4, and 2 and if you take the 6 year-old back to the site of the house, he’ll show you exactly where the kitchen was, his bed and even one of his old shoes that was left behind.
Doña Odilia didn’t know why Doña Carmen wanted her to bring only a couple of orphans and one of her own school-aged children into town into the office of the NGO; just that it was some project that wanted to help poor children trying to go to school. The combined income of her husband’s chicken bus and microbus service that he provides shuttling people around town and the sale of the vegetables he grows plus her midwife’s salary is enough for them to get by, but she is in no position to turn down a little help.
She had just finished breastfeeding her yet unnamed newborn of 15 days when she hung up the phone. I had never heard her speak to anyone that way before. I had never seen her at someone else’s mercy before. Raising 17 kids on less than what I made at my part-time hostess job per year can’t be easy, but I was angered by the sound of helplessness in the voice of a woman who I’ve seen resuscitate a purple newborn with one hand and coax a reluctant placenta out with another. She told me we would bring Luisito, the six and the four year-old, and Juana, her seven year-old on Carmen’s recommendations to the office of the foundation at noon the next day to do who knows what. I inferred from the conversation that she was asked if they had nice clothes to wear, at which point she reminded Carmen that because her sister had left her with nothing to support the kids, she just bought the cheaply made clothes from the market: the t-shirts and underpants that only cost three quetzals (about forty cents U.S). Solo tres quetzales. Tres quetzales. Tres quetzales. As if Doña Carmen was not yet convinced of the perilousness of the situation, Odilia seemed to latch on to clothing prices as the perfect way to paint that picture.
I knew from the second I heard about it that this unnamed project (the name of which was still never formally disclosed to Odilia even after the meeting) was another Save the Children sans Sally Struthers in which a small dollar amount a day would support a bureaucratic institution the size of a small Caribbean country that thrives entirely on monthly contributions and appropriately unfortunate sounding situations. I wanted to reserve judgment however because at the end of the day, Odilia would still be getting help in who knows what form to take care of these kids with whom I am completely in love. About twenty minutes before the set appointment time, I peered over the banner of the patio where my room is to see Juana, Odilia´s seven year-old, with her head half way submerged in the water tank and a comb double the length of her head’s diameter slowly making its way through her mess of wet, black hair. Valentina, the four year-old was dressed to the nines in her traditional Maya skirt and blouse with her hair being aggressively combed into a ponytail. The end result being the world’s most devastatingly cute little girl who at this point I’d only scarcely ever seen without two straight streams of green snot oozing from each nostril and smudges of dirt accenting her cheeks, forehead, and alternately everywhere else she had exposed skin.
The six year-old orphan, Luis, who is nicknamed Patas, was out to pasture with the goats when it was time to hit the town so Odilia grabbed Miguelito, her 3 year-old to go in his place. The three chosen ones piled into the microbus with excitement; going into town doesn’t happen often for the littler kids. Unfortunately, Daniel, the 2 year-old, got swept up in the excitement and piled into microbus as well. The last thing you could hear when pulling out onto the road was the sound of him crying hysterically after his older sister, Sarah, peeled his tiny body from the van. I wonder if the people who chose to sponsor a kid in a foreign country ever think about the fourteen other kids in the child’s household who don’t get a new sweater and greeting card every Christmas. The microbus took off towards Tecpán in what I think of as a pothole with some road in it. They each fought an appropriate amount for their spots next to me or in may lap. The seatbelt-free seating arrangement slowly but naturally eroded into the most dangerous combination of positions for children to be in in the event of an accident. I hardly recognized the three eager little faces without their usual layer of all organic makeup.
Around the second bend in the road we came across Patas and two of Odilia´s boys making their way back to the house with the goats. Santos , Odilia´s husband, rolled down the window and, according to my pathetic command of the Spanish language, tried to coax Patas into the car by telling him that we were going to see his father. Patas just stood there, fighting the accelerating goats, with his usual unsuspecting smile, a little reluctant and as cute as hell. Odilia seemed uninterested in pursuing this tactic given that even at six, Patas could figure out that that dude was not coming back, and just barked at Patas to get in the van. He hoped in, confused, but placid as ever. She told him to change his dirt streaked t-shirt and clean himself up, thought at the time I didn’t really process that request, so I instinctively grabbed what I thought was a dirty, wet towel on the bench of the bus to smooth his multiple cow licks into conformity. I pulled his boots off to try and tuck them into his filthy sweat pants but he pulled off his pants too, one step ahead of me, to put on the clean pair of jeans and belt that were sloppily folded next to him. I hadn’t noticed but, Odilia had put a clean set of clothes and a wet rag in the van for just such an occasion. With that realization, I abandoned even the mild hesitance I’d previously exercised and began violently wiping dirt and snot off of his face with the rag and went to town on those cow licks. Why I felt so compelled to make this kid look squeaky clean for the NGO and their digital camera I don’t really understand. Why did we want them to look clean and well-taken care of? Isn’t that the opposite of what is expected of a bus full of charity cases?
We were late and Santos and Odilia were frantic. We couldn’t locate the office so Odilia shouted to a lady making roadside snow cones to ask for directions while simultaneously calling the office for guidance. Once we found the place, I was told to stay behind, immediately angered that my presence as a white girl could in some way injure their chances of charity. Apparently never showering and having dirt all over my clothes did little to make me less conspicuous. It’s hard for a 5´8” fair-skinned white girl to keep a low profile in a land of Maya Indians who barely graze 5´1”. Odilia reconsidered and told me I could come along. I couldn’t see how having a gringa here to learn about her practice of rural midwifery possibly hurt her case. The office was an empty house with old wooden school desks lining the entry way and absolutely no identifying markings on the outside of any kind. A tiny woman in non-traditional dress, who was not Doña Carmen, raced around the office greeting us only with a, “Do you have an appointment?” before rushing in to assist two other perhaps also unusually well-dressed young boys that could be characterized only by their awkwardness. Odilia commanded all four kids to sit in the desks and wait to be received. I took my place in one of the little wooden desks and smiled at each of the little angels down the row. The walls were lined with crumpled notebook paper signs that were either requests for children to keep their materials clean or lists of food and clothes that children of different age groups were supposed to receive, all written in orange or purple washable marker. On the floor in the room straight ahead were piles of cellophane-wrapped sweaters that had been removed from cardboard boxes and picked through. I got up to look at a Xeroxed copy of the NGO´s newsletter taped off to one side of a wall: a Christian children’s foundation. Just as I had suspected.
The frantic woman passed us down the hall and called us into her office. More boxes. More sweaters. More almost bare walls. First order of business was to distribute plastic-wrapped sweaters. They only had one in Juana’s size so that was the end of that task. Odilia snapped at to get the kids to sit down on this stool or that bench, trying desperately to order them in some way, despite having no particular guidelines to do so. The tiny lady pulled out some blank forms and began asking questions about how the orphans came to be the helpless creatures in need of assistance that they are. Odilia shifted immediate back into three quetzales mode, explaining the death of her sister and her lack of support in their upbringing. At the same time that I was angered by Odilia´s self-victimization, I felt myself mentally encouraging her to ham up her situation a bit. Why not milk this for all it’s worth? The woman asked us about Valentina and as soon as we told the lady her age, the woman pushed that form to the side. Nope. No good. Too Young. “Excuse me,” I said silently. “Have you seen Valentina? Do you have any idea how charming and precious she is? What do you mean she is too young?” She jumped right ahead to plan B, and started asking about the other orphan, Patas, and began to explain that the organization was interested in orphans as a priority and only those of school age. At six years old, and in his first year of school, Patas was a winner.
I enjoyed that she felt the need to explain herself to me knowing full well that her higher ups are English-speaking white woman just like myself. I asked her whether it would be better to bring in his tow older sisters, Juanona and Sarah, thirteen and fifteen, who weren’t going to school because Odilia couldn’t afford it. Nope. Too old. Not marketable. Only 6 to 10 years old and ALREADY going to school. I found this restriction as confusing as I did obvious. She said she was scared to sign up one of Odilia´s kids because they obviously weren’t orphaned. So of the four kiddos we glossed up for the show, only one got to perform. Thank heavens for that moist rag. She asked Patas´ birthday which neither he or Odilia knew, so we made a quick call to Sarah to find out. She asked what he liked to do and then immediately wrote play soccer before Odilia said anything. Ok, I know we are in Latin America here but I’ve never seen the kid even touch a ball. However Odilia said yes and then listed some other activities that he actually does like to do, but the lady didn’t write any of them. “He doesn’t play ball!” I wanted to scream. He likes to pick wild mushrooms and raspberries watch WWF. Wouldn’t Jane Doe from Des Moines, Iowa or whoever rather know that?
She asked about the house, what the floors were made of, whether his bed was wood or metal, whether we cooked with wood or gas, i.e., exactly how poor is he. Odilia said the rooms had cement floors which is true in his bedroom but not in the rest of the house. Odilia clearly felt the make-it-sound-as-bad-as-they-want-it-to mandate. The woman then hastily explained that Patas would have to come and make greeting cards and candles for whoever his benefactor is every so often. I absolutely hate the idea of him making a Christmas card for someone he doesn’t know for reasons he won’t understand to thank these people graciously for their good will that he may not really realize he’s getting. She said they would have to come by the house too to look at it. We found out later that night that the NGO had already contacted a neighbour to verify her story only about 15 minutes before we arrived.
After the sob story was duly recorded, she rushed us out to the back yard patio, lamenting all the while that there wasn’t good sunlight for the photo. She put Patas in front of some shrubbery and pulled out her little, silver digital. While she was complaining about clouds to Odilia, I got a surge of pride when I turned away from the photo shoot to see that Miguelito had dropped trow, and was unapologetically peeing on the back fence. Odilia seemed to try not to draw attention to him. Patas stood there with his mild grin, like always, the fly of his pants popping out and his little boy belling extending boldly over the belt that had in recent weeks become too small for him. “Pobrecito,” she kept saying. Poor little guy. “And, oh, how cute he is. Poor, poor thing.” At this point the cool contempt I had been projecting until this point turned to a quiet rage. Why do you have to keep saying that? He is not poor! He is perfect. What good does it do to keep telling him that? I told him to smile when she took the picture because I didn’t want him to look sad like I thought they might want him too. But then I thought his sponsors might just pick him because he is so cute and smiley in spite of all his hardship and I felt guilty. She kept saying how cute he was in spite of it all, as if being orphaned automatically meant you had to be homely looking. Odilia inquired about bringing in Valentina and Daniel when they were school aged and the lady showed us the pictures. I smiled politely; more convinced than ever that I was at the root of some evil NGO conspiracy to commodify the children of the world. Odilia disengaged by thanking this woman profusely in alternation with giving stern orders to the kids to get in the bus.
When Patas got in the car, I hugged him like he had just returned from fifteen months in Iraq . I hugged him like he needed protection or consolation from something traumatic though I think it was far more traumatic for me than for him. So despite being unaffected, I continued consoling myself by kissing his forehead until I was about 3 kisses away from wearing off the first layers of skin. Back we went with four immaculately clean children to a house full of even more children who are just not the right kid of adorably poor. I explained to Odilia and Santos how these organizations work while trying to restrain disillusionment. I was by no means successful at self-restraint, though I can’t imagine how or why it would change their course of action. Is Patas gonna be on a television commercial? Is somebody going to flip through a booklet of photos of slightly confused, uncomfortable children and fly right past him? Are these people ever going to have any idea how adorable he looked on that car ride home?
While Odilia´s family will benefit in some way from this transaction, I can’t stand what people feel like they have to do to get people to open their pocket books. I felt today like I saw something I shouldn’t see, the part of the process that people from my world aren’t supposed to know about: that this has almost nothing to do with that little boy or girl in the picture, or else maybe Miguelito and his golden arch in the background would have made it into the shot.
