I saw the Circle of Poverty up close and personal.
Last night I was called to assist a family that had been kicked out into the street. A mom, twin 8-year-old girls and an 18-year-old boy.
As I sat in a taxi, on a dark and dusty road that you could not pick out on a map, in the back streets of La Libertad, I wondered how in the hell did I end up here?
Here in this country, in this very moment, in front of a falling down bamboo fence with another crisis before me; for people, I barely know and a situation completely out of my control?
Wound up tight all day, wondering, not just if I should help, but just how to help, and damn it, feeling sorry for myself; why does this end up in my lap?
Then someone dear to me said plainly, “cuz you are who they think of when they are hurting”.
I could say no, in fact, I did say no. Then those two 8-year-old faces popped in my mind. The thought of them sleeping on the street nearly made me want to vomit.
So I responded; “where are you right now? I will be there in 20 minutes”.
In the end, the family has a temporary home at the neighbors in exchange for us to leave up the fence we built and to buy food until a new home can be found for the family.
We reviewed 1 lot today, without services or building, not an easy fix. We have a question into some connections in Salinas and also in Anconcito….so now we wait.
The bigger picture is the very clear circle of poverty going around with no end in sight. Raised by a single, uneducated and very broken woman, the 18-year-old boy never finished grade 5. Mom, without skills and with such a flat facial affect that only comes from years of struggle and abuse; I shudder to think where she gets money to feed the twins. The twins, so young and innocent in all this… but their place in the circle of poverty is clear, they will go round and round, not by choice, but by a destiny of having been born into it.
…. unless a miracle happens… it will suck them in forever.
