Yesterday we visited a childcare center for malnourished children and their mothers in the Asuncion neighborhood of Santa Ana, where we had worked for most of this past week. The center takes care of children while also providing many other essential programs for the them and their mothers. They have a pediatrician and nutritionist come in once a week to do consultations with the children and their mothers. They have social workers seek out women in the neighborhood with malnourished children. They offer classes for the mothers to learn important life and parenting skills. And they have stimulation rooms so that the children don’t fall behind developmentally.
This amazing program has many dedicated volunteers to help seek out those in the neighborhood in need, but they can’t always find and help everyone, so occasionally one falls through the cracks. One of the workers at the center showed us a picture of a baby who was so severely malnourished that it was painful to look at. She told us that they did a quick assessment of the baby when the mother brought him in, and then immediately sent them to the hospital. They still don’t know if the child survived, and believe that sadly he probably did not. This mother and her child obviously took a piece of every single volunteer’s heart when they sent him to the hospital. Fortunately most of the mothers in the neighborhood get help before it is too late. Many of the mothers at the center are relentlessly dedicated to utilizing the program and learning how to create better lives for themselves and their children.
One of these incredible mothers, Juliana, is what brought us to the center in the first place. She lives a five minute walk away from the center with her alcoholic husband, one year old son, Francisco, and her seven year old son Carlos, in a house that would sooner be considered a shack than a home. Yes, her house had four standing walls and a roof, but they were made of corrugated metal with huge holes that provided no protection from the elements. There were two small rooms, but one was essentially unuseable because it was filled with trash and broken furniture. Outside the house there was a another little structure filled with similar things and a bathroom with no sink or shower. Juliana was in the main room cooking on a charcoal stove with baby Francisco sleeping on the bed about five feet away under a ripped makeshift mosquito net (the baby had lesions and mosquito bites all over his face). It was extremely disturbing to imagine anyone living in those conditions, especially a woman with two young children.
What was going through my head as we walked through this tattered house was the urge to immediately start picking things up and to fix everything from the holes in the walls to the nonexistent kitchen. I wanted to do so much for this woman who obviously cares so much for her children and is stuck in a terrible situation. But there was also a strong feeling of frustration and helplessness, because what could we, ten teenagers, do in one day? We were concerned that promises had been made to Julianna with high expectations that we couldn’t keep.
That feeling lingered until the next day when we actually started to work on the house. When we arrived at Juliana’s house, ready to jump into action, were about twelve of the people from Viñas Cue (the neighborhood where we spent last week) and Santa Ana. Also joining were two of the brothers of our Paraguayan leader, Domingo. Both had experience in construction and building houses. I was absolutely stunned with the amount of work we were able to complete in a single day. We cleaned her yard of piles of trash and rocks, set up a drainage system/garden, created a recycled stone and rock path (so that they wouldn’t have to walk through mud and puddles), cleaned out and organized the inside of the house (which allowed us to put in a second bed for her older son, Carlos), and also cleaned out the outdoor structure to set up a kitchen when she could store things and the baby wouldn’t be inhaling smoke. Domingo’s brothers put plywood all along the outside of the house so that water wouldn’t leak in and they expanded the outdoor bathroom for privacy. Every single project that we completed on the house felt as though it had a purpose and would actually make a difference in Juliana and her children’s lives. To me it was the most satisfying and fulfilling project we’ve done in our time in Paraguay.
Although this project left a sense of pride in my heart it reminds me of how many people are still in need here. There are thousands of people living in refugee homes from the floods, that are in similar or even worse living conditions than Juliana. And realistically the ten of us cannot help those thousands of people.
The most practical solution to many of the problems, such as housing and poverty, that face this country, is government intervention. Today we passed some graffiti in that said “Socialismo es vida, pan, y paz. Capitalismo es de muerte, hambre, y guerra.” which loosely translates to “Socialism is life, bread, and peace. Capitalism is death, hunger and war.” This perfectly described how I was feeling about the corrupt government situation in Paraguay. Political campaigns are funded with drug money, and the the government still has ties to the family of the dictator that ran the country for 35 years. Social services are lacking, and the government does little to help the people who have been forced out of their homes into shacks because of flooding. They don’t provide reliable education for children. They don’t even provide trash pickup in many areas which forces the people to throw their trash into streams and pollute them.
Don’t get me wrong – I know that there are issues with socialism as with all forms of government, but a government who takes action to actually help their own people instead of their own agenda could do so much for Santa Ana and this country. Hopefully the government will start to help their own people soon, but until then all we can do, as ten teenagers, is to help give hope and support to as many people like Juliana as we can.
Julia W., Montgomery Blair High School