Paulo has 8 children ranging in ages from 14 years to 6 months. Three of them walk 2 hours to school and 2 hours home. He told us that he used to live near the mines, but it wasn’t a safe place for children. He bought the land in the mountains where we visited him, and moved his family there. But he can’t grow enough in his fields to feed them all.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
As we talked, his wife nursed their baby, surrounded by five of her beautiful but shy little ones (the older three were at school).
As we walked away, I couldn’t help wondering when the next baby would come.
In rural communities, we’ve seen a baffling series of contradictions about the value of children. On the one hand, their’s is a close-knit large-family culture. On the other hand, if a cow and a child are both sick, the family will usually seek care for the animal.
Rural Bolivian women believe that their role is to make babies, care for their animals, cook food, and make more babies. Their identity is wrapped up in this. They also have a real need for children to help them work their fields.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
Bolivian men also see children as helpers for the farm. But the extra mouths to feed are an inexpressible strain. Almost all Bolivian children are abused sexually, physically, and verbally. If you were to take a U.S. class of 30 kids and move it to Bolivia, 27 of them will abused and 12 of those are sexually abused (both boys and girls).
Many parents just walk away. They usually go to find better work somewhere else, promising to send money home, but many never return and never send money. They just disappear.
How can you find your identity in child-bearing and then turn around and abandon your children?
It seems obvious to us that if you can’t afford to feed more children, you don’t have more children.
But it isn’t obvious to rural Bolivians.
I don’t know how to help Paulo and his wife. He is so underwater he doesn’t even know what his problems are, or how World Vision can help.
But it takes time. You can’t barge in, point your finger, and say “Stop having babies and here’s how. You can’t have sex with your spouse certain days.”
It’s far more complicated than that. You have to build trust which requires building friendships. You have to open their minds to new ideas through education. Children need to grasp a vision of their future that includes options like higher education, small business ventures, agricultural innovation, and giving back to their communities. Families need to embrace the value of children, the responsibility they have to each child, and their capacity to meet that responsibility.
©2011 Amy Conner for World Vision
World Vision does all of this in the communities within which they work. They also teach nutrition, cleanliness and sanitation, and healthy practices. They have the opportunity to teach about fertility, the reproductive cycle, and why and how to space pregnancies for the health and well-being of the mother.
Because unless they take ownership of their capacity to provide adequate care for the children they have, the cycle of poverty will only continue.
Join World Vision’s work with communities. For just $1 a day or 1/4 of a Starbucks latte, you can help break this cycle of poverty.
This post originally appeared on deepeerstory.com
Read more posts from the Bolivia bloggers team.
How can the rhythm method work when women and children in these communities have so little power? Even condoms will not protect them from men who will not use them. Is it Catholic teaching to abuse women and children? There is no solution to poverty unless effective birth control as used by Catholics in Australia, US and UK is made available.
Hey Steph, I just talked to Andrea (our fearless translator and trip host while we were in Bolivia) and I asked her the exact same question from what I remember while we were there. She said that abuse can be a very taboo topic in Bolivia because of a number of factors. But that 9 out of 10 children are expected to be abused in the Bolivian countryside, 3 out of those 10 have suffered from sexual abuse. One of the many reasons why it is not talked about there is because the children and mothers often depend on the men as their income source and they are often fearful that if they report the abuse, the men will leave them. World Vision is helping by hosting workshops and conversations with the communities so that all people know abuse should not be tolerated. We’re also helping to ensure that men and women alike are developing income sources for their families so there is not such dependency on the men. Thanks for asking this question. It’s extremely heartbreaking to know and it needs not only our help, but our prayers as well.
This absolutely breaks my heart. Is sexual abuse something that is talked about in the community? Are the children usually assaulted by family members? What is WV doing to help combat it?
Thanks so much for working hard on behalf of children in communities around the world.
No offense but you are being melodramatic. Obviously is you have five children you cannot feed it is not practical to bring more children into the world, it is not good for the children, so it is not going to be good for the rest of society. That is obvious! You say “perhaps the real issue is how to reduce or eliminate poverty.” For obvious reasons having fewer children would be a start to reducing poverty right? yeah I would think that that’s one of the points the blogger was trying to make, no need for melodrama.
Exactly. When you think about the complicating issues involved, you can at least see how they come to the decision they make, even if you still find it painful and tragic. The animal has the potential to provide food for the family long term. To them, in that moment of desperation and surrounded by other hungry family members, the sick child looks like a liability.