Prevention or cure?
Doña Rosa stares fiercely into the air. She had her last period three months ago. A long time ago, her periods had stopped altogether, but that was right after hurricane Mitch had devastated the region and she was so emaciated that her body focused on the most basic, urgent functions; leaving no room for such luxuries as tears or menstruation. But now Doña Rosa was pregnant. She knew it and wasn’t pleased.
Her first child was born when she was barely fifteen. When she was told the news, she was filled with juvenile dreams of motherhood and thoughts of a better life, overcome with love and joy. Her boyfriend of the time, also fifteen, had other ideas and walked away. Could it be he was weighed down by the responsibility of what he had started? Rosa’s world shattered into pieces. She could no longer attend school, but working with a three month old girl in your arms and after only four years of education is an equally impossible task.
But anyway, that was years ago. Now, Doña Rosa was thirty and pregnant with her tenth child and her fourth partner. The men came easily, but never stayed. The kids came too though, and would never leave. Doña Rosa adores her children and gives them what she has, but that is dangerously little.
In the meanwhile, Karla is fervently calculating how many women she can reach with the 5.000 $ that Homeless Child has offered her. She works as a doctor for Marie Stopes Honduras, and has been promoting sex education; understanding sexuality, women’s rights and baby care for years to the poorest women of El Progreso, Honduras.
In 2006, Homeless Child decided to start supporting a project for malnourished and orphaned infants and toddlers in the same town where Proniño is located. Before the orphanage existed, children who had been malnourished babies a decade ago, often ended up in Proniño’s care after a harrowing journey on the streets with terrible consequences for their lives. By offering care from an earlier age, much trauma and injustice could be prevented.
The roots of the problem though, lie even deeper. A remarkable 54% of Honduras’ population is under 18, the age at which many girls give birth to their first baby is fifteen or younger, and a stunning 80% of children are officially fatherless at birth. Adolescents become mothers and a woman is grandmother at the age of thirty. Because there is usually no father and because an adolescent girl cannot raise a baby herself, this task falls to the youthful grandmother, who is often also the only wage earner in her disintegrated family.
Doña Rosa remembers her conversation with Karla, six months earlier. She wanted to consider contraception, but wouldn’t dare. What if her friend found out?
“Could Ricardo notice when I take the pill, or can he feel the coil when he… you know?”
“No Rosa, he cannot, but you won’t carry his child.”
It sounded like music to her ears, but she wouldn’t do it. Ricardo had promised that he would stay with her forever, that he would build them a house with stone walls and a corrugated roof. A house with a bedroom, in which they could lay together through the long nights and in which love would finally be hers. In exchange, Ricardo wanted her to bear his child, as proof of his manhood, and of her love for him.
Now he is gone and she is bearing the child in her belly, carrying the weight on her own. Rosa thinks of her six year old, Margarita, who now lives in the orphanage. At first, she was deeply humiliated when Margarita was taken away from her because of her chronic diarrhea and parasites. Now she is happy when she thinks of her daughter. She goes to school, she is well fed, and they even teach her English. Who knows, one day Margarita can care for her when she gets too old to keep going.
And Gerardo, her twelve year old, he’s quite a young man. Gerardo has been doing drugs for a while, but now he is learning carpentry and computer classes at Proniño.
But more than anything, Doña Rosa’s thoughts are with her eldest, Eva. Eva has a boyfriend and is madly in love, but Rosa remembers all too well her own euphoria and the terrible disillusionment that followed her first pregnancy.
She knows that Ricardo would beat her up if he knew, but Ricardo has vanished, he holds no rights over her body. She also knows that many in church would frown upon her, but Karla had explained that she needn’t tell anyone and no one would notice. Of course she thought it was better to be married and raise children with your spouse, but apparently that wasn’t meant for her.
And next time when sexual education was given, her daughter Eva should absolutely attend. She needs to know her rights, to understand how you can get HIV/AIDS and above all needs to see that it isn’t wise to have a baby when you have no job, no durable relationship and no money to offer your child a secure future.
And Karla? She’s done calculating. In the next six months she will teach 1,260 women in the poorest parts of town. If their partners wish to attend, they are most welcome. No one will be talked into anything, but everyone has the right to know about the birds and the bees, and then decide independently about motherhood.
Give a child a chance and offer the world some balance!
Homeless Child has long thought before deciding to also support sexual education and birth control. At first sight, it may seem unrelated to support for abandoned children, but after six summers of intensive work on site, we have come to understand that attention to the root of the problem will eventually benefit each child that has already been born.
