Pampa de la Madre

One of the two comedors supported and administered by Etta Projects is located on the outskirts of Montero, in an area know as the Pampa de la Madre. The full grand name of the place is the `Mother Theresa Kid`s Dining Room in the pampa of the Mother of God` ... here is one of the main roads in that area:

The area is very troubled. The roads are poor, sanitation worse. During the rainy season the place is a fragrant swamp. During the summer it becomes very dusty due to the poor sandy soil. It is home to many large families, mostly immigrants from the altiplano. The most needy ones qualify for the comedor´s plan, kids coming in each day for lunch and before/after school programs (school is only 1/2 day in Bolivia) and the mothers learning some kind of trade.

The area is plagued by serious health problems. During this, the wet season, Dengue fever is common, sometimes knocking out a good portion of the students all at once. There are also many problems with parasites, worms and skin problems. Drinking water, which comes from wells, is also usually contaminated, so that 2/3 of the kids at the comedor report problems with diarria. One of the enigineers working on the water problem told me that some of the wells have the highest e coli count he´s ever seen in a water source. Dank pools like this one are everywhere ... as a result of playing in and around them, kids come in all the time with foot and skin problems, including fungi and worms.

Matt L spent some time yesterday treating kids feet who had bad fungus problems. Here`s a photo:

The problem is that there`s almost no point in doing anything about this particular problem, because kids go right back home and play in the wet and mud, and are likely to come back the next week with the same problem. There are other problems here too ... sort of too many to mention. One is that there is not really much in the way of infrastructure, although the city did extend water mains to the area, they did not connect them to anyone´s house, and since most people here squat or rent, they don`t have running water even though there may be a pipe 20 yards away. The other is the seeming lack of grabage collection. Garbage is burned, or it ends up on the side of the road like this:

The most pressing issue, and the most shocking one to me, is the unsustainable large size of the families. A good example: there is a young woman facing her first (and unwanted) pregnancy. She is 22. This woman`s mother, which whom she lives, has just had her 9th child. We also met a woman, who, due to deaths in her family, has almost 20 children living with her. The level of burden on these women is completely unimaginable to me ... and it´s probably the biggest contributor to continued poverty and misery in this neighborhood ... too many unwanted pregnancies.

I know I´m painting a pretty bleak picture of life in this particular area, but I`m not really sure what else to say about it. Kids are kids everywhere of course. And these kids just want people to play with them, pay attention to them, and stuff like that. To be honest, both Matt and I have found it hard at times to be at the Pampa. The level of need is very great, greater than any person or community itself could hope to satisfy. I think that there is this myth of the `happy poor person` who has nothing, but is really happy anyway, and in some sort of sanctified state. But the kind of lack we´ve seen here at the pampa has not only been a material poverty ... what`s struck me most has been the intense emotional need of these kids, many of whom will come up to random friendly people and throw themselves into their arms or onto their backs and have to be removed somewhat forcibly. These are kids who are not getting their very basic emotional needs met, and while we and people like us can swoop in for a week or four and fill tiny holes of need, the greater change in this time will be in us. It's a different world.

MP