picture. A case of
Oh, those old familiar faeces
.
Diana’s thirteen-year-old daughter sat mutely in the corner, sucking her thumb. Her legs were covered in bites and discolorations. She is four months pregnant. ‘As a mother, I do what I can,’ Diana shrugged, ‘but in these areas, girls start their sexual lives at twelve.’
Diana’s daughter told me in a faltering voice that girls have sex so as not to lose a boyfriend. With a self-esteem that is limbo low, they dread being cast off into social Siberia. This macho society encourages young boys to sow whole acres of wild oats, but girls can’t go on the pill without parental permission. Most don’t have the fifty cents for a packet of three condoms. Many girls die from illegal abortions. They try to abort using herbal pessaries and potions from the forest. The latest misguided fad is for the pregnant girl to eat four ulcer pills and insert four vaginally to provoke miscarriage. ‘You can’t have babies any more after this,’ Diana told me, matter-of-factly.
Worse than the urban slums are the favelas on the edge of the rainforest. The aptly named Poverty Street, Rua de Pobreza, is a cluster of rickety mud houses, with no sanitation and nothing but sheets of plastic tacked to the roof for protection against the five months of rainy season. Half collapsed and open to the elements, the huts look as though Pavarotti has sat on them. There are 4,000 families squatting in this one area, quite literally, as there are no latrines. It must be impossible to get to sleep here – mainly because some insect is always blinking its 9,000,624,439,002 eyes at you in the dark.
Despite this, the young mothers showed me their lean-to’s with the pride of 1950s housewives – the tiny stone fireplace for cooking rice, the well where they fetch water, the palm fronds tied together to make a private place to wash, the earthen floors swept clean.
I had come to meet thirteen-year-old Maria, a beautiful and bright student. Her mother asked me to stay for lunch, offering piranha. Gritting my teeth, I decided that I’d better eat it before it ate me, giving a new definition to ‘fast food’. What an innovative way to lose weight – eat piranha and diet from the inside!
In a water-to-wine, loaves-and-fishes act which would put Martha Stewart to shame, Maria’s mother magicked up a lunch of rice, black-eyed beans, beetroot, tomato, potato and fried fish. The kids stood around wide-eyed, amazed at this sumptuous feast. Starved stray cats insinuated themselves into the hut, weaving a mewling minuet round our legs. Some days the family has nothing to eat, Maria’s mum revealed. The adults sleep on a single, lumpy mattress on frayed, torn sheets, the babies in filthy cribs with the other kids strung above them in a hammock. Maria’s mother told me that they moved here to try to improve their lives. (How bad could it have been in the city? I wondered, aghast.)
Despite the desperate poverty, there is a quiet dignity to these women. After lunch, I retreated on to Maria’s small bed, with her mum and sister, away from the village men. The males hovered nearby, suspiciously. They all had the sort of faces you usually associate with Crime and Accident reconstruction units and I didn’t want to rile them.
Maria is doing well at school. She takes pride in her appearance. Two filthy dolls are decoratively draped upon the bed and a plastic handbag is proudly displayed, on a nail on the wall, along with dog-eared books. Her bed-sheet depicted a beaming Jesus, but the mattress beneath was just a pile of bricks with a thin blanket. If Maria can over-ride her ovaries, this girl could make her mark. If not , she will join the millions of other young women in the Missing Persons Bureau. And who is missing? The girl with potential – the girl she was B.C. (Before Childbirth).
Out of earshot of the men, I asked Maria’s mother what aspirations she has for her daughter. ‘To stop her from having
Oh, those old familiar faeces
.
Diana’s thirteen-year-old daughter sat mutely in the corner, sucking her thumb. Her legs were covered in bites and discolorations. She is four months pregnant. ‘As a mother, I do what I can,’ Diana shrugged, ‘but in these areas, girls start their sexual lives at twelve.’
Diana’s daughter told me in a faltering voice that girls have sex so as not to lose a boyfriend. With a self-esteem that is limbo low, they dread being cast off into social Siberia. This macho society encourages young boys to sow whole acres of wild oats, but girls can’t go on the pill without parental permission. Most don’t have the fifty cents for a packet of three condoms. Many girls die from illegal abortions. They try to abort using herbal pessaries and potions from the forest. The latest misguided fad is for the pregnant girl to eat four ulcer pills and insert four vaginally to provoke miscarriage. ‘You can’t have babies any more after this,’ Diana told me, matter-of-factly.
Worse than the urban slums are the favelas on the edge of the rainforest. The aptly named Poverty Street, Rua de Pobreza, is a cluster of rickety mud houses, with no sanitation and nothing but sheets of plastic tacked to the roof for protection against the five months of rainy season. Half collapsed and open to the elements, the huts look as though Pavarotti has sat on them. There are 4,000 families squatting in this one area, quite literally, as there are no latrines. It must be impossible to get to sleep here – mainly because some insect is always blinking its 9,000,624,439,002 eyes at you in the dark.
Despite this, the young mothers showed me their lean-to’s with the pride of 1950s housewives – the tiny stone fireplace for cooking rice, the well where they fetch water, the palm fronds tied together to make a private place to wash, the earthen floors swept clean.
I had come to meet thirteen-year-old Maria, a beautiful and bright student. Her mother asked me to stay for lunch, offering piranha. Gritting my teeth, I decided that I’d better eat it before it ate me, giving a new definition to ‘fast food’. What an innovative way to lose weight – eat piranha and diet from the inside!
In a water-to-wine, loaves-and-fishes act which would put Martha Stewart to shame, Maria’s mother magicked up a lunch of rice, black-eyed beans, beetroot, tomato, potato and fried fish. The kids stood around wide-eyed, amazed at this sumptuous feast. Starved stray cats insinuated themselves into the hut, weaving a mewling minuet round our legs. Some days the family has nothing to eat, Maria’s mum revealed. The adults sleep on a single, lumpy mattress on frayed, torn sheets, the babies in filthy cribs with the other kids strung above them in a hammock. Maria’s mother told me that they moved here to try to improve their lives. (How bad could it have been in the city? I wondered, aghast.)
Despite the desperate poverty, there is a quiet dignity to these women. After lunch, I retreated on to Maria’s small bed, with her mum and sister, away from the village men. The males hovered nearby, suspiciously. They all had the sort of faces you usually associate with Crime and Accident reconstruction units and I didn’t want to rile them.
Maria is doing well at school. She takes pride in her appearance. Two filthy dolls are decoratively draped upon the bed and a plastic handbag is proudly displayed, on a nail on the wall, along with dog-eared books. Her bed-sheet depicted a beaming Jesus, but the mattress beneath was just a pile of bricks with a thin blanket. If Maria can over-ride her ovaries, this girl could make her mark. If not , she will join the millions of other young women in the Missing Persons Bureau. And who is missing? The girl with potential – the girl she was B.C. (Before Childbirth).
Out of earshot of the men, I asked Maria’s mother what aspirations she has for her daughter. ‘To stop her from having
Similar Books
