While visiting Maria’s family in Tecpan, I finally met Rosa, the sister of a young blind girl. Bethel has built her family a house only a few feet from Maria’s. This was the first time I’ve visited this family, since usually no one was at home when we were here. This time, Rosa had return to Tecpan to get guisquils (a squash like vegetable) to seel in the market in Chimal. She was very eager to have me see their house here.
Rosa’s mother has been ill, and right now the family is living in Chimaltenango so that the youngest daughter (age 14) can care for the mother after school. Rosa asked if we’d like to visit the family today when we returned to Chimal, and we decided to give her a lift back to town when we would leave Maria’s.
When we arrived, we walked into a large building which seemed to have many rooms. I soon discovered that a different family lived in each room. We climbed a number of stairs and made our way to the family’s room at the rear of the house. This space was a vast improvement from where the family had lived the last time they were in Chimaltenango. Their previous dwelling was a room in an abandoned building, with no electricity or water, and boarded up windows. This place has those “amenities” and is warm and dry at least.
We made our way to Rosa’s part of the house, and found her mother, 2 sisters and younger brother waiting her return. Sylvia, another daughter is blind and unable to do much around the house. The youngest in the family is a boy of about 10 years.
It appears Mama is almost bed-ridden, though we’re not quite sure why. She says she gets too dizzy to walk whenever she stands up. It does not seem that she has seen a doctor, however. They have been receiving food assistance from Bethel ministries, and survive on what little Rosa can earn selling vegetables, doing laundry and doing other household work when she can find it. Today the youngest brother was also sick in bed with a high fever.
The biggest concern, however, was that the fourteen year old girl would be finishing “sixth” grade this October and would need to move on to “Primer Basico” (middle school, sort of) in January when school resumed. The problem was, this is much more expensive the primary school. This young lady (whose name I can’t remember, sorry) loves studying and is a good student. Dick tells of how she literally jumped for joy when she was told she would be able to attend school with the help of a sponsor.
Now she worries that she will have to quit school. She beamed when we told her we would try to find her an additional sponsor to help with the extra cost of continuing to secondary school. If any of you would like made a monthly donation to enable this bright young woman to continue her studies for another year, please email me and I’ll give you the details. Lately we have been feeling a significant burden over being able to keep the girls studying past the most elementary grades, and this is one young lady with a lot of potential, who hopes one day to be a bilingual secretary and earn a wage to help her care for her family. We would love to be able, with your help, to see her dream come true.
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