When Lynn and I walk in the city center here in Cochabamba we frequently pass beggars. A few may be walking and holding a hand out to catch your attention, maybe holding an old medical bill that they say they need help to pay. Others, frequently women, sit on the sidewalk and beg with their possessions and often their infants or small children gathered close around them as well. At first it seems charming that the babies--though usually wrapped too tightly for comfort--are sleeping. However, not long ago Lynn pointed out how unusual it was that so many of the babies were asleep and remarked that maybe they were drugged. 1
A week later Lynn brought this up again during an adult English conversation group. One of the participants said she believed that some of the children were drugged by letting them inhale the vapor of glue. We often see glue sniffers here, usually boys from about age ten to mid teens, passed out on the sidewalk, or reeling along in a semiconscious state. Despite the bleakness of this approach to a depressing life, it shows some small measure of choice that perhaps can be corrected before permanent damage occurs. With the sleeping infants, the destructive choice is made for them by their care givers. Tightly wrapped and quiet, they promote sympathy for the poor mother with mouths to feed.
My first inclination was anger that infants would be victimized by their mothers, but then I wondered how much must have happened in the lives of these women that some of them at least were willing to risk their babies' health by rendering them more suitable as props in what must be a competitive business to maximize plight as a selling point. The competition here is acute because along some blocks we may see three to four such family units encamped at intervals along the sidewalk. And this method of attracting attention can only add to the long-term difficulties each mother will face if her children grow with less than normal faculties.
I would like to say that suddenly--despite the risk of addiction--the Victorian use of quietness doesn't seem so bad, but I don't really feel that way. Instead, the women seem like desperate prisoners on the sidewalk, in need of any kind of education that will enable them to support themselves and their children in some less destructive way.2 And where are the fathers?
A week later Lynn brought this up again during an adult English conversation group. One of the participants said she believed that some of the children were drugged by letting them inhale the vapor of glue. We often see glue sniffers here, usually boys from about age ten to mid teens, passed out on the sidewalk, or reeling along in a semiconscious state. Despite the bleakness of this approach to a depressing life, it shows some small measure of choice that perhaps can be corrected before permanent damage occurs. With the sleeping infants, the destructive choice is made for them by their care givers. Tightly wrapped and quiet, they promote sympathy for the poor mother with mouths to feed.
My first inclination was anger that infants would be victimized by their mothers, but then I wondered how much must have happened in the lives of these women that some of them at least were willing to risk their babies' health by rendering them more suitable as props in what must be a competitive business to maximize plight as a selling point. The competition here is acute because along some blocks we may see three to four such family units encamped at intervals along the sidewalk. And this method of attracting attention can only add to the long-term difficulties each mother will face if her children grow with less than normal faculties.
I would like to say that suddenly--despite the risk of addiction--the Victorian use of quietness doesn't seem so bad, but I don't really feel that way. Instead, the women seem like desperate prisoners on the sidewalk, in need of any kind of education that will enable them to support themselves and their children in some less destructive way.2 And where are the fathers?
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1We knew about the practice in Victorian England of using quietness to make children and babies sleep while mothers had to work. This reminded me of a recent passage from Isaiah 49:14-15:
"Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget,
I will never forget you."2Of course, we see healthy relationships, like a young mother and her two-year-old son on a road on my way to Abra. He apparently had gotten his feet dirty. She sat him on a rock and was washing his feet with handfuls of water she dipped from a bucket. And as she ran her fingers over his toes he was laughing, and then she was too.
Interesting thoughts.
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