Maria Cortez

Maria Cortez is overweight, as is the infant she holds in her hands for the entire duration of our times together. When she nurses, which she seems to do more often than most, she barely lifts the bottom of her blouse to reveal a low, dark breast and let her baby drink. She has long black hair and a thin, kind smile that brings dimples to her freckled cheeks. Maria was born in El Zaite and has lived here her entire life.

At four months, the infant is the youngest of seven children. Her siblings are 16, 13, 12, 9, 7, and 4. As the children get older, they get thinner as well. The two eldest girls are like string beans with wiry hair. When Debbie visited last, Maria was pregnant. With twins. Possibly there was a partial miscarriage. Also, only four of the children had lived at home. Now all but one share the single room shack.

Her husband works most of the day. He earns about 80 dollars each month. She used to work regularly as well, selling things in the market, but has been unable to since the birth of her youngest child.

Her three daughters (aged 16, 13 and 4) help supplement the family’s income by stitching together shoes. Two pairs of shoes sell for $1.50. The girls try to sell 2 lots daily. There are 24 shoes in a lot (12 pairs). The girls work throughout the day and barely seem to notice my presence in their home.

The house consists of one large room made of concrete covered by planks of sheet metal. The family has no books and no toys apart from the ones children receive at school. There is an upside down disheveled teddy bear in one corner and a thick paperback bible on the bench. A folding table stands in the center of the room holding a large bowl of corn and a box of miscellaneous utensils. There is one bare mattress.

Outside there is a concrete sink and covered well and a brick oven with wood piled beside it. In the empty lot out back, zigzagging laundry lines are covered with pastel-printed cloth scraps. Diapers, I suppose.

Martita, the four-year old girl, has a loose tooth. Apparently, it should be removed by a dentist so the other one doesn’t grow into it. They don’t know when they will go to the clinic. If they will go to the clinic. But the girl seems happy. She slouches low and plays with the tooth and smiles often.

When asked what would improve her life most, Maria responds that there has never been a program or anything to help her improve her life so she doesn’t know what would make it better. When the question is explained differently and I ask what she would like most in life, she responds, “What I would like most is to work, so I could take care of my children.”

They own their home and share the plot with one other family, headed by an elderly woman who brings me a nice plastic chair. Both families get their water from a well on the property. Maria does nothing to treat the water. Every member of the family has been sick from amoebas except the 4-month old. Thank god, she says. The amoebas started with the girl who is 13. She was sick for a month and could not attend school. Then they spread to the other older child and the younger girl. Finally, to the boy and the mother. The children were all taken to the clinic, tested and received treatment. They are well now. The mother was never tested herself.

only so much

The air feels different immediately; it smells of dry grass and red earth and sinks in thick and stale on my white skin. The sun is brilliant and blinding, even this early, and a pale green butterfly passes over the tarmac. My body knows I’m finally here, in Africa.

As we crawl along towards Nairobi, towards work, so does the rest of this new world. Birds flock overhead and roost in trees by the hundreds-- beautiful, pure white egrets and strange scraggled vultures. Men and women walk in mud beside the road and dart through the traffic, moving with purpose. Some stop to wash in the shallow gully that winds along beside us. Others have already begun to tear at the tall bushes with long hoes.

It is only when we pull off the main highway and onto an unmarked road that leads to Kiandutu, the people’s settlement we’ve come to help, that I fully feel I have arrived. Every shack is different, pieced together from any and all available scraps: sheets of rusted tin with crooked nails protruding from bottle cap washers, rotten boards, cut brush, broken glass, shipping crates, cardboard, and mud, scribbled with advertisements or sketches , and crowned with knots of barbed wire. A sign along one wall reads ALTHOUGH DESPERATE WE ARE KIND BUT NOT WEAK.

Children are everywhere, more than I’ve seen in any village. They too appear to be pieced together with scraps of outgrown or handed down clothing, torn blankets, plastic bags, broken shoes, dirty lace petticoats. Some creep out into doorways or peer out through holes in walls and mother’s legs to watch us pass. Others chase the car and scream and smile and wave, skirting through garbage piles and cess pools with joy. Some are crying. Some are sick. Most are hungry. They are why we’ve come.

First we must confer with the village elders, to find out what has happened since we last spoke. One escorts us to the meeting place, Gerald, and tells us they “keep pushing on.” I enter the church with uncertainty, my eyes adjusting to dim light. A circle of men and women watch solemnly, waiting in patience for someone to begin. Our fearless leader Debbie gives them an update, states our purpose and what we hope will be theirs. Asks for questions. “They have not many questions. What they would like to see is that the children are taken care of.”

The first one we visit is dying and can no longer walk; he barely moves at all. Dennis has HIV. He is 3 and a half years old, but weighs just over 15lbs. He will not eat. I give him a lollipop, and after a few moments his hand opens, and it drops out onto his mother’s sandal, sticking straight up into the air. Later, she tries to give him water and he pours it onto the ground. He whines and scratches at his shirt until she opens it, exposing his rib cage and a chain necklace that dangles around his frail body. She holds him close, but his head falls back like a newborn. He cannot support its weight. We spend a long time convincing her to let us take him to emergency care. We tell her he can stay as little or as long as she likes. That he is not going there to die. We send him away with a social worker, and we pray that we have told her the truth.

The other families we visit are poor and hungry and weak but surviving. One blind grandmother cares for 5 children, who have been abandoned by both mother and father. One has an infection that appears to be eating her ear. She also has a disease in her eye, and it makes her seem to be always crying. Her brother has jiggers, and he balances awkwardly on one foot to scratch at the other, his loose and holey shirt sliding off his shoulder like his crooked smile. They have not eaten today. The best meal they’ve ever had is rice. They depend on the help of Muslim friends. When they get no help, they do not eat. We give them two bags of food, and though she cannot see into our eyes, the old woman holds each of our hands in hers for a long time before we can leave.

All are single mothers, struggling to keep their children alive. They cannot possibly care for their children and look for work. As Debbie tells them all in a focus group, “Women are expected to do so much, but there is only so much that any one woman can do.” Many times, they lock the little ones in dark rooms with no windows. One explains the precautions she takes, “You put out the fire. You hide the matchbooks.” The houses are padlocked from the outside. There are no locks on the inside.

They cannot pay the 35 to 45 cents a day for child care. There are a few decent nursery schools and women who provide care in their homes, run by compassionate people with some education. But most single mothers cannot afford this. There is no one to help them. A few leave the young ones with their older siblings, forcing the others to miss school and watch them. They too may be locked in the house.

Food is a dire need for all of them. They don’t discuss their problems. They don’t support each other. “They just do what they’re going to do.” What they have to do to survive, and hopefully it is enough.