Como nós venceremos?

Today I made my first house visit to a family that was reported as being neglectful and has requested two of their infants be sent to the ICM emergency center in Praia. We picked up two nurses in the hospital where one of the infants with severe malnutrition is being cared for, and we all went driving to the interior to find this house to see the family and their conditions. When I say driving I mean off-roading in a tiny beat-up truck (which incidentally broke down once we returned to Assomada) and hitting my head on the roof or door frame every few minutes. We went as far as we could go by car, and then all got out and continued our trek by foot. So we hiked up--straight up--through the corn, wondering where in the world this house actually was. Of course this was at the height of the day temperature-wise, so I'm sweaty and greasy, but nonetheless excited that I've been able to accompany them on this house visit to see what the conditions of the children going to the centers are really like. And what an image I received. Once we finally reached the "house", it turned out to be a one and a half room shack with two beat-up and dirty beds, and not much else. No kitchen, no latrine, not really much of anything. And 11 people live there. Eleven, 8 of which are under the age of 6. There are two women, sisters, who live there with all their 8 combined children, and apparently they both have mental problems. Neither of them have jobs, except for the 3 agricultural months when they attempt to grow corn. When we arrived no one was there, and a neighbor informed us that the sisters had been gone for at least a week, leaving the children to fend for themselves, and who were currently dispersed among their neighbors' houses to find whatever food they could. The fathers were of course unknown (with a different father for each child), and the only person stable enough to care for the children is their 80-year-old grandfather, whose health is quickly failing and who has no job. Quite the situation for these poor children. And really, this is a situation common for the children we find in the ICM centers. So I was able to see firsthand what it looks like, how they live. It's different from reading it in all the files I'd been poring over last week. And so hopefully these two youngest infants will be lucky enough to enter into the Emergency Center in Praia where they'll be looked after by someone. Unfortunately for the rest of the 6 children, there will probably be little that can be done, no more space available.

I have too many thoughts right now to really clarify them while I sit at the internet cafe, so maybe I'll work on journaling them later. But today was just a heavy day. Not anything I didn't expect, and not really anything I haven't seen before (I remember having quite the similar experience walking through homes in rural Nicaragua that were very reminiscent), but tiring nonetheless. In the afternoon after we got back to Assomada, we had meetings with some of the 6 girls who returned to the Center from their suspension that I mentioned earlier (the 6 who had tried to poison the mães). Tensions are so high in the Center right now, and there's a lot of very visible stress for the coordinator/social worker, psychologist, and mães. One of the girls is already trying to start trouble and is getting into fights at school (she just arrived yesterday), and the mães won't talk to anyone during the meetings because they're so upset that the girls were allowed to come back. They're scared (with good reason) that the girls will try to pull a similar act as before, and so of course they don't trust the girls. Which isn't a great environment for them to come back to. Doomed to fail before they walked in the door. So what do we do? Do we request they all get expulsed? Or do we tell the mães to suck it up and open their hearts to these girls who will continue to find the road their lives our on become more difficult? No one is quite sure what will happen, but the mood is very tense and solemn. To add to it, there are two more girls coming back from a different suspension on Monday. Should be fun. In any case, there shouldn't be four mães taking care of 35 children 24 hours a day. It's too much. And so I am continuing to seek out what should be done, where is the root of the problem? Do we seek out the money to hire more people or more mães? Do we seek for more people to be actually educated enough to work as qualified mães? Do we give the troubled girls another chance? How many chances? Do we implore the mães to change their attitude and try to help the girls instead? All things I don't yet have answers to, but that will hopefully come to be resolved soon enough. In the meantime, I'll continue to process and will have more to write later. In the meantime, any thoughts?