STORIES OF LIBERATION AND CHANGE IN LAMPA DE ORO

I scream a lot to get Mama to give me what I want. She carries me over her shoulder. I like it better when Juan Carlos comes and takes me up to the high path. Mama is tired and afraid we will fall off the tiny ledge on the way up. And then all those steps. I like Juan Carlos. He is young and strong and makes me laugh. And he told Papa not to beat me any more because I was afraid all the time and the doctors couldn’t do anything with me; That was after Madre Carmen came to see us and new things began to happen.

Like showing me I could walk. Like yesterday: Madre Carmen and another woman came and put me in the car and we drove away. I liked it a lot. I wanted to scream when we stopped but they said we would see new things.

They helped me walk into a room with a lot of women, sitting and working. They looked at me but didn’t smile like Madre Carmen. I think they were afraid. Then we went into another room with toys.

I could see myself in a big white square shiny board. When I moved, the picture moved. I never knew it was such fun to move and see myself. There were other children there playing games and looking at books. They stared at me. After a while two little girls came and touched my hand and played with me. I didn’t scream at all yesterday.

Mary Elizabeth’s story

When we went into the classroom to find toys for her to play with she went straight for the whiteboard, which was leaning against the wall. I should say that she pulled me along, in her shuffling way, until I understood what she wanted. For a little nine year old, who is only learning to walk, she is making great strides. She spent an hour in front of the whiteboard,  playing delightedly with her reflection. She twisted and turned and waved her hands and clapped over and over and watched intently to see the effect on the shiny surface. Each new moving image brought a cry of pleasure and seemed to urge her on to try new things.

Carmen’s story

One day last November I heard a child crying away down below the dirt road that goes up the steep hill of Lampa de Oro. Unable to climb down I waited. A little girl emerged from a house and I asked her who was crying. She said it was her little sister, whom I had never seen. When I met her mother I discovered that this child was disabled due to a loss of oxygen at birth.

Her mother carried her around their little makeshift house on a steep slope of the hillside that is Lampa de Oro. To go anywhere else she needed to carry her along a narrow ledge and up a long flight of steps. The first thing we did was to get her up to the hilltop where there is a workshop and a classroom and some yard space. I asked one of the young men, Juan Carlos, to help and little by little we helped her to begin to walk.

The next step was to bring her to the St John of God Clinic. Juan Carlos went with her each day for a week. The doctors found she was too tense and frightened to cooperate with them and suspected she was being beaten at home. I found out from her little sister that her stepfather who was beating her when she screamed. Juan Carlos visited him and told him there would be dire consequences if he continued. Since then Jo Mira has relaxed and is a much happier child. The doctors have found that she also has congenitally dislocated hips and will need surgery.

The cultural background for some of the attitudes reflected here is that disability is seen here as the result of a curse, or, as a punishment for wrongdoing; mothers cover their babies’ faces, with a shawl, when out and about, in case someone should look at them, with an evil eye. Mothers, too, are seen to bear the major part of the responsibility for it. And disabled children are hidden as much as possible. There is help available in St John of God clinic and in other hospitals; but ignorance and poverty deny the child the right to become all she or he can be.

Jo Mira’s situation was made worse by her mother’s inadequate coping and housekeeping skills, as a result of which the children are undernourished.

So yesterday we went shopping together and talked about budgeting. All of this is a work-in-progress.

Now the local men are woree time to build a safe ramp and steps so that Jo Mira can walk, with help, up to the road, or on her own,when she is able to.

The money for this is being provided by a sponsor, Juan Ignacio, in Spain who has been here and takes a special interest in her; he will also provide funds for another ramp and steps which families in that place have wanted for a long time.

Zoom Out to the wider Story

This is the paradigm for all the work done here in the past fifteen years. It is based on a three-way partnership of the people themselves, Loreto and many generous sponsors in Europe, Canada, US, Ireland, Arizona. The context is the Parish, the Christian Community where everyone is included and everything is seen as a gift of the God who loves.and helps in all kinds of situations.

We chose to come to Lampa de Oro in 1990 because there were no supports in place for the people who had built or were building homes all over the hills here. Dry dusty hills. No water, no electricity, no roads, no chapel. At first we simply walked around, meeting people, talking to them, hearing their stories. Bringing good news in little ways. Evangelizing.

Now there is water, though they pay ten times more for it than people elsewhere, and it is often cut off. There is a dining room where over 100 children of various ages come to eat a well balanced lunch every day, there are two sewing rooms, a computer room and two chapels. There are weekly groups for mothers, young adults, couples.

These are the more visible things. Along with these there are the envelopes, weekly or occasional, with some cash inside, given discreetly for school or college fees and books and a hundred other needs. And there are the conversations and the listening and the encouragement, which are part of every day in my ministry in Lampa De Oro.  I know and love the people so well and they know and love me. I grieve to see how difficult their lives are and how hard they have to work just to stay alive or make any progress.

Many teenagers have to work all day and take classes at night to get their schooling. My happiness is to be there to give a helping hand, to be able to be a link for them with the many, many good people who are more than willing to provide funds for their development. We are family.

Angeles’s story

I had known Dacia for two years before I learned about Royer. When she talked about her children she did not mention him. Then one day I saw her in the distance and she had a small child with her. Afterwards at the weekly group I asked about the child. She said he was her baby, but he couldn’t walk or talk.  told the story to Anna and Carmen and we decided to see what  professional

help might be available to him. We went to the special school that the Columban Sisters had set up for children with a disability. Yes, help was available, and his mother was willing to avail of it; so I set off with Dacia and Royer in a taxi at 8am next morning.

The psychologist/ pediatrician attached to the School was kind and gentle with the child. Little by little she got from his mother the information needed to place Royer in a class. He was in fact fifteen, a teenager, but he had never been to school, had never had the opportunities other children get to develop. At one point of the interview she asked Dasia if her other children went to school. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘But not Royer? ‘No.’

As it turned out he did not have a birth certificate or the papers necessary to have an identity in the country. In that sense he did not exist. So we set off, with the necessary fee, to procure these. Royer began school the following Monday.

Dacia’s story

It was so hard to bring him out anywhere. People would stare at us. There would be something in their eyes that made me feel ashamed. He was always at home with me, my baby, year after year. No one else knew what he was trying to say but I always knew.

Royer’s story

La Madre Angeles took my mother and me in a car to see a lovely lady. She looked at me, really looked at me, called me Royer and talked to me. She asked me a lot of questions and gave me a picture, only it was in a lot of pieces. She was pleased when I could put the pieces together. My days are so new and different now. I go to school and see other children. I don’t talk much but I can repeat what you say to me. And I smile a lot these days. I walk up straight now, not like before, when I just lay on my mat all day. And people like Madre Angeles and my teacher look at me and talk to me. And call me by my name.

 Angeles again.

None of this was very difficult but, nevertheless, out of reach of Royer and his mother Dacia, unless there was someone who could help them speak for themselves and be heard.