Just things in my life right now...

So I was thinking about the classic picture that every girl takes on her mission trips abroad. You know, the one where she is surrounded by native children? It's like, "Look at me! I like babies in other countries too!" I don't know. Maybe that's not the motivation. I'm probably being rude. Anyway, it bothers me so I wanted to make sure I didn't do that while I was in the Dominican Republic. I was younger then and didn't know what I was getting into. Hahaha. Let's just let the weight of that sentence sink in.

My journey through the photos took me back to that hot and humid July when I first left the country and subsequently fell in love with the Latin American culture. Gosh, I really didn't know what I was doing. I got thrown into what life is like for the vast amount of people in this world who live below the poverty line.

There are very few times in a person's life where they can say, "That decision is what changed the course of my life. That steered the choices I made from that point forward." I can honestly say that the Dominican Republic changed my life. Because no one in my family speaks Spanish, hardly anyone in my community speaks Spanish, yet here I am in Peru, trying to fit in and learn the language.

More than that, now that I am well into my internship I am looking poverty straight in the eyes. Yeah, it's not like the poverty I saw in the mountains of Haiti, or the garbage dumps in Guatemala, but it's still  poverty. I'm translating a book about child domestic work for my internship. Did you know that of the 10 million minors living in Peru, 45% live in conditions of poverty? Only 57% percent are in school and of those who are in secondary school, 37% are behind a few grades. And that percentage is not for areas of poverty or extreme poverty. SHOOOT.

You probably can't tell, but that hill in the background is covered in houses.

This is a picture of where I work. San Juan de Miraflores is about an hour's bus ride away from where I live in Lima. During the financial crises starting around the 60s, people began flocking to the city for work. Many of them ended up living in barrios just outside the city. They grew and now the city is huge. San Juan de Miraflores is one of these barrios. This is one of the most populous parts of the city. And one of the poorest.

A lot of the kids that we work with are child domestic workers. Most of them don't realize that what they are doing is work and they aren't getting paid for it. Usually it's stuff like taking care of baby siblings while their parents are at work or cooking or cleaning. Maybe they do those things for a neighbor or an aunt or uncle. Unfortunately, it is more than what we would consider "chores" in the US. On Sunday, Lizbeth asked our room full of 9-13 year old girls how many of them did the cooking at home and almost all of them raised their hands. Some of them aren't even tall enough to reach the stove.

One of the beautiful girls I get to hang out with, Daniela.

Today I have a lot of hope, though. La Casa de Panchita is doing a lot of work. They are educating women and children on the rights they have as domestic workers. These workers are now asking their employers to pay them fair wages, give them time off, and let them go to school. My favorite part of all of this, though, is that most of the women who are in charge at La Casa de Panchita used to be domestic workers or are currently domestic workers. Their current campaign is called "Child Domestic Workers Supporting Child Domestic Workers." I think this makes a big difference in the work at La Casa de Panchita because those in charge know intimately the issues that these women and children are dealing with. They know how to make the biggest impact because they know the issues. Because of that I am proud and very blessed to have had the opportunity to work with this organization.