Unexpected Daughter

Ten-year-old Ana* announces she’s going to change out of her slip-on flats, then disappears inside her adobe home. She returns a few minutes later in white athletic shoes — the special ones she keeps safe and clean inside until the time is right.

This afternoon is such a time, when a soccer game is likely to break out at her Compassion center.  Ana’s parents, Pasesa and Pablo, wouldn’t have been able to afford the shoes if it weren’t for their daughter’s sponsor, who sent a family gift.

Ana and her family live in Achacachi, an impoverished town on a 12,647-foot plateau of the Bolivian Andes. Most people in the hilly town are Aymara, one of Bolivia’s two largest indigenous groups. The Aymara have lived in the region for at least 800 years, and parts of their culture have survived periods of Inca and Spanish conquest, urbanization and globalization. While Ana and her friends dress in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, her mother wears the full skirt and shawl typical of Indigenous women, who are known as cholitas. But while wealthy cholitas can spend hundreds of dollars on ornate skirts and their signature bowler hats, Pasesa can barely afford food. That’s why Ana is one of 367 children who receive help from the church in Achacachi — with the support of sponsors.

Shoes laced up, Ana joins her friends on a large soccer field at her Compassion center. More sponsored children filter in through the center gate, their round cheeks made rosy by the dry, chilly wind. Most of them were born into need — but maybe none more so than Ana.

In Search of a Family

Before they had Ana, Pasesa and Pablo had a son, Carlos. When Carlos was 10 he started having seizures that lasted a few minutes each time. The scant income his parents earned selling CDs, DVDs and toiletries in the street market didn’t even buy enough food for Carlos — let alone the medicine that stopped his seizures. Carlos began falling behind in school but continued to attend. Then he stopped speaking.

So his parents worked longer hours in the marketplace while Carlos was at school. At the market one morning, Pasesa heard that a friend and fellow merchant had died while giving birth at home. The baby, a girl, survived. Such stories are too common in impoverished places: Many women can’t afford hospital bills or transportation, so they give birth at home with no skilled attendants present.

Three months later Pasesa heard that the baby girl’s relatives were still searching for a permanent family for the girl. Even though she and Pablo were struggling to raise a son with developmental disabilities related to the seizures, they knew immediately what they had to do: A child needed a family, so they gave her one.

“I felt really bad about that situation because she was a baby,” says Pasesa, who adopted the child to raise as her own. “Now she is my baby.”

With a new child to feed, the parents’ worries increased. They and the children often went to bed with hungry stomachs. But Ana managed to reach 3 years old, when a neighbor saw their plight and told her mom about a program for children at a nearby church. Pasesa took Ana to the church up the street, where they met Alejandro, director of the Compassion program there. After Pasesa told him about her children’s problems, Alejandro explained that at age 14 Carlos was too old to begin the sponsorship program, but Ana would be a perfect fit.

“He has done a lot for Ana,” Pasesa says of Alejandro. “The [Compassion] project helps Ana with school materials, her books and notebooks — everything she needs.”

LIGHTER LOAD

The meals and snacks Ana eats at the center are a relief to Pasesa and Pablo, who still struggle to afford enough food for themselves and Carlos, now 21. Pablo still works long hours, making about 20 bolivianos — less than $3 — on a typical day. Pasesa sells toiletries at the market on Sundays, but mostly she stays home to watch over Ana and Carlos.

Many kids in the community hang out unsupervised in the streets while their parents drink alcohol. Alejandro, the Compassion program director, says alcohol is a big problem among adults and adolescents in Achacachi. Pasesa and Pablo, who don’t drink, feel calm knowing their daughter is playing and learning at her Compassion center rather than joining the kids in the streets.

Pasesa says her biggest concern is for her daughter’s education. Ana is thriving in that area. “I’m doing well at school,” Ana says. “I was the best student of the class for two years.”

Because Pasesa — who never had the chance to learn to read and write — can’t help her daughter with her homework, she’s thankful for the tutors at the Compassion center who help her after school. One of Ana's favorite things to read is letters from her sponsor, Yakimiki, in South Korea. “My sponsor is a math teacher,” Ana says proudly. “When I grow up I want to be a math teacher too.”

After Ana joined the program, her parents started attending the church and became Christians. “To believe in God, it’s a good thing,” Pablo says. “… He’s our father, and He sees us. He helped us.”

A Family's Hope

Of course sponsorship hasn’t made life perfect for Ana’s family, but it has greatly improved it. “We are worried about Carlos, and we are sad when we don’t have enough money for buying food,” Pasesa says. “But we are calm, we are OK. I believe in God, so it’s easier. As the Bible says, ‘Be calm, for I am with you.’”

Carlos continues to have seizures once or twice a month. But he’s regained his speech with the help of teachers at his public school, where he’s in 11th grade. Pasesa says she wishes he would read his Bible instead of hanging out in the streets.

But the weight of her worry has lessened immensely thanks to Ana’s sponsorship. Pasesa knows that when Ana curls up next to her in bed each night, she has a full belly. She finds comfort seeing Ana read her Bible and earn top grades in school. And when Ana laces up her shoes and heads to her Compassion center, Pasesa knows she’s going to a safe place that will nurture her physically and spiritually as she grows into a young woman of God.