Hope and Dignity in Naga City, Philippines ~ Balatas Dump

Stories of Human Dignity in the Dump

Poverty and severely limited opportunities create endless trials, aggravations and suffering for the poor, but it does not always defeat the hopefulness of the human spirit. The smiles on the faces of children playing in the worlds garbage dumps

Carlo Pante, 26 years old

Carlo is a family man. He has two kids. He has been living in Barangay Balatas since he was born. Marrying at an early age, he felt compelled to earn a living for his family. Finishing only the 6th grade and used to only hanging around with friends, he found it difficult to find a job. Consequently, he turned to garbage picking.

It is customary for Carlo Pante to wake up around 6:00 in the morning to feed the few pigs that he owns. After this, he would eat breakfast with his family. He would spend the rest of the morning sifting through the scrap materials that he had collected from the dumpsite, looking for things that he could employ to repair their home or trying to fix some of them that could still be use. After lunch, he would proceed to the dumpsite and pick garbage. Oftentimes, Carlo Pante would come home late at night because he had to wait for the dump trucks to unload fresh garbage. He earns P50 – P80 pesos a day ($1.15 – $1.95) from garbage picking. “Even if you’re only able to collect a few garbage, you will still earn some money to give your family“.

But Carlo Pante does not want his family to live at the dumpsite for the rest of their lives. “Time will come when I can move my family out of this place with the little money that I earn from garbage picking. I know that it is hard but in these times, everybody is hard up”, he says confidently.

Ervin Avilla, 11 years old

Ervin is no ordinary boy. Seeing that his father, a welder, cannot provide for the needs of his family of nine, Ervin decided by himself to help by starting to work. He turned to garbage to picking as it was the only way he knows that he can make a living in his place. He started picking garbage when he was still in pre-school. Now that he is Grade 5, he is already used to it, “Only that my body aches” he confides.

He divides his time between going to school on weekdays and picking garbage on weekends. Ervin wakes up at 3:00 in the morning and heads straight to the dump site. He comes home for lunch and immediately goes back to pick up more trash to sell. In a day, he can collect 1-2 sacks of garbage which he could sell for about P50 – P300 pesos ($1.15 – $6.50). Late in the afternoon, if he still has time, he plays with his friends or watches TV. Indeed, one could notice his childish ways – - – he was a little distracted during the interview, eager to go back to his playmates.

When asked if he had heard about an accident of a collapsing rubbish pile that killed several garbage pickers in Payatas Dump (Manila) he nodded, saying that he is not afraid should it also occur in Balatas? “I will not leave this place even when I’m grown up” he says firmly. He sees garbage picking as a small but important step towards fulfilling his dreams, which is to finish his studies and become a policeman someday. He hopes that, by being a policeman, he would be able to provide a better life for his family.

Off hand, one may feel pity towards Ervin and Carlo Pante, but a closer look at their lives will ultimately give you a feeling of admiration. One gets the impression that, for the people in Barangay Balatas, there exists more than just a pile of trash but a mountain of hope. And that amidst the decay and worthless heaps of human refuse, the value of love for one’s family will still grows undeniably strong.

A baker’s dozen

A Bakers Dozen, Abandoned Children’s Stories

Bereket , Gifiti , & Eyne Abeba ~ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

To appreciate the happy ending of the story of these three little Ethiopian girls one must first understand the circumstances they were born into. And one must never, ever forget the millions left behind, besieged by poverty.

Poverty is more than having an empty stomach day in and day out. Poverty is so much more. Childhood poverty makes children vulnerable to exploitation, violence (physical and sexual), discrimination and being stigmatized. They barely survive let alone develop anywhere near their full potential. As parents they are not educated and some don’t even have their full mental faculties due to lack of nutrition in their own childhood. Worst of all, they perpetuate the cycle of poverty for generations to come.

13,000,000 children under the age of 14 live in abject poverty in Ethiopia (UNICEF). Girls as young as 11 are married off to bring in a dowry for the family, many flee their remote villages for the city where they end up in row upon row, street upon street of tin shacks. By night they stand outside their doors and wait for customers.

Bereket 5, Gifiti 6, and Eyne Abeba 6, come from such beginnings. To see them today is a joy and blessing.

They are only 3 of a number of orphans brought to our orphanage. It took many days before Gifiti and Bereket spoke or ate. Gifiti arrived nameless, dumped by the government, her past only to be guessed at and was called ‘Gift’ by our staff. Eyne Abeba (meaning flower) is HIV positive and often sick. All were thin, dirty, bedraggled and frightened. They wore sadness like a tight-fitting coat.

Today they are funny, playful, loving and affectionate. They go to school, have warm beds, food, clothes and care givers who love them and give them attention – to know them is to surely love them.

 Boosah, Kabul, Afghanistan

Boosah grew up in a poor family in a small village just outside of Tehran, Iran. She was young when she met a young Afghan man her father had brought home after work one day. It was love at first sight. Within six months they were married and making plans to travel back to Afghanistan.  She knew she would be joining his first wife and children.

Boosah’s sister-in-law and his first wife routinely abused her depriving her three young children the opportunity to go to school, and withheld giving them even food. One day Boosah learned her husband was bit by a rabid dog and died. The abuse and rejection at the hands of her in-laws became intolerable. In desperation, Boosah fled with her children to Kabul’s Human Rights Commission who referred her to our project partner for help.

Boosah’s story is one that echoes the haunting cries of countless abandoned, abused and rejected women and children in Afghanistan. With Abandoned Children’s Fund supporting our partner in Kabul, Boosah and her five children were able to return home toIranwhere she was reunited with her brother and his family.  The long process of court cases, immigration papers and applying for passports to return to Iran, nearly broke her spirit.

 ”It is so different now.  My brother has said that his food and his house are ours. I believe a different ending to our story is possible, because we’ve experienced acceptance and care.  I learned we could be wanted again. And now, this long journey that I thought would never end has come to a close.”

The daily life of the average Afghani is brutal and harsh. Harsh weather and climate, grinding scarcities and poverty, ethnic tribal and religious strife, and an endless state of war has been a fact of life for generations and there is no prospect of any change soon.       Women and children suffer these conditions often without any vestige of relief. Girls are usually forced into marriage before the age of 18, there is virtually no education for girls or women, and property ownership for women is unlawful so loans for business enterprises for women are non-existent.      Our project partners in Kabulare rooted in the culture but are not part of the culture. Whether caring for Kabul’s own street children or child refugees from internationally organized relocation efforts into Kabul, our child centers are characterized by the touch of acceptance, family love and personal attention and kindness.

Begom Jan, Afghanistan

Oddly, one of the things that we need to be reintroduced to these children is the experience of playing and having fun. Some of them have either never played games or have gone for so long without anything resembling fun that it needs to be learned. Begom Jan is one such Afghani girl. Little is known about her past other than she was resettled to Kabul from exile in the north where she lost her all connection to family ties.  Begom Jan had to be trained to play and discover fun because it was foreign to her experience.

In the more remote rural areas of Afghanistan, where there are little or no strategic combat agendas vying for military of religious control, our partners have been able to identify remote tribal people who are crying out for food, medicine and educational assistance. The smile on a malnourished child’s face, after going for long periods of time without proper nutrition is worth the days of travel it takes to reach them with bags of rice and grain, ten times over.

 Angelina, Philippines

This beautiful little girl, Angelina, was admitted to our Abused Child Centre in thePhilippinesafter being sexually abused by her father. Her tiny body was thin for her age and she was pale and weak. She is also suffering from a skin allergy and gonorrhea which was due to her father’s sexual abuse.  In just a few months after arriving she had gained 2 kilograms (from 16 kilograms to 18 kilograms) and increased 7 centimeters in height (from 97 centimeters to 104 centimeters). Angelina is free from the skin allergy, has healed from her vaginal discharge and is now a healthy and active child. When asked if she wanted to thank those who had helped her to be rescued this is what she said.

“Salamat po sa mga taong tumutulong sa amin. Salamat po sa pagkain. Nakakakain kami dito ng tatlong beses sa isang araw at may meryenda pa kami. Sumigla din ang aking katawan at gumanda. Sa tulong niyo natutugunan ang aming mga pangangailangan dito. Mahal na mahal kami ng mga tita at lahat ng staff.”

 Thank you to all the people helping us. Thank you for the food. We can eat three times a day and we also have snacks. My body became more active and I became more beautiful. With your help, all our needs are provided here at the centr. Our tita (aunt) and all the staff as well, love us so much.

 Virgie & Lovely, Manila Philippines

Virgie and Lovely were abandoned by their mother when they were 3 and 4 years old. In the absence of a mother they were raised by their father who secluded them from neighbors and all other relatives and eventually when the girls reached puberty he took to sexually abusing them.  They were trained to hate their mother and depend completely on their father, fearing separation from him as their only known family and support.

The sexual abuse was eventually exposed when Virgie wrote letters and threw the letters out the back window into the yard. The wind carried some of the letters to a neighbor who was able to read the letters and reported them to police.

The father was put into jail while the 2 girls were admitted to ourAbusedChildCenterin 2005. In 2007 their father died while in prison, and the 2 girls felt hopeless Despair as total orphans.

During their stay in the center, the girls were surrounded with love and healing which helped them to accept their situation and grow close to one another. Their love and concern for each other shows that they get the strength to move on with their lives from each other’s company. Virgie and Lovely are 16 and 17 years old now and they are more expressive of their feelings and needs than ever. They seemed to cope with their sad experiences more positively and are trying their best to perform well in school and really compete for other students.

Janet, Naga City ~ Philippines

In Naga City, Philippinesa a local Social worker, the University Outreach Director and their attorney came to our Project Partner and admitted “this one is beyond our ability, can you help us please”. Six month old Janet is the youngest of 5 children who had been abandoned first by the father who went toManilalooking for work, and later by their mother who went looking for the father. Neither ever returned. Care for the children fell to the grandmother who struggled with acute hunger herself and had no money, no work, no family, and no means of feeding 5 grandchildren.

Janet was immediately admitted to the pediatric ward of the hospital and slowly nurtured back to health by the nurses and nuns. She clung to life by a thread when she arrived, weighing less than 11 pounds, her swollen stomach betrayed advanced malnutrition as she had survived thus far on daily servings of “ams” (a liquid made from boiling rice grains over and over) and the inside of her mouth was filled with sores which made receiving milk or soft bread painful for her.

Janet’s scalp was crusted with grime that needed to be soaked off with warm oil, and because she had been kept in a dark room since her birth, she was sensitive to sunlight and tried to shield her eyes from the light and color. Janet has never been heard to cry in spite of all her suffering and she does not yet talk, but she is beginning to move around in her crib and strength is returning to her tiny limbs.

Arrangements to place Janet’s four brothers and sisters were made but Janet required intensive care, much loving kindness and attention (which she receives from her new family).

Armando, Philippines

Poverty can at times bring out the very worst in people who look for ways to prey upon the weak and gullible. Armando was abandoned very early as a disabled child with cerebral palsy.  He was used as a prop by a professional begging racket to solicit sympathy from passing strangers. Even the poorest feel pity for the hopelessness of others in worse condition than themselves.

Armando was rescued by our project partner and none to soon as he was only being feed the bare minimum to keep him barely alive and malnourished, as that enhanced his value as a begging prop. A woman would be placed beside him (a prop herself) on a street corner to give the appearance of a hopeless mother and son. The coins would mount but Armando was not being compensated for his contribution.  One of the guest interns at the home where Armando now lives would hold his 10 year old limp, spastic body in her arms for hours and sing to him. This is not something Armando had ever experienced in his life. It took a full week of this kind of tenderness to bring the first smile Armando’s face had ever shed.

Baby abandoned in a Latrine, Zambia

In Zambia an infant child was discovered by a member of a church congregation when she went to the outhouse and heard a whimpering voice coming from the latrine. She looked and discovered an infant just a few hours old had been disposed into the latrine. The congregation dismantled the latrine and rescued the child and placed her in one of our partner orphanages.  Within days the child was healthy and cheerful and recovered quickly. The abandonment of this child, while dramatic and horrifying, will probably not have long lasting consequences, as there was not a great deal of time for the infant to struggle in the process of the distress.

 

Sovann ~ Phonm Pehn, Cambodia

Sovann was brought to our project partner’s care home when she was 16 years old after having been trafficked for some time. At first she was lonely, friendless and utterly miserable. She cried continually and wanted to run away but a house mother comforted her and she began the long process of healing.  “I received a lot of support and care from my new friends like shelter, food, counseling and skills training. What I liked most was hearing about God and soon I began to experience Love and Trust. Now I have many friends and I believe God has rescued me for a purpose.”

Today Sovann is 18 years old, and has graduated from the vocational training program she has been provided. She has a job as a receptionist in a small office. She has enough money to save a little each month after her expenses are met, which she is planning to use to open her own tailor shop. “I have a dream God has given me to follow, that is bigger than the terrible past I escaped, through the kindness I received from these wonderful people.”

 Monkeys protect Abandoned Child, Zambia

In another story from the same orphanage is the story of a 3 month old girl who had been abandoned by her mother by being left, wrapped in a blanket, deep in the forest where no one would discover the abandonment which was obviously not only the cause of profound grief to the abandoning parent but also a source of deep shame and guilt. The next day a professional hunting party discovered an oddity. A group of monkeys had formed a defensive circle around something and were screeching and threatening the hunting party until being driven away by gunfire. When the hunting party investigated they found the infant had been fed and cared for by the monkeys.

The child was brought to the orphanage and within a few years was as normal and healthy as any of the other children. Love and care had healed the wound of being exposed to a group of primates for a time.

 

Witch Children driven from homes in Africa

It’s said that in Nigeria today there are more churches per square foot than anywhere in the world, and yet it has also been identified as the source of a growing and spreading tragic phenomena known as the church sponsored persecution and abandonment of so called “witch children”. The information emerging across the continent gives rise to a very distressing awareness that the combination of ignorance, superstition and fear (particularly when clothed in the garments of religion) can and does have horrific consequences.

The colonial period of African history is when Christianity was planted and inculcated throughout the continent with mixed results. An amalgamation of a variety of versions of Christianity and various local traditional African spiritualism and belief systems emerged and prevailed in the post colonial period. 50 years ago in Nigeria (one of the more influential geographic regions of sub Sahara Africa) the dominate Christian influence was Anglican / Episcopalian as Nigeria had been a British colony. The mid 20th century saw the introduction of Pentecostalism with it’s inclusion of spiritual warfare and demonology become a turning point in the emergence of an accelerated focus on some of the more toxic traditional superstitions concerning witchcraft and deliverance from evil powers.

Some church leaders began to emphasize the benefits of specially gifted apostles, prophets and deliverance ministries to exercise their unique spiritual power to discern and identify children who had become possessed by the spirits of witches, who fed on the blood of innocent children and brought multiple curses and plagues on the people.

The fear of these children who are often spontaneously identified (stigmatized) by these charlatan prophets and spiritual leaders in public worship services is difficult to fathom as it causes mothers and fathers to turn against their own parental instincts and either abandon and reject their own children or worse, torture and even kill them to protect the community.  For the price of a half year of salary for the average family, a priest or minister would perform arcane deliverance rituals and try to drive the evil out of these stigmatized witch children with no guarantee of success.

In the last several years, against all sense of credibility, crude and inexpensive video cassette movies featuring plots and narratives of hapless children being invaded by evil spirits and becoming witch childrenwho fly around at night feeding on the blood of others and eating the clothing of the dead, have been marketed throughout the continent and instead of being laughed at as ludicrous, they have spread the fear and dread to countless Africans of many nations. The most popular of these movies is called “End of the Wicked” which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trI9C-Gdhmw&feature=related

The most obvious evidence of the terrible consequences of this movement is the growing number of children who have been driven out of their homes, families and villages and abandoned to the streets of urban centers throughout the continent. There predators exploit and abuse their vulnerability by recruiting them into child labor schemes or human slavery. The statistics are only now beginning to be compiled to try and document the scope of this incomprehensible cruelty.

Abandoned Children’s Fund is careful to qualify all our project partners, working only with organizations that recognize this kind of assault on innocent children and are committed to protect their own children and speak out against this kind or barbarism. Some of our partners have asked us for increased security measures to protect their children from kidnapping by some who even practice human sacrifice in their communities.

I know this information is inflammatory, unwanted and so incredulous in the 21^st century that one is tempted to think it a ruse, but do some research, visit You Tube or Google “Child Witches of Africa” and see for yourself the growing and staggering scope of the problem.

Youngest of 5 Children Rescued from Death

Six Month Old Girl Abandoned in Philippines

In Naga City Philippines a local Social worker, the University Outreach Director and their attorney came to our project partner and admitted “this one is beyond our ability, can you help us please”. Six month old Janet is the youngest of 5 children who had been abandoned first by the father who went to Manila looking for work, and later by their mother who went looking for the father. Neither ever returned. Care for the children fell to the grandmother who struggled with acute hunger herself and had no money, no work, no family, and no means of feeding 5 grandchildren.

Janet was immediately admitted to the pediatric ward of the hospital and slowly nurtured back to health by the nurses and nuns. She clung to life by a thread when she arrived, weighing less than 11 pounds, her swollen stomach betrayed advanced malnutrition as she had survived thus far on daily servings of “ams” (a liquid made from boiling rice grains over and over) and the inside of her mouth was filled with sores which made receiving milk or soft bread painful for her.

Janet’s scalp was crusted with grime that needed to be soaked off with warm oil, and because she had been kept in a dark room since her birth, she was sensitive to sunlight and tried to shield her eyes from the light and color. Janet has never been heard to cry in spite of all her suffering and she does not yet talk, but she is beginning to move around in her crib and strength is returning to her tiny limbs.

Child Abandonment Syndrome is an unofficial umbrella term that describes many symptoms suffered by abandoned children. Symptoms may be physical and/or mental, and may extend into adulthood and perhaps throughout a person’s life and include alienation from the environment – withdrawal from social activities, resistance towards others. Guilt, fearfulness and insecurity (clinginess), depression, nightmares and sleep disorders, lack of energy, and anger are often outgrowths of this syndrome. Some of these symptoms are reversible in some cases with sufficient care and tenderness, others are not.

Arrangements to place Janet’s four brothers and sisters were made but Janet requires intensive care, much loving kindness and attention which she receives in her new family. The long term impact of such abasement and neglect will take time to unfold and discover, but Janet is now in the hands of compassionate caregivers who will give her every advantage in recovering from the shock of her abandonment.

Gypsy Children sold to French and Bulgarian families

Abandoned Gypsy Children promote Market for Human Traffic

 BOLIGNY, France — The first adoptive parents caught in a Bulgarian baby- trafficking network sought to defend a clandestine system in which they had haggled over the price of newborns and paid for them in cash.

 More than 50 Bulgarians and French adoptive parents went on trial in a suburban court northeast of Paris for suspected roles in a secret network dating from 2002. The system operated by word of mouth to reach desperate couples in France’s Roma, or Gypsy, communities, who negotiated prices from €3,000 to €7,000, or about $3,900 to $9,100, for 22 babies, with boys commanding top prices. “You will tell your child one day about the birth?” the presiding judge asked the first couple who appeared before the tribunal in the 10-day trial. “And you will explain to the child that he was purchased?”

 ”Purchased? no,” murmured Dalida Mancera, 38. She and her husband, Jimmy Julian Rosa, 41, recounted how they had been approached about adopting a baby through a Bulgarian intermediary and had negotiated the price of the child to €3,700. It was the Bulgarian mother of their child — a prostitute — who disclosed the existence of the network to the French authorities after she delivered the baby in May 2004.

 More than two months later, she went to the police with a story of misery about emigrating from Bulgaria in search of a new life in Paris and ending up as a prostitute, living in an illegal squat while awaiting the birth of her child. Although the woman was not in the courtroom, the tribunal read aloud a summary of her complaint that her baby had been kidnapped and that she had received none of the money promised her.

 Investigators believe that the network operated by prospecting for pregnant women, mostly young Roma girls from Bulgaria, and then organizing their emigration to France with promises of money, jobs and transportation, usually on the Eurolines buses bound for Paris. But often after delivery they had little money and worked as prostitutes to survive.

 The French parents were able to arrange for hospital care and legally document the births by giving the biological mothers the medical cards of the adoptive mothers so that the babies could be recorded as the children of French parents. The suspects on trial for trafficking in human beings include 41 parents, 11 intermediaries, two biological mothers and two others suspected of pimping. Four, who are the suspected of having organized the ring, are already jailed, while seven others are being sought on international warrants.

 The first couple to confront the charges against them raised a delicate issue, saying they had been forced to buy a baby because the French authorities were reluctant to allow adoptions by Roma families, citing the families’ itinerant lifestyle. The couple told the tribunal that they owned a house in Montreuil, an eastern suburb ofParis. They have grown daughters of their own, but for years yearned to have a son while believing the authorities would never allow them to adopt.

 ”We couldn’t adopt because we are Roma,” Mancera said, but she added that the family had never tried to adopt though official channels. Rosa said he had been contacted by an intermediary who was living in a house trailer and who initially offered a baby in exchange for €10,000, which he refused because the price was too high. Once the price of €3,700 was agreed on, they got their first glimpse of the baby. In the male-dominated Roma culture, a son is an important part of family culture, which is why the prices were higher for baby boys.

 While the couple stood before the tribunal, they repeatedly were asked if they had been surprised or shocked to name a price for their child. Mancera admitted to qualms.

“People say it is bizarre to sell an infant like an object, but when I saw him in the trailer looking so sickly I couldn’t leave him in that misery,” Mancera said. All of the children remain with their adoptive families, pending the outcome of the case, and officials say they are in good health. Trafficking in children carries a penalty of as much as 10 years in prison, but the French parents face milder punishments, as much as three years in prison, for “provoking the abandonment of a child.”

 The trafficking in Bulgarian babies has also emerged as an issue in Greece, where earlier this year the police broke up three baby-selling rings. The police there said organized gangs extended loans at high rates to impoverished women in Bulgaria, forcing them to have babies to give up for adoption when they could not repay the loans.

Babies Abandoned in Airport – Great Britain

Babies Abandoned in Airport – Great Britain

A troubling new trend is appearing in Great Britain. Home Office figures show an increase of unaccompanied children under 18 years old, applying for asylum.  Many were from war-torn countries or those afflicted by desperate poverty, with around a third from Afghanistan, 10 per cent from Iran and nine per cent from Iraq.

Asylum seeker groups said that relatives abandoning their children do so as “the best of several terrible options” but the increased numbers results is becoming a burden for local authorities and council tax payers who will have to pay an estimated £150 million to look after them.

In Hampshire, 68 children were found abandoned at Southampton docks, Southampton airport and at service stations in the past year. One, at the docks, was aged just three. A spokeswoman said unaccompanied asylum seeking children would be treated in exactly the same way as other children in the council’s care. “Our fostering service has care givers who are skilled in providing the extra support needed by children requiring emergency placements,” she said. “We do whatever we can to facilitate contact with their families.”

Christine Knight, from the Southampton and Winchester Visitors’ Group, an organization which works with asylum seekers, said children were abandoned as the “best of several terrible options”. “Usually their parents have been killed and distant relatives or friends put them on a plane here because it is better than staying in Iraq, for example,” she said

Under plans announced by the Home Office children could be sent back to their country of origin. But a Border Agency spokesperson said they would never deport a child unless they had contacted their family or arranged care for them. “We recognize that the subject of unaccompanied asylum seeking children is a very complex and emotive issue, and the welfare of children and young people is of paramount importance.  ”That is why, even where an unaccompanied asylum seeking child has been found not to need international protection, we do not return children and young people to countries unless either the family has been satisfactorily traced or an acceptable level of reception and care arrangements have been established.”

Babies Abandoned in Storage Lockers

JAPANESE STORAGE LOCKER BABIES

In Japan unwanted infants are left in storage lockers under the mistaken notion that these lockers are checked every day. They are not. Most of these children are found to late. Not all stories end so fatally. Recently in Lusaka Zambia, a woman slipped out of church Sunday morning to use the outhouse. When she opened the door she heard, to her horror, the faint murmur of an infants sigh. Forcing herself to look down into the darkness she saw an infant had been abandoned to the depths of the pit latrine. She rushed back into the church interrupted worship with the alarming news. After disassembling the structure and removing the rock foundation one man reached into the filth below and rescued the little boy.

This infant was unusually lucky. After a couple of days in the hospital he was released and delivered to our project to be cared for until he could be adopted. Today he is a healthy and smiling boy, waiting for loving parents to resume his upbringing.