Heartbreaking Reality

We currently have an intern living with us from ETSU.  She is studying Public Health and came here to do a follow up study on 14 malnourished kids here in the valley.  Her first day here, Ricardo, the interim director of the CAFNIMA project in the valley, took Beth and Kris to see a family he had been told had a severely malnourished child.  So, off they went the morning of March 6^th to check on this child.  What they found was horrifying. 

This is the heartbreaking reality they discovered:  Cesar is six years old and when they found him, he was literally dressed in rags and chained to a post outside.  There were no adults at the house and he told Ricardo he was chained up so that he wouldn’t run away.

They had to leave him at that point since no adults were there, but later that evening, we went back to speak with the parents and weigh and measure him.  What we found was two women, neither married, living with their father.  One mother had two children and is pregnant.  The other, Carmen, is Cesar’s mom and she has two other children younger than him.  We weighed and measured all the children in the house.  Most of the others are adequately nourished.  When we weighed and measured Cesar, I was shocked…he is smaller than my Little Monkey, who is small for a two year old.  And he is six!!!  I held him the entire time we were in their home and he was trembling from cold.

We gave him something to eat that night and he devoured it and the water offered to him as if it had been weeks since he had seen food.  The mother says they feed him, but he told Ricardo that they give all the other kids food on a regular basis and only give it to him some of the time.  His size is a reflection of that.

The next day Kris, Dee Dee, Ricardo, and Beth went back to check on him (we had left that morning for a little sightseeing tour of Guate with my mom) and they found he had been throwing up and unable to hold down the food we had left for him.  This is a sign of severe malnutrition and the protocol for such is to take the child to a hospital because they will not be able to receive food at home.  So, all the above mentioned piled into a truck along with Cesar, his mom, and his baby brother who was still nursing.

They took him to the nearest hospital where he was cleaned up and received IV and a good haircut.  When Kris, Dee Dee, and Beth checked on him late last week, Dee Dee said she would guess he had gained 5 pounds in one week.  At this moment, he is still in the hospital.  From there, he will be discharged to a recuperation center where his mother will have the opportunity to learn how to properly care for her child.

There seems to be obvious discrimination going on in this family for a reason we have been unable to completely figure out.  There are so many superstitions and beliefs here, sometimes it is hard to weed through them all and figure out the truth.  The good news is, Ricardo is faithfully following up with this situation and all involved want what is best for Cesar.  Please pray that his mother will begin to have a desire to care for Cesar as she does her other children.  Or that if she is not going to change, that this will be very clear before Cesar is permitted to return to her house and that a loving family will be found who can take care of him.