Mothers in poverty


	Marie & Nelanda Gelen

“Because I feel that in the heavens above The angels, whispering one to another, Can find among their burning tears of love, None so devotional as that of ’Mother,’ Therefore, by that dear name I have long called you, You who are more than mother unto me.” ~Edgar Allan Poe

A mother’s fears

It’s a mother’s prerogative to worry about her children. Every night, mothers across the globe lose sleep fretting about their children’s health, education and happiness. But within the destitute Latin American and Caribbean communities Food For The Poor serves, these concerns reach a whole new magnitude: Will I have enough food for everyone? Is this tent strong enough to withstand the rain? Will he survive the night? Too often, the answer to these questions is “no.”

When misfortune mounts, these women turn to prayer as their only recourse. They are hobbled by limited education and a lack of steady income and sometimes cannot rely on a husband for support. In fact, paternal abandonment is so common that the homes Food For The Poor builds in Honduras are deeded to the mother or the family as a whole, “Patrimonio familiar,” to prevent the children from becoming homeless. According to Girl Up, a United Nations Foundation campaign, 1 in 7 girls in developing countries is married by age 15, often to a man twice her age or older. Domestic violence — even domestic rape — is common.

A mother’s determination

Yet these women serve as the backbones of their families, caring for their sons and daughters despite their predicament. They perform domestic chores foreign to the First World, like trekking miles to collect water or gathering wood scraps to patch the leaky roofs of their sheet-metal shacks. Above all, they seek nutrition for their children, and when they can’t rely on a husband’s wages, they work outside the home to provide it.


Maria Gomez and her surviving children.

Judith Reid, a mother of 6, works 6 days a week as a security guard in Kingston, Jamaica, but her wages are often too small to cover the cost of food. In Guatemala — where nearly half of all children under 5 are stunted from malnutrition — Heidy Guzman begs neighbors for food when her husband’s corn harvest fails and their 4-year-old son languishes from hunger. In Managua, Nicaragua, countless mothers scour La Chureca, a massive dump, and salvage recyclables for money. On a good day, they uncover half-eaten food among the garbage mounds and parcel out the precious morsels to their children.

“We can try as hard as we can, but God is the one who will decide what to do with us,” said Maria Gomez, a Nicaraguan woman whose 5-month-old son, Jarlin, died from malnutrition. Maria had rushed the infant to the hospital, but she couldn’t afford the formula and medicine needed to keep him alive.


	Maria Gomez prays.

It was too late anyway.

“They told me there was nothing they could do because he was so malnourished,” she said.

A mother’s desperation

In Haiti, desperate mothers quell hunger pains by feeding their children mud cakes flavored with salt and butter. Marie Gelen attempts to calm her three children by filling their bellies with sugar water. Her community, Rossignol, Haiti, is known as a rice-producing area, but floods destroyed the family’s crop, and they are now without a livelihood. As soon as 1-year-old Nelanda wakes, she screams from hunger.

“I’ll try to figure something out because I can’t let them go the day without food,” Marie said.

Necessity has made these Third World women strong, but they need First World support to sleep at night. Losing a son or daughter to hunger should not be a realistic fear of any mother.