She was really a cousin, but when hardship drove the sister of the mother of my wife to drop her young daugther off to be raised by others, my wife came to feel like it was the younger sister she never knew. Unless, of course, you count the two young nieces also being raised in that household where children were welcomed to live when the part of the family who has almost nothing is still so much better off than the members who have nowhere near even that much. Can you imagine a place where the little girl walks barefoot more than a mile to go to school, has a lunch or snack only when someone else shares, and needs to ask a classmate for something as simple as a piece of paper because the school really has no supplies for anyone? And as that child, my wife still knew that things could have been far worse.
So now let's fast forward.
The Facebook message last night told my wife that her cousin had just died. The now twenty five year old single mother of a two month old daughter was simply alive one minute, and not the next. The cause of death will probably not be listed as starvation. Nor is it likely to reflect the fact that even she could not accept herslf for having brought the shame of that pregnancy to a family where, even today, some in a culture that observes a "traditional Catholicism" will still end up choosing death over her brand of dishonor.
We did rescue one of those other three little girls. Eight year old Erica, eight years ago, faced the same as what happened last night, or even worse. Today, she has enough to share with her playmates, and she does. And they, in turn, and in the nature of young kids, return the favor by never letting Erica forget that, while they may not have her "abundance", at least they enjoy the blessing of having a mother and father. Standard eight year old cruelty.
Cousin Roseann, yesterday morning, was offered food for herself and milk for the baby. She setteled for borrowing the phone. The mother who dropped Roseann off back in the day for others to raise answered the call in the place where she now eeks out a living as a domestic. And, no, she could not and would not make the effort of finding a way to get a bus ticket to come for a visit with her daughter and granddaughter. Would Roseann have lived if the answer had been motherly, had been grandmotherly? We'll never know. The only thing we do know is that she simply returned to the bamboo shack where she shared her meager existence with all too many others who wished that she were not there and then simply, silently died.
Now that we know these things, Roseann will be buried in a manner that respects her death in ways that had been denied her until now. And what of the baby, her little daughter? Even in a family that big, and that poor, she is still family, and we will make every possible effort to provide. Father, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and as far out to the rest of the family, and even the neighbors as the rice budget stretches, all will eat equally.
So, what is the moral of the story? There is none. There is only this pathetic little reminder that no one in this country knows the reality of third world hardship without knowing the reality of third world life.