The Nuns of Santa Isabella are truly amazing. They run a soup kitchen, a vocational school, an adult school, and a boarding house / orphanage all on the same small plot of land ! One of the most important components of their service is their steadfast commitment to the soup kitchen that feeds young children from the community on a daily basis. This seemingly innocuous soup kitchen proved the catalyst for an emotional revelation for me – I hope you’ll appreciate my experience.

The Mother Superior of the order was visiting recently from Rome and was very impressed with the ongoing service in San Lorenzo. However, she found my beloved nuns in a serious quandary: more children, and even multiple adults were showing up for food in the mornings than there was food, and rather than turn anyone away – everyone was just receiving a little less. 

The Mother Superior ruled that we could only serve thirty children and that they should each receive a full breakfast. 

Thus, Hermana Mery – the head nun in San Lorenzo – asked the Nunnettes and myself to visit the families of the children who were participants in the soup kitchen.

We walked all over San Lorenzo and well into the countryside (or Campo in Spanish) to chat with various families. We were looking for a general idea of household income (or whether or not there was food at home for the children), how the child behaved at home, and amongst other things, whether or not the mothers knew how their children were doing in school.

Intellectually, I must have known before these outings that most adults in the campo do not know how to read – and are significantly less likely to know how to read if they are women. But it never quite came home until these visits.

It was heart wrenching to sit and take notes as these mothers discussed the daily struggle to feed and care for their children; if there were any men in their lives – unfortunately they generally drank whatever they managed to make.

These mothers care about their children, but frequently feel like they have no idea what is going on in their children’s lives because they themselves can’t read. They can’t read progress reports, or fliers, or announcements – it’s a form of isolation of which I have never been truly aware. 

It’s easy to read about illiteracy statistics – ‘this country has more people who can read than that country’ - we, in first world countries, “learn” about this topic from a distance that makes it hard to feel the real day to day impact of what it means to be illiterate.  

But being invited into someone’s home – seeing how that person lives, and listening to the images of very real pain that comes from not being able to read – something I take so for granted – was an eye opening experience.

A most typical story, here in the campo, is when a girl’s father wouldn’t let her stay in or even go to school because of her gender. 

It is a horrible kind of robbery. I’ve read plenty about this, and to some extent worked on the topic while I was working for the World Food Program in the School Feeding Unit. But, there is no substitute for living amongst people for whom this is a reality.

I am exceedingly grateful for this experience, on so many levels – Peace Corps life teaches me daily what an unbelievable blessing it is to be a North American citizen. The norms of our lives, which are so easy to take for granted, assure us a quality of life which a great majority of the world will never know.

Now playing: Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Posted by Sarah Robinson on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm.