After posting a few pictures from Casa Jackson today and getting "like" after "like" after "like" after "like," I realized how many people are, on some level, interested in the wonderful little faces they're seeing and wondering what's happening in our tiny little corner of this tiny little country. I also realized how infrequently I actually discuss what it is that I'm doing, what Casa Jackson is doing, and the massive "why" behind the effort.
Obviously, I feel like what we're doing is really important. These babies and children are just as deserving of a chance at a healthy, happy life as any other, but they and their families face massive challenges that are practically incomprehensible to most of us. So... for anyone who has looked at the smiling faces in my pictures and thought, "how cute!", it would mean so much to me if you could read on and learn about who these little faces are and why they come to us.
Casa Jackson is a center for malnourished children. Our small, 20-bed hospital is one town and a short walk over from Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua is sort of this magical Disneyland bubble of Guatemala where people can walk around safely (day or night!), drive down the street with their windows open, and basically live their lives without a very legitimate fear of being robbed, raped, or worse.
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M A L N U T R I T I O N
(a.k.a., the "why")
Malnutrition is one of the gravest public health issues affecting Guatemala. The statistics speak for themselves:
- 49.8% of all Guatemalan children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished
- 1/3 of all deaths occurring in childhood are caused by under-nutrition
- 4 out of 10 children in non-indigenous families are malnourished
- 8 out of 10 children in indigenous families are malnourished
By chronic malnutrition, I mean that these kids are not experiencing periods of difficulty getting proper food due to a bad harvest year, or their parents losing jobs. These children are growing up without receiving the calories or nutrients they need to grow properly nearly every day of their lives.
In addition to the risk of dying from malnutrition, kids who grow up malnourished often have lower IQs and smaller bodies. They are less able to take advantage of the handful of educational or work opportunities that may come their way, if they're fortunate. They are born poor, and because they are physically and cognitively disadvantaged due to malnutrition, they stay poor.
Anyone living in an area with many Guatemalan immigrants can probably identify with the following assumption: Guatemalans are short. Not so! An incredible study followed siblings of Mayan descent that were separated. One sibling was raised in the US, the others stayed behind and grew up in Guatemala. This study showed that on average, Guatemalan children from the same family growing up in the US were 6-8 inches taller then their siblings by the time they reached adulthood. The results were similar when examining siblings who grew up in Mexico and Guatemala. The Mexico-raised siblings were still taller, despite not being in an overly developed, wealthy country.
Guatemala is not the poorest country in Latin America, yet our malnutrition rates here are nearly double that of every other country. Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador are more impoverished (based on gross national income), yet Guatemala has twice as many children whose growth is permanently stunted (interrupted or stopped) due to malnutrition. This begs the very big, very legitimate question- WHY?
Basically, Guatemala is the "perfect storm" of malnutrition. The gap between the rich and poor is very large. The rich live in/near cities with big shiny shopping malls; the poor are spread throughout villages and dangerous towns across the country without decent roads, sanitation, schools, or medical clinics. There is widespread illiteracy and little access to any real education.
Most importantly is the role the government plays- or doesn't play. Guatemala is extremely corrupt and few social programs exist to support or empower the poor or hungry. It has a horribly dark history involving a 30-year civil war, ending in the 1990's, that saw the military slaughter their own civilians. The government perpetrated a genocide against the indigenous population, who stood to gain the most should the guerillas have won and thus seemed to the government to be the guerilla's "natural allies." Simply put, for the indigenous community (hardest hit by malnutrition), the government is useless at best- criminal at worst.
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W O N D E R F U L B A B I E S & F A M I L I E S
(a.k.a., the "who")
We get a lot of different types of infants and children at Casa Jackson. They come from all over Guatemala and from all different types of homes. Some have parents who love them and are trying desperately to care for them despite the horribly scant information and resources available to them. Some have parents who aren't quite as concerned with their well-being. Some have been abandoned. Some of our patients have medical and developmental issues; some have alcoholic, abusive fathers who complicate their mother's efforts to keep them healthy, safe, and fed. Each of them has a family with unique struggles that are complicating their efforts to care for their child. All of them desperately need help.
A few 'typical' stories...
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| Axel (fully recovered- look at those cheeks!-the day he returned home with his mother) |
Axel came to Casa Jackson at 2 months old, weighing just under 7 pounds. His mother, 23-year-old Maria, was eating coffee and tortillas three times a day, with beans, rice, or vegetables when she and her husband could afford to purchase them. She became pregnant, eating exactly the same throughout her pregnancy. Axel was born slightly early and underweight. His mother tried to breastfeed him but she was so poorly nourished that her breast milk couldn't satisfy him. She tried feeding him a variety of things (soda, locally-made corn and milk drinks, etc) to satiate him and help him grow. It didn't work.
Axel stayed with us for 2 months. During that time, our nutritionist taught his mother about her own nutrition, and how to properly breastfeed little Axel. She began to breastfeed Axel again, and with the formula feeds he received as well as her breast milk during her twice-weekly visits, he gained quickly. Axel returned home, healthy and ready to thrive in a home with two parents who now have a better understanding of their own nutrition, Axel's needs, food safety and sanitation, and how to budget their scant resources wisely to ensure that all members of the family are as nourished and healthy as possible.
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| Magaly |
Magaly came to us for the first time in early 2010. Magaly has microcephaly (small head size, associated with cognitive and other delays) and was born with a congenital subluxation of her hips (her hipbones weren't in their sockets and she couldn't move her legs). She was a malnourished but cheerful toddler. Several volunteers fell in love with her, and raised enough money to build her family a new home to replace their dirt-floor shack as well as buy all the supplements needed to get her through her first six months after being discharged.
Magaly's father was an alcoholic who became very violent when he drank. He beat Magaly's mother, sold the home that was built piece-by-piece, and sold all the supplements that had been donated, to finance his drinking habit. Magaly returned to Casa Jackson in 2010, sicker and not quite so cheerful.
Magaly's mother lived with her at Casa Jackson (as many of our abused mothers do) for several months while she tried to find stable employment and a safe place for her and her two other children to live. While at Casa Jackson, Magaly got the surgery she needed to reconnect her hips into their sockets, and fully recovered from her malnutrition. Although Magaly recovered from her malnutrition in a matter of months, it was a little over a year before Magaly's mother was ready and able to bring Magaly home to a safe, loving home free from the abuse and control of her estranged husband.
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| "Jose"
Jose came to us exactly two weeks ago today. The bomberos (firefighters) arrived one Friday morning with this little bundle in their arms. Jose was exhausted, trembling and crying for his "mama."
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His "mama" had left him outside the bombero station in Chimaltenango (an incredibly poor urban area a few hours away) the night before. He had spent part of the night outside before being discovered and brought into a bombero's home to spend the remainder of the night. He had a horrible case of bronchitis and a low fever.
Jose is one of about 10 children Casa Jackson cares for each year that are abandoned by their very desperate parents. We don't know the exact reasons that Jose was abandoned. Anyone holding and hugging him and seeing him wave his chubby little hands at new volunteers and say "hola," or watching him grin and try to clap along to 'patty-cake,' would have a hard time imagining a reason dire enough to give this sweet little boy up. As easy as it is to judge his mother for abandoning her son, the reality is that whatever circumstances lead her to leave her 18-month-old(ish) son must have been truly terrible.
Because of the stop on foreign adoptions put into place several years ago due to many legitimate cases of babies being taken forcibly from poor women to sell for adoption and other such fraudulent practices, Jose will almost certainly grow up in a foster home or in an orphanage. Adoptive families in Guatemala are few and far between and the foster care system is horribly overloaded.
Unfortunately, we have no control over Jose's future. We can't choose his placement when he leaves us. In these heartbreaking situations, our role is this: love the heck out of these babies from the moment they arrive until the moment they leave. Jose will bear the emotional scars of his abandonment for the rest of his life; he will likely grow up without knowing what it's like to be part of a family that loves him. It hurts to hear him cry for "mama" every evening. It hurts to see him smile and laugh and know that he will never know the stability and consistency and love that children need to thrive.
So we do the only things we can. We feed him, and we love him.
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C A S A J A C K S O N P R O G R A M
(a.k.a., the "what")
In the interest of keeping this short (too late!), I won't delve into all the specifics of what we do at Casa Jackson. It involves a dedicated medical staff who sees to the kids medical and nutritional needs, a constant supply of volunteers who give love and affection and attention to each child, a coordinator who is borderline obsessed with the quality of the kids experience while in Casa Jackson, a social worker with immense patience, strength, and sensitivity, and a lot of people who support us from afar.
We provide free health screenings for any family that brings their child to our center; high-quality inpatient care to the sickest children; follow-up visits and education to their families; donations of food, clothing, and medication to our most impoverished, desperate families; a temporary home for our abused or homeless mothers and "safe haven" for abandoned children; outreach in the community to find the children and families who need help, and will hopefully be branching out into some prenatal/preventative support and education in the coming year.
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I am the luckiest girl in the world. Working at Casa Jackson is heartbreaking sometimes, but I am grateful every day that I have an opportunity to play such a significant role in the daily lives of these amazing children while they're in our care. These children and families, and the thousands other like them across the country, are incredible. I'm honored to get to be a teeny, tiny part of "the solution" to this massive problem that affects so many here.
It's also amazing to me how many people are supportive of me, despite knowing the details of what I'm doing, and without really knowing me on any real personal level. Family, friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers have expressed their support since I began coming down here in January. I appreciate the support and the kind words, and humbly ask that you remain interested and supportive. Just knowing that so many people in different places are aware of what's happening here, and care about these kids that my world more or less revolves around, means so much to me.
(for pictures and bios of all of our current patients, visit www.godschild.org/casa-jackson)
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