2007
Compassion and Child Labor
CATEGORY: 12 & UNDER
Looking at a photograph, what do I see?
My soft hand caressed the faces of poor, working children in photographs. Staring at their faces, feeling their pain, adrenaline rushed through my body. I was angry. These photos revealed lives without childhoods. The pain and sorrow I felt for the working child would impact my life tremendously. I was sitting in a middle school classroom looking at these photographs and wondering what I could do. My wise teacher came up to me with a suggestion to go to a Friday “end child labor” meeting.
At first that amused me because, I mean, me, a regular person, make a difference? I went to a meeting on a Friday. I wasn’t the most enthusiastic about it, but I went. Then, my teacher brought all the new members down the hall to a little display case. I always thought that case was a TV or something. I didn’t really care about it. The teacher started to tell a story of a little boy whose name was Iqbal. Iqbal, age four, was sold into child labor in a carpet factory because his family had debts to pay. When he worked in the carpet factory, he barely had enough food to survive each night. Finally, one day at the age of ten, he escaped. He finally got out. Eventually he was able to share his message about what he went through in the factory.
A few months later Iqbal received the Reebok Human Rights Award in Boston. All the kids were touched by Iqbal’s story. We now wanted to do something to help working children like Iqbal. The teacher continued by telling us that when Iqbal returned to Pakistan, he was riding his bike and he was shot and killed. At this moment, goose bumps were shivering through my body. I think it was the same for the rest of the kids. The teacher took a long pause and pointed to the display case that was to the left. He said that inside this box was a carpet that Iqbal had made. Iqbal actually visited our school the day before he accepted the Reebok award. We were all shocked. The teacher kept talking about Iqbal and what Broad Meadows did to help. The students back then wanted to do something, so they decided to start a school in Pakistan in Iqbal’s honor. The teacher said, “we can’t do this!” However, those words are not in the vocabulary of Broad Meadows students. They raised over 147,000 dollars and built a school in Pakistan! The teacher was amazed; he never thought that twelve-year-olds could do it. When he finished the long story, we went back to the classroom. It hit me like a ton of bricks why all these young people are here at the meeting. They heard the story; they felt the same compassion I did when I heard the story. Now I finally understand what kids my age can do to help the tens of millions of children like Iqbal all over the world.
Compassion for the working child is basically tough love to all of us who attend “end child labor” meetings. For us, it’s not just having compassion for the working child, it’s actually doing something to help working children help themselves.
CATEGORY: 13-17
My heart is overflowing with compassion for them. My eyes are overflowing with tears because of them. My spirit knows I will always fight for them; the children of the world.
It happened a week ago. As a member of the church youth, I had graciously volunteered to accompany a team of university students on a trip to the garbage village in Egypt. Yes, I live in Egypt, where one can’t help but notice the reticent, ill-looking children loitering on the maze of streets in Cairo. This image though, at that time, did not strike me as abnormal; on the contrary, I hardly even noticed the hoards of children around me in my everyday maneuvers around Cairo. I had become numb to the sight of the poor and weak, never once asking myself what life these children lead. They were out of my bubble, and I never noticed them while the transparent encompassment held me captive for far too long, until now.
That day, we drove slowly over the mounds of waste and garbage. I was nauseous, thinking to myself that no human was capable of leading a life in this part of hell. The odor wafted up into my tensed nostrils as it gradually leaked into the car and through the closed windows. I glanced at the people outside behind the protection of the car window. They were living in this part of hell, but I paid no heed to this as I supposed that they didn’t mind it, and felt that it was their everyday duty to collect garbage from thousands of homes in Cairo. I later realized that it was not only my perception that was warped, but that of every human. Through the corner of my eye I suddenly spotted a child squatting in a mound of garbage, gaping at us. As soon as I glanced at him, he quickly shifted his round, black eyes back to the garbage and began to sort through it. I could see his hands touching mold and slime, things I did not recognize. I jolted my head back and looked around me to see if anyone had witnessed what I had just seen. I pressed my face to the window again, hoping to catch one last glimpse of the child, but as I did so I realized and endeavored to understand why it was that all of the garbage sorters were children: small, dirty, underfed, and overdeveloped children as a result of this grueling work forced upon them.
All day and every day, this was their life; they knew nothing else. With their tiny bodies they labored and would sort through all of the garbage in hopes of recycling most of it and creating something to sell. The men would collect the garbage, heaving it all over the city, and the women’s job was to weave and create beautiful and intricate ornaments. I bought one of these crafts but I couldn’t fully appreciate it. It cut through my heart to think of the children who had to endure strenuous labor at such a young age. My bubble was slowly disappearing.
We gave the children some food, mostly rice and beans to last them some weeks, but we also indulged them with chips and candy. I have never seen children so ecstatic over food. After I took one on my lap, we began to sing them songs; and after the first confusion as to why we were displaying such overwhelmingly benign behavior, their faces beamed with delight and joy, not to mention gratitude. I could not comprehend my own ignorance. Was everyone like me? People just sat at home, threw away their garbage and never gave it a second thought. When I finally wrenched myself away from those children, to see those faces fall was more than I could bear. I went home, not knowing if I would ever go back. The children went back to work, sure that I would never go back.
I went home with a mind full of images and thoughts foreign to me. My instant cure was to watch some television. As I flipped through the channels I stopped on the one where Oprah was on. I sat up as soon as she started talking. A picture of a little boy with haunted eyes was shown to the audience, and his eyes were the spitting image of the little boy I had seen that day. This boy was a child slave in Ghana, forced to work on a fishing boat doing strenuous labor in the night. I couldn’t deny or ignore it anymore, and I knew that I would go back to that child, back to help all children who faced the same injustices. I had witnessed only some of the hurt placed on children around the world, but now, I am thankful for the little experience I had, which proved to be a blessing.
Later, my friend gave me a picture she had taken of that boy who had so captured my heart. I keep it with me always. It is a treasure unlike any other, inducing and pushing me to serve God in ways unimaginable.
CATEGORY: 18-22
The Haunting Faces of Child Labor
I sit down to dinner and her eyes watch me, weathered and hungry. Hungry for food, for shelter, for love, for hope? I can feel them on me as I eat from a plate overflowing with food. They watch me as I sort through my closet, shocked at my multitude of clothing. I feel their presence as I curl up in my warm bed at night. Beautiful eyes. Sad eyes. Hungry eyes. Sometimes I forget that they are nothing more than a memory.
I met Sarah in Trujillo, Peru. She was beautiful, with big black eyes and long dark hair. Slipping quietly up to my table at a restaurant in the city, she stuck out a bony hand filled with candy. She looked about 8, dressed in thin clothes that hung on her emaciated frame. “Un sol,” she implored (which is about the equivalent of 30 cents), “solamente un sol.” I glanced over at my sister from across the table, feeling guilty that I sat behind a large plate heaped with food while this skeletal girl attempted to sell me some gross looking candy at an hour when most kids her age should be asleep in bed. I started to search my pockets for change, then suddenly I could feel her gaze lock onto me, hungry for help, for food, for money, for relief. I glanced at her and was shocked to see the eyes of an old woman staring back at me. The eyes of someone who had seen enough of life, the eyes of someone who a few coins were not going to help.
“Tiene Hambre?” I ask. Are you hungry? The eyes are responseless, calculating. They wait. Then a barely perceptible nod. We invite her to sit with us and share our food. Suddenly her inner hunger is unleashed, and she attacks the chicken as if she were a famished lion. Chicken tears off bones, bones are cracked and sucked dry and licked clean. I feel sick. We pack up whatever food she cannot consume, and before we realize it, she is gone. But her eyes remain, boring into my soul. All the information that I knew about child labor suddenly took the form of an adorable little girl.
Sadly, that night we saw Sarah again. We watched her mother snatch the leftover food, slap her across the face, then throw her to the ground, admonishing her for sitting down to eat when she should have been making money. The people in the city around us walked by without so much as a glance, as she scurried to her feet and set back out to continue selling her worthless candy. With a horrified heart, I suddenly realized why UNICEF calls these laboring children “the invisible children” (www.unicef.org). Only once I began to look around did I realize how many children were out selling things…. little boys and girls of all ages selling candy, playing cards, and small toys at nearly midnight in one of Peru’s most dangerous cities.
After spending time living in Trece de Abril, a small village in the northern deserts of Peru where my sister works as a Peace Corps member, child labor began to seem disturbingly normal. Children barely old enough to form sentences slaved away in rice fields, lugging giant, sword-like tools twice their size out into the fields to cut the rice crop. They drove donkey carts or mototaxis to make a profit, or sold small items from dawn until dusk in the market places. Only a lucky few were able to go to school, and even those who did rarely made it past the sixth grade.
One little boy stands out in my mind, an undersized 8 or 9-year-old named Luis. My sister was running a cultural dance group the night that I met him, trying to give the kids living in homes made of cornstalks and mud some sense of pride in their own culture. The little boy was good-natured and full of smiles, yet my sister explained that he, too, was the face of child labor. After taking an overcrowded, broken-down van for an hour to the market each day, he was forced to spend hours selling small hard candies in the hot sun. Never mind that few people in the area had money for things as frivolous as candy. He and his six year old sister were forbidden from coming home until the bags of candy were sold. He lived on a diet of rice, which meant that he was undersized and malnourished. Yet without fail, he came proudly to the cultural dance group each week and despite his exhaustion, danced his heart out with a big smile. I am still amazed by his smile.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child dictates that “children have the right to be protected from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development” (http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/10/africa8789.htm). Apparently Peru has forgotten these rights. Carrying sharp tools to slave away in rice fields, walking the streets alone selling objects to strangers, and driving mototaxis at a young age are dangerous to the welfare of children. They could be hurt, kidnapped, or even killed each day as they head off to work. For girls, rape is a danger, and the child-trade in Peru is especially alarming; the first thing I noticed while exiting the airplane was a large sign imploring people to stop buying children so they will stop being sold. I was appalled.
Not only are these children in danger, but they are missing out on an education and even more importantly, a childhood. Sadly, they will be stuck forever in their villages, forced to perpetuate their way of life into another generation due to poverty and the lack of education. These children are lost souls. Child labor has robbed them of their potential. They are not children, but instruments to generate money. Their parents capitalize on their innocence to elicit money from compassionate people who buy out of pity. It’s amazing what the desperation of poverty can do.
In Lima, my sister and I were heading down the street when I heard a male voice attempting to sweet-talk me. Translated, the voice was saying, “Beautiful woman, you are so sexy and gorgeous. Oh Queen, you are the most beautiful woman I have seen. Turn around and see what I have for you.” Being a blonde, this was not uncommon to hear from the men in Peru; however, what made this time different was that when I glanced back, I did not see the face of a man, but rather a boy of about 7 who was earnestly trying to sell me a small bracelet. His use of language belied his loss of childhood innocence. I was shocked to hear those words coming from such young lips. He had learned that flattery was the way to sell, and had picked up the language of older men to maximize his profit. My heart broke for his loss of innocence and the fact that he could never just be a 7-year-old boy. We bought the bracelet from him and then bought him food, wishing all along we could kidnap him, spoil and love him, and show him how to be a child instead of a man.
The longer I was in Peru, the more powerless I felt. Child labor was everywhere I looked, and though my sister and I tried to feed these children and give them money at every opportunity we could, we knew that helping them once was not enough. Giving some food or money to a child may be a temporary help, but in the end the money goes to the parents, reinforcing the use of children to generate money, and the hunger comes roaring back with a vengeance. The only way to really help these children is to raise awareness of what is going on with these “invisible children” (UNICEF) and support campaigns targeted to alleviate the extreme poverty creating the need for child workers. Eventually, laws protecting children need to be strictly enforced, even in remote areas.
Back home in the extravagance of the United States, I cannot forget the children of Peru. I hear little voices that are wise beyond their years, and silently apologize to all the children for whom I did not do enough. In church last Sunday, a quote caught my eye. “I have shown you in every way by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Bible – Acts 20:35). I realized that I have been blessed to have the life I live, and that it is not enough to visit Peru and help a handful of children when so many thousands need help. I am reminded every day by the haunting memories of these so-called “children” that something needs to be done, and I have vowed to do all I can to “support the weak” and help their cause.
Until I do, Sarah’s eyes will watch my every move with their desperate plea for help. I will be forever haunted by the memories that, sadly, are a tragic reality.
