|
Bolivia's "Angel of the Andes" Works to Save Street Children By Marion A. Ellis Special to The Dilworthian |
|
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- Every day an estimated five thousand children roam the streets of this busy city in the middle of Bolivia. Unwanted, hungry, dirty and desperate they are everywhere -- as young as five years old -- panhandling, shining shoes for the equivalent of 20 cents, stealing, begging for food from diners in the sidewalk cafes.
To stave off hunger and boredom, many smoke cigarettes laced with cocaine paste or sniff glue or gasoline. More than a few bear scars from knife or razor fights or burns from stomping coca leaves to make cocaine. Wearing ragged clothes, barefooted many sleep under bridges or in cardboard boxes.
 |
But the ninos de la calle--children of the street--in this city of 550,000 have an unusually intelligent and determined advocate known as the Angel of the Andes fighting for them. That's what many who are familiar with her work call Sister Stephanie Murray, a tiny Catholic nun who has patched together an organization called Amanecer (Daybreak in Spanish) that has rescued thousands of boys and girls since its beginning in 1981. But unlike most homeless programs Amanecer does more than give the street children a hot meal and a safe place to sleep.
Against the odds and without a solid source of funds, Sister Stephanie and her staff have built a system that has grown into a $570,000 annual budget that includes an orphanage for abandoned infants, overnight and long-term shelters for boys and girls, a day care center and retreat for battered women, a school and finally a manual training institute that includes working with computers. It is a complete package that far surpasses anything the government has tried. In fact, the government gave up on an orphanage it was trying to operate and turned it over to Amanecer. It is the only orphanage in Cochabamba. |
"If you're not a religious person, it is hard to fathom what she has done. You can explain this as kind of a minor miracle," said Dr. William Scarborough, consular agent for the U.S. government in Cochabamba who has worked with Amanecer since its inception. Amanecer's work is very important because youths under the age of 15 now make up one-third of Bolivia's population. The country has the highest birthrate in Latin America at 6.8 births per female, although fully one-third do not live past infancy. The figure jumps to 65 percent in rural areas. Ironically, the high death rate for infants simply spurs families to have more children to replace the dead ones. Bolivia is the second poorest country in South America with an average gross national product of $900 US annually. Only Guyana is poorer.
Amanecer takes in street children who can stay as long as they want and are able to stop using drugs and alcohol and obey other minimal rules. From overnight shelters, they are transferred to anyone of five longer term programs based upon their age and sex.
Sister Stephanie, a native of Philadelphia who joined the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul when she was 20 years old, had no grand plan in mind when she and another nun opened their first homeless shelter to 14 boys one night in April 1981.
"We just envisioned an albergue (shelter) for children to sleep at night," Sister Stephanie said.
From there the complex just grew and grew, and somehow Sister Stephanie always found the money. "The Lord will provide," she says.
Sister Stephanie and her staff see more tragedy in one day than most Americans see in their entire life. There is Efrain whose mother tried to kill him when he was three. There's Estella whose mother died at the age of 24 and left Estella a four-year-old orphan. Palmella has been to and from the streets more than 100 times. Another child was rescued after being left chained every day. There are children who were left at the bus station or ran away from cruel treatment or simply left because there was nothing to eat.
Every Thursday and Saturday night, Sister Stephanie or her chief assistant, Sister Carol Donohoe, who is from St. Louis, Missouri, take a male staff member and tour the major Cochabamba homeless hangouts in Amanecer's aging white Jeep pickup truck. They take along a covered bucket of milk and plenty of bread they have made to hand out to whoever wants it. The "milk run" is Sister Stephanie's way of keeping in touch with what's happening on the streets.
| Once the truck rolls to a stop, figures begin to emerge from the shadows. They recognize Sister Stephanie, the four-foot-eleven nun they call Madre Cita, or little mother, and they know they can at least can get one meal without stealing or begging for it. More shapes materialize with cups and buckets of their own. A young mother with a baby tied to her back hurries forward. Another with one on her back and a toddler in tow comes for some milk and bread and takes some to a grandmother who waits on the sidewalk almost hidden from view. Sister Stephanie walks across the busy street to comfort the woman. Her tan nun's habit and head scarf stand out in the dim lighting and drivers in this devoutly Catholic country are extra cautious lest they hit a nun.
In the small park near the Cancha, the main market, several youths are obviously high on something. One girl has fresh razor cuts on her arm, but refuses to go to a shelter because she won't give up her bottle of glue that she is sniffing. |
 |
"Sometimes the mothers make the little babies sniff glue to keep them from crying and then the babies get addicted," Sister Stephanie said.
Despite Amanecer' 5 success, she says the situation is getting worse as Cochabamba gets larger and Bolivia's economy fails to improve. "They are leaving home at earlier ages," she said. "When we first started we wouldn't see a child under 12. Now we are seeing them as young as six.
When the Bolivian government closed its tin mines south of Cochabamba in the mid-1980s, numbers of the unemployed miners flocked to Cochabamba to look for work. The jobless rate climbed to more than 20 percent, where it stays today.
Many of the miners turned to growing coca, which is grown for legal uses as well as for illegal processing into cocaine. But the U.S. has put great pressure on the Bolivian government in the past few years to close coca plantations in an attempt to stem the flow of cocaine to the States. This has caused economic hardship for many to multiply.
The coca growers, who are called cocaleros, have protested that their compensation of $1,650 each for loss of their crops is inadequate. Violent protests have occurred in the jungle region of Chapare near Cochabamba in recent months. The cocaleros also point out that not all coca production is bad; for centuries, Bolivians have chewed coca leaves or brewed coca tea as a mild stimulant and appetite suppressant.
Everything Amanecer has started has come because Sister Stephanie saw a need that was not being filled. She founded the trade school because the older boys could not qualify for government or private technical schools. "And besides they had to have birth certificates and they just don't have them," Sister Stephanie said. Amanecer also has formed a company that hires the boys for cleaning carpets and rugs in homes and businesses.
|
|
At first local governmental officials were suspicious, but now the police often take homeless children to one of the Amanecer shelters rather than to jail. Working with the homeless is not a daunting task for Sister Stephanie, who has been the administrator of a leper colony and worked with political prisoners during some of Bolivia's many governmental upheavals. It is obvious that the children love her responding perhaps to the first kind treatment in their lives. When she walks through one of the shelters happy, smiling children rush up to be touched and hugged. Sister Stephanie had a normal, happy childhood growing up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Born January 4, 1921, she was the oldest girl in a family of five boys and two girls. When she was in high school, she started volunteering to visit patients in a hospital and joined a club of young Catholic girls called the Little Flowers. The leader of the club was a Daughter of Charity nun named Sister Frances Finley who also worked with homeless people. |
"From childhood on up, I always wanted to give myself to God more completely," Sister Stephanie said. She joined the Daughters of Charity when she was 20 years old and has never regretted it. She was educated at St. Joseph's College in Emmitsburg, Maryland started out as a teacher working with poor children in Albany, New York.
She earned her master's degree in nursing from Boston College and became director of nursing at St. John's Hospital in Lowell, Massachusetts. Then she moved to Buffalo, New York as director of nursing and chief administrator at Sister's Hospital. She had been interested in foreign service and was hoping to go to China until unrest in that country prevented it.
Then in 1963, she was asked to go to Cochabamba to establish a school of nursing. She had never been out of the States and thought she was too old to learn the language.
But she gladly accepted the assignment which had come after Pope Pious XII had asked the Sisters of Charity and other communities to consider working in South America. "I've been happy every place," Sister Stephanie said. "I always feel if you put your whole heart in what you're doing you are going to enjoy it."
After establishing the nursing school, she was asked to take over as administrator of a leper colony in a rural area northeast of Cochabamba. "They were hidden away, outcasts with deformities. They had broken all ties with family," Sister Stephanie recalled. "All they wanted was to live in peace." She said she never felt uncomfortable or threatened. "They could tell someone cared for them."
| She returned to Cochabamba in 1976 and began working with Mothers' Clubs, which were formed to help mothers provide food and clothing for their children. It was during this time that she and Sister Ana Maria Branson began noticing children in jail. Talking with the youngsters the nuns learned that many of them were homeless and they decided to ask their Sisters of Charity community for money to rent an apartment to serve as an overnight shelter just to provide safety and food for the night.
Sister Ana Marie died in 1982 and Sister Stephanie struggled along until 1983 when the first permanent shelter was built to accommodate 57 boys. The shelter offered primary grade education and even a carpentry workshop using volunteers. Amanecer got a big break in 1983 when renowned Catholic author Henri Nouwen of Holland wrote about the program in his book called, Gracias: A Latin American Journal. |
 |
"I was happy to see at least one place and to meet one person who had responded to the inexhaustible needs of these children and had shown them that not everyone is an enemy," Nouwen wrote. Nouwen 's book triggered contributions that have helped the program grow.
A second shelter was built in 1986 followed by a third in 1987 to make a separate place for the younger boys ages 3 to 11. Albergue Madre de Dios opened its doors for women and young girls on August 13, 1988. A drop-in center for both boys and girls was dedicated in October 1988.
Amanecer took on a new, major responsibility in June 1991 at the request of a citizens' initiative. The buildings of Salomon Klein, a state orphanage in Cochabamba, were in total disrepair and had to be completely renovated. It is still the only home in Cochabamba which offers care for orphaned and abandoned children from birth to six years old. Amanecer receives some meager state funds of about $1 per day per child, but has to supplement them to keep the orphanage in operation.
 |
Amanecer encourages adoptions from Salomon Klein and the facility has been averaging about 40 per year, although the process is long and complicated. "An adopting family has to go to an agency in its own country that has a contract with Bolivia," Sister Stephanie said. The process can take up t6 two years and cost $10,000 to $20,000. A child must be declared abandoned for three months before it is eligible for adoption. Many newborns are brought to the home by police who have found them under bridges or in similar out-of-the-way locations. Sister Stephanie is constantly coming up with creative ways to help the children of the streets. For instance, in 1987 Amanecer opened St. Vincent de Paul School, the only institution of its type in Bolivia. St. Vincent's is a public school, but it has different operating rules. Street children are accepted at almost anytime of the year. They receive individualized instruction and may come and go without penalty because life on the streets is uncertain. Children with learning disabilities and behavior problems are accepted. The goal is to help street children acclimate to a classroom setting so they will be accepted in normal schools. |
Religious instruction is obligatory, but Sister Stephanie said, "We put more emphasis on the fact that religion is not just something you get in the classroom. It is a way to live. If they learn that God loves you and because God loves others he wants me to be good to them. To me, that is enough. Love God; love your neighbor." Amanecer is dedicated to trying to give street children a well-rounded outlook. Playing a musical instrument is encouraged and the children have performed. They also participate in individual and group psychological therapy sessions with qualified personnel.
Trade schools
Within a few short years, Sister Stephanie had recognized that street children would never break the cycle of poverty unless they could find meaningful employment. That was when she decided to establish the trade school. "We want them to leave the program with the skills necessary to enable them to earn a living through honest work," she said. Metal working was the first skill to be taught followed by agriculture and gardening, carpentry, construction, electricity, plumbing and baking. The trade school underwrote all of its costs for the first time in 1997.
Medical attention is also an important part of Amanecer' 5 program. Stab wounds and infections are treated immediately and most children receive a physical examination. In 1997, Sister Stephanie and her staff arranged for lab work on all residents to determine the presence of Chagas, a disease caused by a beetle that resides in adobe. Those found to have symptoms were treated.
Volunteers
Volunteers from 14 countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Holland, have found their way to Cochabamba to work with Amanecer over the years, but an effort headed by a dentist from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin USA has been especially faithful. Dr. David Crane started organizing groups of dentists to travel to work with Amanecer residents in 1986 when his cousin, a Maryknoll Brothers missionary named Father Gordon Fritz, was stationed in Cochabamba. Crane had treated Father Fritz's teeth on home visits and Fritz described the tremendous need for dental care in Bolivia. Finally, Crane visited Fritz in Cochabamba and he was hooked.
| "My first impression was a very poor country with very nice people who could use some help," Crane said. Since 1986, he has traveled to Cochabamba twice a year. Every October, he goes down for a week to 10 days and works with a dental program. Then each March he leads a group of 15 to 40 dentists for a two-week volunteer period. His organization has started five dental clinics in Cochabamba and one in cooperation with the city's Rotaract Club. |  |
Dr. Clyde Horstmann, a Charlotte, North Carolina dentist, became one of Crane's recruits in the late 1980s and started taking a contingent of dentists and helpers from the Charlotte area with him every year.
Charlotte orthodontist Dr. Ernie Rider made his first trip to Cochabamba in 1991 and immediately was captivated by the medical mission work.
After several trips to work on the teeth of orphans and street children, Rider said, "I decided we were working on the wrong end of the equation. We were extracting teeth instead of making sure the children received fluoride treatments."
Rider came back to Charlotte and created the Global Health Service, a foundation dedicated to worldwide fluoridation. Then the new organization, in cooperation with the Cochabamba Rotary Club and the Downtown Charlotte Rotary Club, began providing a year-round fluoride rinse program for the orphans and street children of Cochabamba. Global Health Service has continued the project and in 1998 provided fluoride for over 10,000 Bolivian children, purchased an x-ray machine for one of the orphanages and a steam vacuum for Amanecer.
Rider's Global Health Service has worked in cooperation with Rotary District 7680, The Rotary Foundation, Pan American Health Organization and the Bolivian government to implement a salt fluoridation project for Bolivia which requires the addition of fluoride to salt to fight dental decay. The government passed a new law in January 1998 mandating the addition of fluoride to salt for distribution throughout the country.
Rider and members of the Cochabamba Rotaract Club, made up of 18 to 30-year-old men and women, are now working toward adding a mobile dental clinic in the Vacas community east of Cochabamba.
The 130-member Dilworth Rotary Club in Charlotte collects contributions for Amanecer every week and also has worked with the six Cochabamba Rotary clubs to create a burn center in the local hospital and to build toilet facilities in several rural villages outside Cochabamba.
"Volunteering with Amanecer is about the most meaningful thing I've done in my life," said John Barringer of Charlotte, president of the Dilworth club in 1996-97 and a veteran of two trips to work with the orphans and street children of Cochabamba.
There is no question that Amanecer has been a success. The 14 boys who took shelter on that first night in April 1981 has grown to more than 1,200. But the question now is how long can Sister Stephanie and her staff sustain the program.
"We live one day at a time," she said. "We have no assurance of the future. We must depend upon individuals and organizations to keep letting us know that they want this work carried on." Recognizing that she is not going to live forever, Sister Stephanie has started training a Bolivian native Sister of Charity to succeed her some day.
Sister Stephanie has received several awards for her work with street children, including the Ambassador's Award for Distinguished Service from the U.S. Embassy in La Paz. A special guest at several world conferences on the problems of children, she is helping set up a program similar to Amanecer in Honduras.
But her goal has never been to try to establish some kind of dynasty for working with street children. "All along we are trying to get them back with their families," she said. "We make visits to the homes and we try to work with the families in every way we can. We even offer assistance to the families and give them short-term loans in some cases."
Sister Stephanie goes back home to Philadelphia every five years for a two-month visit with her family, but she is always eager to get back to Cochabamba and her ninos de calle. "I have to admit it; I belong here," she said.
(All photographs by Dr. Ernest A. Rider, 704-366-8936, 3535 Randolph Rd., Charlotte, N.C. 28211. E-mail: orthoear@earthlink.net.)
Marion A. Ellis is a free-lance writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, who traveled to Cochabamba in May 1998 to research this story. A University of Missouri Journalism graduate and a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with The Charlotte Observer, he is author or co-author of eight books including the official history of NationsBank, The Story of NationsBank, and an upcoming biography of former N.C. Governor and U.S. Senator Terry Sanford being published by Duke University Press in the spring of 1999. He also has written biographies of philanthropist Frank H. Kenan of Durham, North Carolina, and Fred Kirby II, chairman of the Alleghany Corp. of NY, NY. Mr. Ellis can be reached at 704-364-4344 6825 Alexander Rd., Charlotte, N.C., 28270, or by e-mail:mae68@charlotte.infi.net