visiting the campo.....

So I wish I had been keeping a blog early, I think it is a really good way to keep in touch and give people a glimpse into my life here. It is also a good way for me to reflect. So anyways, now I want to share a little bit about the situations that some of the girls who live in the home come from.
One of the projects that Maria Elena wants me to work on is connecting the families of the girls to the home more. Some of the girls are orphans, but most have some sort of a family. The reason that they are living in the home is that for some reason or another they cannot live at home or their home is unsafe. All of the girls come from situations of poverty, some more extreme than others. Many of the girls were born to young mothers who were unable to care for them. I will share a few stories and pictures with you from recent visits to some of the girls’ families.
Jerdalin, 5, and Yomaira, 12, are two sisters who live at the home. They both have very sweet dispositions and I love to be around them. We went to visit their family in the campo (country). The reason that Jerdalin and Yomaira are in the home is that there family lives in a situation of poverty and because they are way out in the campo the girls cannot attend school if they live at home. It was obvious during our visit that the family was very loving and that were it not for the their situation that the girls should live at home with their family. Jerdalin’s feet never even touched the ground when we were there, her dad and brothers took turns carrying her around like a little princess.
While we were in the campo we visited another family that has 2 daughters and wants help from the home. Like Jerdalin and Yomaira’s family the family was living in poverty and the girls were unable to attend school. The sisters were 7 and 5 years old and were very sweet. I sat down and began to Nayeli, the 7 year-old. Before I knew it a small group of children from the campo had gathered around to listen. They were eager to listen and I though what a waste, all these young minds yearning to be nurtured that are wasted because they can’t go to school…. Maria Elena wanted to accept the girls into the home but we were faced with a problem. The girls’ parents were Haitian and neither or them had birth certificates. Maria Elena does not like to take children without birth certificates because declaring children later on can be difficult. Without a birth certificate a child cannot go to school past the 8th grade. Additionally, being Haitian was going to make getting the birth certificate even more difficult if not impossible (talking about being Haitian in the Dominican Republic is enough for a whole other blog entry)