A Closer Look

Sandra (fake name, same girl from the other posts) was the first girl that I met who was involved in prostitution. Lucy first told me that she started working the streets because her mother encouraged it, she wanted her daughter to work because she couldn't afford to send her to school. When I first heard this I had such a hard time understanding how someone could do this to their daughter, of course I still have a hard time imagining the amount of desperation that someone must be in order to do such a thing. Even though I know I will never comprehend fully, the economic burden, the cultural acceptance, the natural instincts of doing anything to survive, I understand a little more now.

The other morning Lucy called me and told me that three girls were arrested last night for "smoking" and they had to spend one night in jail. She wanted to go and bail the girls and talk to them about how the police treated them. When I arrived there with Ruben and my friend Camielle, two of the girls were already gone, they were bailed earlier that day by an aunt, and the last girl Sandra was just getting ready to leave with her mother when we arrived.

When Sandra and her mother were outside of the prison it was time to decide where they were going to go next. Now logically for us we would assume the mother and daughter would go home, but for this child, she really has three or more homes. She could return to San Bartolo with Lucy where she could study, she could go back to the streets and live with her pimp or rent a room with a friend, or she could go and live with her mother.

Of course I would prefer San Bartolo, but in their eyes this option was out of the question. Sandra never felt like she fit in there, and her mother kept saying she has "problems" in San Bartolo. The real fight was if Sandra was going to go back to the streets or go with her mother. Unintentionally, I was in the middle of fight between a mother and daughter. Sandra wasn't saying much, but her mother kept telling me that she wants to be able to take her daughter home with her but she just doesn't have the money. She works so hard selling candies in the streets but she doesn't have enough money to support her daughter. She can't saying to me, miss please help, please help me and my daughter I don't know what to do anymore.

Hearing those things was so hard, I didn't know how to react. Giving them money would just be a quick fix, it would only help them for a little while, but they really need to know how to help themselves long term. This girl needed to understand that it was important to stay in school, that would be the only way that she would be able to get herself out of this situation. Prostituting is making money now but she can't do it forever. She needs help with an alternative that she can sustain herself and her family. Something that she can take pride in. When I ask girls to tell me a little bit about their work, they say I'm embarrassed a lot of times. Why should a 14 year old girl have to go through such a thing?

This day, I got a little bit deeper into the problem, and the deeper that I get the more complicated and tragic it becomes.