Housing

I went to see my friend Doña Beti (doña (pronounced don-ya) is the name that goes before every woman’s name to show respect) about making me a cake for my buddy’s birthday. (she is pictured here on the far right side).But here in Bolivia, just like in many fine countries in the world, conversation kind of wanders around what you came for, and you tend to go to it for awhile and then talk about other stuff, then come back (often at the gringos promptingJ). Anyway, in the midst of the meandering, it came up that Dona Beti is moving. Which is a sad thing, because she’s one of the crucial social hubs in the barrio and she keeps things moving, and even though she’s only moving about six blocks away, it will really change things. I asked her why and she said she’s been renting this place and has found another place to live “casero” (which means the shack or whatever is on the property is not suitable enough to actually charge rent, so you make an agreement with the owner to take care of the property, usually for one year at a time for no cost).
She then talked about looking into buying a lot here, and she said there are some in the next neighborhood over (which is less developed than ours and has more open spaces) for $3500. At first I thought she was talking about bolivianos (which would still be $500 or so), but she actually meant dollars. She said they would probably give it to her on credit. She said her friend bought one awhile back for $100. With the arrival of several thousands of people to Santa Cruz each year, housing prices have sky-rocketed. My friend whose grandparents live just off the first ring in the center of the city told me their house is worth $100,000. I’m sure her grandparents settled there when there was nothing but forest beyond the first ring and probably everything including the construction of the house cost less than $100. In the 1960s when MCC was setting up its office, everyone told them they were out in the middle of nowhere and that people would never be able to find it (just between the 1st and 2nd ring). Now, their property is right smack in the middle of it all (and with five buildings on it and a nice piece of yard in the middle, I’m sure it’s worth several hundred thousand dollars now)..
Of course this means good things for people like Loida’s grandparents and MCC and other visionary folks who were able to buy up early and could cash out now. But for Doña Beti, who has lived and worked in this neighborhood for the past twenty years, the dream of owning her own place is just slipping out of grasp. The really crazy thing for me to think about is that during the three years that Chris and I are here in Bolivia, I’ve calculated that all the money we have saved and smartly (with the advice of my brother-in-law/financial advisor) invested will make us about half of what it costs to buy one of those lots. We get paid just for being rich. My first reaction to that is the easiest “well, could we give her all we’re going to make on the interest.” Which would leave us still rich, having dona beti still paying a lifetime of payments on her place, a whole neighborhood in line for another one of our generous donations and a system that still makes rich richer and poor poorer. We have got to think of something better. Any ideas?

Reproductive Rights?

The photo is of Ana Maria, one of the mom’s in the nutrition group we work with. She is posed with her fifth child, the only girl. Ana Maria is always looking for money. Her kids walk around with mismatched flip-flops and snotty noses. Her husband works harvesting wood and comes home about twice a month and leaves her with about $6 USD until he comes back the next time. Sister Benedicta, one of the nuns who works at the chapel who sponsers the program, apparently would often bring up birth control in her visits to Maria when she had four children, proposing that perhaps four was enough. One of Ana Maria’s sons died last year of a flu that just wouldn’t go away. And before the sister could get her a date with a doctor to discuss some kind of birth control, Ana Maria was once again pregnant. This time sister benedicta was not going to let it happen again. She went and visited with Ana Maria in the hospital and talked with the nurses, who handed over some papers with a date to come back for an IUD.
But it still wasn’t quite so easy. The doctor had operated on a hernia that Ana Maria had aquired during her pregnancy, and according to Ana Maria, just tied her tubes while he was at it, so in her opinion, she didn’t need to get an IUD. Benedicta just assumed that she was lying because she was afraid of the IUD, so I went one day and visited her. “Oh, I’ve had one before,” she said, “it’s just that it gave me really bad cramps and I couldn’t go to my monthly check-ups because we lived out in the country. The doctor told me he tied my tubes, I don’t know why I’d need an IUD also.” The sister was not convinced. Her papers said come back in a month for the IUD, nothing else appeared in the care instructions. It is rumored that in order to do tube tying, the doctor must get the signature of the woman’s husband (which never happened). So, they took a trip to the doctor’s office to get the story. Apparently the doctor, upon hearing about Ana Maria’s life, took advantage of the fact that he was so close in the hernia surgery and just tied her all up at once. “And the papers, you ask”. Well, apparently the nurses filled them out upon talking with the Sister, unaware of what the doctor had already done.
I’m sure this story is not all that rare here, and in other places in the world. We tend to think about poverty and overpopulation being an issue of lack of access and bad information. But here, three blocks away from my sand filled street, there is a clinic that puts in IUDs for free. It seems though, there are problems in the administration, because I have heard horror stories of IUDs here, in one case a baby born with a T imprinted on his face (which I cannot confirm)! Anyway, I wonder what we should do when a mother is well informed of her options and still wants to continue having children. In the long run, I think the doctor did Ana Maria a favor. But in such a shady process of just using the power he had as a surgeon to decide the future of Ana Maria and her family, I’m not convinced it was the right thing. When it comes to a person’s will over their life, I don’t think it matters if it’s a doctor a nun or a northamerican volunteer with the best intentions, it isn’t our job to decide the fate of others.