2007 Essay Contest - 1st Place Essay - Age 18-22

The Haunting Faces of Child Labor

 

By Melissa Sherry - Age 22
Columbus, OH

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.