odysseyone

Lima is an enigma weather-wise, a city that is in the tropics yet is cold most of the year and a place where it almost never rains. It’s a city that plays with your senses as it is foggy almost all of the time and while you anticipate rain because the sky is overcast, it never comes. Seeing a star is a rarity in Lima because of the constant fog but I saw one and it touched my heart.

Estrella is a 12 year old girl from Lima whose name translates as ‘star’ in Spanish. Estrella and her small family of three are people we as Westerners rarely come across in our day to day lives. They are just a few of the tens of millions of people worldwide who are considered the poorest of the global population, living on around $2 a day. While these statistics are familiar to us because we hear about it in the news on a regular basis, the reality of a life lived like this is very foreign. Justin and I were able to spend a day with Estrella and her mother and were privileged in this short time to see life through their eyes.

Estrella is our Compassion sponsor child in Lima, the capital of Peru. I have been sponsoring her for about four years so to have the chance to meet in person was very exciting. Estrella lives with her extended family in Callao, the poorest and most dangerous suburb in Lima. In their small house - owned by Estrella’s grandmother – lives 13 family members. Estrella and her mother share the bottom bed of a bunk and her 14 year old brother sleeps on the top. This living situation is not uncommon in this suburb of Lima. The normal sponsor visit involves a tour of the child’s Compassion project and sometimes a visit to their home as well, but because Callao is so dangerous we met at a local zoo instead.

Our translator Maritza asked me why I had chosen Estrella as my sponsor child. I had two reasons and I guess the first is a rather selfish one- I chose a child in a country I thought I might like to visit one day. The second reason was because she had a huge smile in the photo. I wanted to sponsor a child who was a little older as the younger ones are often snapped up because they are cute. I was very taken by Estrella’s smile, which I thought was intriguing considering she must have been very underprivileged to be accepted into the program. I found out she waited two years until I sponsored her. I haven’t seen a photo of her in a long time so I didn’t recognise her when we met at the zoo gate until she smiled and I knew that smile instantly. Maritza had warned us not to be worried if Estrella is shy in the beginning as the attention is overwhelming but she was pretty happy to be at the zoo instead of school and was at ease with us from the beginning. She is learning English in school so she was able to practice a couple of words with us. I was really impressed with how she handled a visit from complete strangers, considering she and her mum only found out a day earlier that we were in the city to see them.

As the family has very little money I knew their education and exposure to the world and trends in things like food, fashion and entertainment would likely be limited, but I was unprepared for how limited it was. We showed Estrella on a map where Australia was and told her a lot about our country as she knew nothing of it. She is a quick learner and was able to identify Australian animals in the zoo. She also asked intelligent questions about things like what air travel is like and if Australia has the same time and seasons. We let Estrella choose what we ate for lunch and because her favourite food is chicken, Maritza suggested we go to the nearby KFC. I thought maybe we could go somewhere a little more special - somewhere the family couldn’t afford to go themselves - and had a huge reality check when Maritza had to explain to Estrella and her mother that KFC was an American chicken restaurant. I didn’t know whether to pity them because they had never heard of KFC or be jealous that they haven’t yet been exposed to such bad food!

The KFC lunch was a real treat for them and I think they thought it was Christmas when we pulled out some small gifts as well. We gave Estrella small souvenirs from London and Hollywood, which feel a little flat because she has no idea where these places are but was still very grateful. I brought her mother a very small gift of toiletries worth just a few dollars and was very humbled at what I thought was an overreaction to such a small gift. In Australia, you would never give a gift worth so little to someone and get such a response of excitement and gratitude.

Estrella’s mother was supposed to stay just a couple hours at the zoo then go to work. It meant a lot to us when she decided to stay on for the afternoon because for her to take a day off work meant she would earn no money that day. She recognised it was a very special day for her daughter and she wanted to spend it with her. It was also a good break for her, a very short period of time when she was able to forget about work and supporting her family.

Estrella’s mother works 14 hour days, six days a week for very little pay. She sells photocopies of school textbooks outside a school in Callao. When school is in recess, she often gets odd jobs at the school like painting walls. Their living situation with the extended family works well with her long working hours as Estrella’s grandmother and other relatives help care for her after school. On her day off, Estrella’s mother does housework and teaches Sunday school. Estrella’s mum said the Compassion project has made a big difference because Estrella receives a meal each day and gets help with her homework. She is one of more than 200 children who go to this project in Callao. Each one of them is working through a textbook that lasts the lifetime of their time at the project and helps them to analyse their personalities and behaviours and think about what they can do to contribute to their community when they graduate. It has also had an impact on the family spiritually. Before she joined the Compassion project, Estrella didn’t go to church but she now attends regularly along with her mother.

It’s exciting to see any child dream big, but especially a child from an underprivileged background. When we asked Estrella what she wants to do when she finishes high school she said she wants to be a doctor. This was a great relief because Maritza had told us the trend at the moment is for the girls to say they want to be a traffic policewoman. We have seen plenty of them in Peru and they don’t seem to be working too hard so I’m not sure what is the attraction with this job.

Estrella’s mother has dreams too but as a single mother supporting two teenagers, they are difficult to fulfil. She asked us to pray that she can find more work so they can leave the neighbourhood where she also grew up. There is a lot of drug and gun crime in Callao and she would like her children to live in a safer neighbourhood especially her son, who will finish school soon and has no idea what he wants to do. He is a good kid but she fears he might get caught up in crime because it is rife in the neighbourhood.

The Compassion director showed us Estrella’s file from the project, which was a little strange as checking over a child’s school and medical report is foreign to us. Included in the file was a record of the gifts she has bought with the sponsorship money as well as my letters, which I was very embarrassed to see as it was pretty irregular. It was then humbling and a little tear-jerking to have the director thank us for our sponsorship and the interest we have shown in Estrella and she assured us we are making a big difference in this child’s life.

We had no expectations before the visit and it wasn’t until the day we met Estrella and her mother that we really understood the enormity of having an influence in the life of a family in Lima, a city which is very foreign to us. If you have a sponsor child, I would like to really encourage you to see them as ‘real’ people and get involved in their lives via letters. These children are the future of their countries and with encouragement to dream big and having the confidence and prayers of their sponsors behind them, they can be the catalyst to positive change in their countries.