Frana. She is four years old and has a huge personality. She loves
to walk around with her little black purse and pretend like she’s
grown up. She can’t stop laughing when she’s playing with her blue
Disney Princess ball and it hits her in the head, and she is
constantly brushing the dirt off of it from the dusty Nicaraguan
roads. She loves oreos and juice boxes.
works in the dump.
Yes, you
read that right-she works
in the dump.
other day we filled up our truck with our trash and drove to the dump
to drop it off and stay awhile to visit with the people who live
and/or work there. This is the second dump we’ve been to on the Race
(check out my previous blog, Peru Recap, to read about our first
visit in Peru), so I wasn’t completely shocked to see people digging
through garbage with their bare hands or that people live in
cardboard houses next to the trash. I expected the smells and the
dirt and the shame that inevitably fills the dump workers’ eyes when
they first look at you. It didn’t surprise me anymore when a group
of people went running to the dump truck that drove in to drop off a
new load of trash.
I didn’t expect was to meet Frana, a four year old that
simultaneously stole my heart with her smile and broke my heart with
her circumstances.
The
first thing I noticed when I met Frana was that she had her own
trash-picking tool. The dump workers use a long stick, usually about
5-7 feet long, with a sort of hook at the end to sort through the
trash and pick up things that might be valuable. Frana has her own
stick-pick just her size. It isn’t her mom’s stick that she just
plays around with. It’s her own, made just for her.
it isn’t just Frana. Her eight year old sister, Jennifer, and six
and ten year old cousins, Juan Carlos and Juana, also have their own
sticks and work at the dump. The older kids sometimes get to go to
school, but they have to take turns as to who gets to go to school
and who has to work at the dump each day.
You
see, working at the dump is a family business for them. Their
parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents-they all work at
the dump. So Frana is growing up thinking this is normal, believing
from the very beginning that this is who she is-someone who digs
through trash and dirt and waste.
the moment I saw Frana, I saw her as someone different. I saw her as
a beautiful child of God, a princess in His kingdom. When I told
her she was a princess like the princesses on her ball, she just
looked at me with a question in her eyes, doubting that she could
ever be royalty.
And
thus begins the cycle of being a dump worker for Frana. At four
years old, she doesn’t believe that she is anything else, that she
can be anything else.
My
heart breaks for Frana. I pray that somehow the time we spent with
her, the words we spoke to her, brought life and a new perspective.
That maybe now there’s at least a little glimmer of hope in her that
her life can be different, that she is more than a dump worker.
for Frana and her family. Pray for safety and protection as they dig
through who knows what. Pray that they would be able to find a way
out and find another way to provide for their families. Pray that
they would know their worth and their identity in Christ. Pray that
the cycle of poverty and hopelessness would be broken and that Frana
and the other kids would have hope and opportunities for a different
future than what is laid out before them right now.
