My background has given me different perspectives to evaluate the poverty that I see every day. I am originally from Mexico City, where although I was not poor I was surrounded by poverty. Now the city itself is dying--the population of the city increases by l000 people a day, to breathe the air is the equivalent of smoking 5 packs of cigarettes a day. From Mexico I went to Sweden, where everyone is taken care of, from the cradle to the grave. Parents of newborn children get one year paid leave of absence from their work, everyone from the garbage collector to the president of Volvo gets six weeks paid vacation yearly. Now for the last 20 years I have been in Eugene, a city that has wealth and abundance, but also has poverty. In fact, I feel embarrassed when I describe my work to my Swedish friends, and they say "Oh, that sounds like Sweden in the l9th century."
I am the school nurse at Whiteaker, considered to be the most disadvantaged school in the state of Oregon. What this means is that all children suffer economic hardships; of the present student population of 190, 60 are homeless, 75 are recent immigrants, and the remaining are children whose parents are struggling to survive. Each year the situation seems to get worse rather than better. At the federal level, with cuts in food stamp program, more children are hungry. At the local level, there is a desperate need for affordable housing. Previously, it was common that children could be homeless for 2-3 months, now I see children that have been homeless 2-3 years. This means that the children have no idea about any routines, about any normality, about ownership of belonging -- you have a jacket, you drop it, wander to the next place, and then freeze or find something to wear. The children move from a car, to a hotel on 6th or 7th Street with names like "The Executive House", "Blue Moon", then get into the church shelter system that just opened up this week for a month, then move to transitional housing for 6 weeks, and then begin the routine again.
Who are these children? An example would be a single mom, with a 7 year old, 6 year old; when her twins were born this summer, the father disappeared, and she is now living in a pickup. The family troops into my room in the morning as soon as I get to school at 7:30, they shower, eat breakfast, and then the mother spends the day helping the school in such tasks as cutting 30,000 Campbell soup labels so that we can get 4 volleyballs. She feels the time goes by quickly as she is around people, her babies are warm, and she is contributing in a small way to help the school.
Another family: the father has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, the mother is pregnant, with 3 children living in a garage. Her children take jackets and blankets from my little clothes closet (known as "JC Maxine's") so they can be warm; the mother asks me if I will be able take care of her children when she goes to the hospital to deliver the baby as she knows no one else who she can entrust her children with.
The background of these children vary. The ones I feel the saddest for are those I call "the lost generation." These are children who are constantly moving--they come from Florida, Colorado, Wyoming, California, they are constantly searching. Usually it is a parent, fleeing something, the law or an abusive spouse, and they move from place to place. The children never stay in a place for very long, so they can never bond with teachers, or make friends, and about the only person they get to know is the school nurse, because from day one they are suffering from headaches, stomachaches, and general stress.
The other children, the immigrant children, have come here mainly from Central America and Mexico, looking for a more prosperous life. These are eager and enthusiastic learners, the parents take 2 and 3 jobs, hard working, striving, the children come to school with pressed jeans, neat, clean, ready to learn. but have a difficult time financially, and are also becoming second class citizens because they are shut out from the society. Without proper social security numbers they have difficulty renting apartments, they do not qualify for the Oregon Health plan.
The immigrant population is growing rapidly in Eugene and will continue to do so. The INS can put as many border guards as they want, and as many barriers, but no matter what, as long as the great disparity between the wealth of the United States, and the poverty and overpopulation of Latin America continues to exist, people will come. As long as we as a society want to pay so called "reasonable prices" for tomatoes, apples, for Firecrest chickens, then there will be jobs for immigrants because no one else will do them. Right now Mexican teenagers and women and men are picking the grapes for wine on our tables; at the end of October starts the mistletoe season, where the women are paid $.08 per mistletoe bunch, and then sold in Paris for $30.00.
The other children, the homeless and those on the margin of society suffer daily hardships. One child loses her hair every time she becomes homeless so she gets huge bald spots all over her head. This weekend she and her mother are vacating an apartment, and the girl is crying because her hair finally looks nice -- but ahe knows she will start losing it again. A brother and sister who have been camping all summer are taking antidepressants -- they do not need antidepressants they need stability, structure, longer school days, longer school year.
What I see as a nurse is the obvious: scabies, head lice, impetigo, -- because of lack of adequate hygiene -- but can I send these children home, when there is no water, when head lice shampoo costs $11.90 a bottle, which means a decision to eat or have a clean head. At the beginning of the school year there is always a mad rush to immunize children who are 5 years old and never been immunized, to get clothes for children, to assure the new PE teacher that somehow the 3 page longlist of children that he has written down for me who do not have proper tennis shoes will be getting them even if it means that some kids may look like clowns with shoes that I have found for them that are too big. Or maybe the PE teacher would like to look at their feet: many children are without socks, in plastic shoes, and they get fungal and bacterial infections, and can barely walk sometimes. Then, the other ailment, the decayed teeth, the abscesses, the children who are so excited to go on a so called field trip to a dentist who has volunteered to help children. Once the children have seen a dentist, and the constant headaches disappear, they beg to return to the dentist, and when I tell them they will need to wait a month when the dentist volunteers again, they feel they cannot wait. Then I have to remind them that thay have lived in pain for 5 years, 6 years, what is one more month--sometimes it takes a year to finally restore all the decay in a child's mouth. Or the children who struggle seeing the blackboard, until I find community organizations that will sponsor a child for an eye exam and glasses. The list goes on, with ear infections, bronchitis, that should not be problems, but when you are on the fringes of society, or an immigrant, you have difficulty resolving health care issues.
What can we do as a community to help children? The Talmud states that "goodwill is the mightiest practical force in the universe." We can vote to support school budgets, advocate for better and more equitable housing, We are increasingly becoming a stratified society where the rich are becoming richer, and the poor are suffering; more ofrten than not, those suffering poor are children. By our daily actions, simplifying our life a little, we can help others.
To end, I would like to quote from the "Wisdom of the Jewish Sages" by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
"We are here to do,
And through doing to learn
And through learning to know;
And through knowing to experience wonder
And through wonder to attain wisdom;
And through wisdom to find simplicity;
And through simplicity to give attention;
And through attention
to see what needs to be done."