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| Yosilí and William stand near the dangerous hole that once threatened their health and safety. |
Danger surrounds the residents of El Limón. Just 25 miles north of Guatemala City, the border settlement clings to sheer, rugged hillsides – an ironic location for a resettlement built by families whose homes were leveled in a 1976 earthquake and has since become a refuge for those who fled 1998’s Hurricane Mitch.
Concrete shacks descend like uneven, collapsing steps down the steep slopes, occasionally crumbling under pressure, and thick vegetation sprouts up through cracks in pavement.
Until recently, though, there wasn’t much pavement in El Limón, nor were there paved culverts to divert sewage away from homes and cisterns. Instead, wastewater filled shallow dirt canals before mucking up unpaved roads or leaching into wells and garbage heaps littering the hillsides.
Lying in Wait
Encamped deep within these precarious surroundings is the Ordoñez family: 10-year-old sponsored child, Yosilí, her parents and seven siblings. They live in a crudely built house with a dirt floor and little else aside from two sagging beds.
Like most families in the area, the Ordoñezes had a hand-dug pit latrine, a six-foot-deep hole with nothing more than an open-ended plastic barrel for a toilet seat.
Surrounded by obvious risks like exposed waste and landslides, the crude latrine went largely ignored. Yosilí and her siblings even played around the latrine’s barrel seat while their mother, Albertina, sold tortillas in the city during the day and their father, Bonifacio, worked long hours as a janitor.
Leaving Yosilí to care for her younger siblings for eight hours most days, neither parent was around when she fell into the rank pit.
While playing with her toddler sister, Dulce, Yosilí lost her balance and fell backward through the barrel. “Though the water [sic] only reached my knees, I was scared because I thought I was going to drown. Little by little, I was caving in and started to shout,” she clearly recalls.
Yosilí’s 6-year-old brother, William, overheard her muffled cries for help and came to the rescue. Anchoring a rope to a nearby post, he extended the line to his sister, but the post snapped and Yosilí remained trapped for a half hour.
“I thought I was going to die and that I would never see my mom and siblings again,” recounted Yosilí. William eventually secured the rope to a tree and told his sister to tie the other end around her waist before pulling her to safety.
Covering Ground
Accidents like Yosilí’s were fairly common in El Limón before the community began installing a central sewer system this past year. Even William had fallen into the pit after a rotten scrap of wood his parents placed over the opening broke underneath him.
Families who could afford the $127 cost of connection and materials were quick to build safer, more sanitary latrines. However, desperately poor families like Yosilí’s could never hope to cover costs almost twice their average monthly income.
All too familiar with the dangerous health risks Yosilí and her family faced due to their poor sanitary facilities, Children International’s field project in Guatemala City covered the costs to build a safer bathroom for the family.
Complete with a flushing toilet, the enclosed cinder-block addition protects the children and their parents from bad weather while providing greater privacy.
Yosilí and her siblings now play in their yard without fear. Safely separated from infiltrating parasites and deadly diseases, they have a better chance of growing healthier and avoiding the traps of poverty. |
