A week ago, a group of six leaders from the Villa’s Scouts program, Sonia, Rosi, Claudia, Pamela, Tatiana, and I, met early Sunday morning in a nearby suburb of Cochabamba. In our weekly leaders’ meeting, Sonia had told us about a project that she had been working with for the past year in Quillacollo that gives support to street children in the area. One of the biggest problems in starting programs like these to help such children, she said, was that public officials do not know how many or in what areas these children live. She asked for our help in taking a census of these children to determine where aid could best be utilized.
So, at seven on Sunday morning, I boarded a bus with Claudia to take the hour trip to Quillacollo. During the journey, Claudia and I practiced the questions that we were to ask “street children” between five and eighteen years old. Even after we arrived in Plaza Bolívar and were briefed on how to identify and interview the children, I had my doubts about who was a proper candidate to solicit. Sonia told me not to worry and to use my best judgment.
We then divided up into small groups and headed toward different sections of Quillacollo. With my twenty-two interviews and coupons (for the children to receive free bananas and milk in the main plaza), I headed toward the central marketplace. When we arrived, Claudia, Pamela, and I split up and agreed to meet back in four hours. I began scanning the area for prospective interviewees and quickly located a young girl selling fruit on the side of the street. I approached her, introduced myself, explained what I was doing, and asked if she would participate. At first she seemed confused and hesitant, even after I told her that she could get free bananas and milk. But when I told her that I also had some gum for all those who helped out, she immediately agreed. I admit, my method may have been a little coercive, but hopefully the anonymous information that she provided me with outweighs any adverse affects she may have felt.
We began the interview, and she told me that she was seven years old and helped her mother in the market on weekends. When I asked her where her mother was, she just waved in a general direction. Her three younger brothers were playing nearby in the plaza but without adult supervision. The interview sheet required me to ask some personal questions about her family, such as if she had experienced physical abuse at home. However, I did not feel comfortable posing such questions to a child who I had just met, and so for the rest of the day I avoided the more invasive interrogatories. I thought if the goal of the census was to identify the quantity and location of street and troubled children, the mere fact that a seven-year-old girl was alone and selling fruit in the street was enough information to qualify her as someone who needed aid. I completed the interview by talking about school and her favorite subjects and giving her the food coupon and gum. She seemed very pleased to receive both and even more excited when I told her that the gum was from the United States. I thanked her for her time and wished her well in her vending.
Glad to have the first interview out of the way and without any problems, I continued searching for more young children. I found three brothers playing on a curb nearby and asked if they wanted to participate. In unison, they replied, “Sí, sí, yo primero.” We finally agreed that we would go in chronological order of age, starting with the youngest. After the first interview, in which the six-year-old boy told me that he sold vegetables in the street on Sundays with his brothers, the next two were straightforward. The oldest brother (10) mentioned that their father had abandoned the family when he was five, and that their mother and grandmother cared for them. The regrettable circumstance of one-parent households is an all too common reality in Bolivia, and as the children talked about the absence of a father in their own lives, they did so as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Once again, I tried to end the interview with a short chat about something light. The boys mentioned Spider Man, so I rolled with it and talked about villains and friends of the superhero. The youngest insisted on acting out Spider Man’s web slinging attacks, and we all had a laugh when he fell into a pile of papayas. I gave the children the compensation for the interview and told them to keep practicing their Spider Man moves.
Four down and feeling good about my quick progression, I continued around the market square and encountered a ten-year-old girl selling peaches and oranges. In between sells, she agreed to the interview, and we started with some basic questions. But about half-way through the interview, a man to her right starting asking me questions about when and how the children of Quillacollo would receive benefits from this project. I told him that I honestly did not know but that it was first necessary to have an idea of how many and what kind of children lived in need. Not impressed with the offer of bananas and milk in the central plaza, he said that I needed to leave. I asked him, “Why, are you her father?” He replied, “Yes, and I would like you to leave now.” So I asked the girl, “Is this your father?” She told me yes, and I walked away. Perhaps it was the fact that I am a gringo, or more exactly, with my interviewer badge, glasses, and pale skin I looked like one of the many Mormon converters in Cochabamba. Regardless, the information from this interview was destined for the trashcan.
Luckily, I did not have any more experiences as confrontational as this one. Four or five indigenous women refused my offers for interviews with their children, but I had expected to get rejected more times than I did. In addition, I had some interesting encounters. I interviewed a Quechua woman and her six-year-old son, me only speaking Spanish to her and her only speaking Quechua to me. Although I know the whole of two words in this native tongue, I was able to conduct a fairly comprehensible interview through gestures and support from the child. In another situation, I walked five blocks with a nine-year-old boy pushing a loaded cart while asking him questions about his family life. In yet another instance, I went to a videogame arcade and conducted two interviews with boys who were battling each other in Mortal Kombat. In between shouts of victory and defeat, I found out that they sell ice cream on the streets on the weekends and share a small room with their two younger brothers. But they were clearly more interested in exacting Fatalities on one another than in the interview.
After nearly five hours of talking to a variety of children, youths, and parents, I was exhausted. I met up with the rest of the Scout group in the central plaza, and we shared our experiences. Together, we had accomplished more than 120 interviews and encountered many different personalities. Compiled with the help of other groups of volunteers, we had achieved more than 500 interviews. When and how the needy children of Quillacollo will be helped, I do not know. But on the bus ride back to the center of Cochabamba, I felt that I had at least contributed to the process that would eventually result in better lives for these children.