As God Gives

In this entry, I’ll be speaking strictly from my own personal experiences in the Guatemalan western highlands where the importance of education is often lost in the realities of the lives the people live. I don’t want this to be read as a blanketing statement about all of the country. In Guatemala City, Xela, Huehuetenango (the city), and other larger urban centers there are great educational opportunities for those who can afford it. In my opinion, education is one of the most important aspects of a child’s development. With that said, it is very hard for the average rural child to get more than a 6^th grade education and harder still for a girl.

Last week, in a far out village while waiting for our dinner, Megan(my site-mate) and I we’re asking a local girl, daughter of the woman who was preparing us dinner, in what month she was in her pregnancy and whether she ever planned on returning to her studies. She said she was in her fifth month of pregnancy and didn’t seem to have a firm answer either way or another in regards to future study plans, which didn’t surprise me. However, it was the comment that her mother made regarding her pregnancy and schooling that was very surprising. Her mother, a woman of 41 and also 5 months pregnant with her 12^th child, replied “This year my daughter is going to get her diploma in motherhood” and chuckled a little. This shocked me. I felt angry, sad, and in the same moment very guilty for coming from a world of such privileges. I was left to wonder how she could be so cool about her daughter having to leave her studies, at such an early age, to become a mother. Here was a 15-year-old girl who would soon be a mother in the second poorest country in our hemisphere. At the time of her child’s birth she will have less than a 9^th grade education and will probably be pregnant with her second child very shortly thereafter the birth of her first. I would later find out that the mother had given birth to her first child at the age of 15 and so it was nothing out of the ordinary. In spite of all this, I was still left with more questions than answers, as often is the case in Guatemala.

It was in an earlier conversation that day that Megan and I were given brief insight into the social reasoning behind having so many offspring. Megan was talking with a 28-year-old mother of four children about the cultural pressures that push women to have so many children in a world where jobs are almost non-existent and the infant mortality rate is distressing. She told Megan that after a woman starts having children she has to continue to give offspring or else the community will begin to talk badly about her. After her first child the community will then know that she is able to give birth and will expect that she continue bearing children and giving birth. However, if she does not continue to bear children and give birth the community will assume that she is using some form of birth control, which is frowned upon. To avoid this negative village press, in the rural villages of the western highlands in Guatemala, many women will give birth to as many children “as God gives”. “As God gives” is a commonly used expression referring to the amount of children that a woman gives birth to in her life. Furthermore, one can draw the conclusion that using birth control, in the eyes of these people, is like going against nature or what God had intended; thus, it should not be done. Unfortunately, this understanding of birth control or any kind of contraceptive is leaving many families with too many mouths to feed and not enough maiz or money.

Regrettably, it’s this mentality that pervades the western highlands of Guatemala and is constantly forcing girls of 15 and 16 to leave their studies behind and become mothers by 16 and 17. In leaving their studies, these girls forfeit opportunities like getting a well-paying job, creating a career path, or having the ability to financially self sustain. I’m not saying that these girls shouldn’t become mothers. I simply wish that they were given the ability to first become empowered, educated, and self-relying WOMEN and then decide to be mothers. In Guatemala, there is a direct relationship between a woman’s health and her education. Health and education, in my opinion, are inseparable; therefore, what Guatemala really needs is a better Health Education curriculum. Without a proper reform of the Health education system, girls will continue to become mothers overnight when, in my opinion, they should first be seen as well educated and respected women especially in a culture where women are often seen as only able to do the domestic daily duties of the house.

In conclusion, if more women had access to a level of higher education supplemented with a better health education curriculum, I believe that in the next 15 to 20 years Guatemala, as a country, would be better off. The education of women would hopefully decrease the average Guatemalan rural family size which should in turn lower the infant mortality rate due to malnutrition. This simple change in infant mortality rate could do wonders for the people of the rural western highlands and Guatemala, as a whole. However, this is based on the increase of two important components. Firstly, the enforcement of health education in all grade schools and middle schools with an emphasis on sex education, which can often be a tough topic for a conservative culture like that of Guatemala. Secondly, there has to be some kind of scholarship system put in place that would give the average poor rural female student the opportunity to continue her studies past the 6^th grade. Guatemala already has a rewards program for keeping kids in school and healthy, so maybe they could make this a part of the pre-existing program. Currently, and to my dismay, scholarships provide some of the only ways for a girl to continue her studies, as schooling is very expensive for the average rural family past 6^th grade. With that said, we can only hope that the Guatemalan education system will one day offer a free middle and high school education. To learn more watch this movie as it expresses some of the same ideas about changing the world with the simple act of educating and empowering the women of the third world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kxysX4MmOU