[Quesita]

I have been thinking about this as well. In much of the world, children are born into poverty and desperation. I’ve lived and worked in Latin America, and I have seen many street kids, and children living on the margins of society.

My daughter’s birthmom is a street vendor. She is one of those women who sells trinkets in the street to passing cars and people on the sidewalk. I imagine that if Liana had not been put up for adoption, she would have spent the first part of her life on her mother’s back as she made sales in the street. Now that Liana is mobile, and charismatic and chatty, I imagine she would have been taught to beg. I imagine that she would work beside her mother on the street, with a dirty face and a big smile and an outstretched hand. I imagine that she would receive miniscule little coins, those fractions of a quetzal, in her tiny hand from those who did not buy trinkets, but who took pity on her, or were enchanted by her charm. That is, if she had survived the rotovirus that caused her hospitalization when she was so young…the hospitalization that was paid for through my attorney fees.

Other children would be learning to work in fields as young as two or three. Still others would be abandoned, to die or fend for themselves. Those from large extended families might stay home in the care of a grandmother until they were old enough to find factory work at 5 or 7 or 10 years old. Few would learn to read. Many would succumb to dysentery or some other easily curable disease. Some would travel with their parents and cross borders illegally and live on the fringe of a foreign society, always an outcast. Some would manage to go to school, and a small percentage would succeed against insurmountable odds.

This is not the reality just in Guatemala. It is the reality in much of Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia. It is the reality of a large percentage of the world’s population.