Centro de Esperanza Infantil

I climbed the short steep hill from my hostel to the Centro de Esperanza Infantil with a spring in my step at the excitement of starting my next placement, of exploring another new culture and set of health beliefs and of meeting the people I will be working with for the next three weeks. Ringing a grand bell on a huge old oak door, I was ushered with smiles and warm greetings through to a pretty red tiled courtyard, sunlight streaming down on the welcoming children´s paintings adorning the walls and smiling faces of families waiting politely in white gilded patio chairs. The whole building was very pleasant, clearly having received a lot more funding over the years than Primeros Pasos in Guatemala, with a well-stocked children´s library, kindergaten full of bright plastic toys, office full of computers and a shiny, clean doctor´s office.

I was invited to join the families in these chairs, small children hopping about with boundless energy up to teenagers sitting a little more sullenly, but friendly nonetheless. The Centre sponsors children from the age of four or five right through until they leave school, providing the poorest families in Oaxaca with the means to put their children through school (which is not free in Mexico), providing the fees, school books, bags and uniforms necessary, provide a nutritious meal which the children all seat down to enjoy together in the relaxed and social dining room, provide social care and help through the community centre based here and healthcare and education for all the families. It is not clear as to how many streetchildren there are in Oaxaca, but I do know that when I stroll contentedly through the Zocolo (the city´s main plaza), I see countless small children skipping barefooted with baskets of chiclets, or a shoe-shining box, hoping to lure in a customer so they can afford to eat that night.

The only problem with the shiny, modern doctors´ office is that is goes too frequently unused. The organisation (Oaxaca Streetchildren Grassroots, http://oaxacastreetchildrengrassroots.org/) cannot afford to employ a full-time doctor, so they can only provide medical care when special funding or grants are received, or they have visiting medical volunteers. This means that the provision waxes and wanes over the year, being greatest during the summer months when more people take time away from studies or work to volunteer (like me).

I am working with a team of pre-med students from Stanford University, led by an intriguing, hard working infectious diseases doctor (Professor of all sorts, actually) and an honest, open, well-informed social worker, to carry out a survey of the health needs of the families visiting the centre. Each child is measured and weighed, their vital statistics and general health inspected, and then asked a questionnaire on health habits (the good old washing hands, brushing teeth, diet - a seemingly simple set of questions not to be sneered at in community preventative health), as well as being asked about their access to healthcare.

I will also be working on my own project designing some health education materials, just a simple leaflet, that could be given to all the visiting families even at the times when there are no health professionals available at the centre. For even when we cannot be right in the action, education is a legacy which is passed from person to person, word spreading like the communicable diseases we hope to minimise.

It is incredible the difference visible between the children out on the streets, and those enrolled at the centre. Whilst they are still clearly poor, some hardly having eaten in the last day, the children here are clean, educated, polite, full of life and fun, take pride in their clothes and belongings, are more confident in their shy, reserved smiles than those working all hours just to feed their families, let alone have the chance of going to school or receive any kind of medical care.

What worries me is that all of this work is sponsor-funded; without the kind gifts of donors, all the children would still be out there touting tourist on the Zocalo. There seems to be very little governmental support for the plight of the poor, with the Seguro Popular government-supported health insurance system only accessible to the ´richer´ of the poor: infant mortality is ten times higher in the Ministry of Health system than in the private healthcare sector (http://www.medtogo.com/mexico-health-care-system.html).

I returned to my sparse but pretty little room, overlooking a courtyard with a sweetly-scented fuschia-blooming pomegranate tree hanging by my small window, to rest from the noise and bustle of the streets below. Such a tranquil spot to take in my thoughts from the day, but never too far from reality, with views of the building tops of Oaxaca over the balcony and the honking of bus horns to remind me that peace and comfort and prosperity does exist here, but that you have to work hard to get it.