Nely's Story

This is Nely's story, but it could be Guadalupe, Maria, Carmen, Dolores, Ascension, any one of the thousands of women who eke out a living in the cities of El Salvador. The photos are not of Nely but depict typical venues of many women and the country. Nely is a scrapper. She battles the daily obstacles that come with poverty in an urban shack community in order to provide for her children. She is a staunch adherent to the Salvadoran adage, "If we do not work, we do not eat." I first met her as my new co-dishwasher at the inner-city parish day care center, where I had been upgraded from dish dryer (volunteer). How could she work so hard this far along in her pregnancy? Nely was scrubbing burnt rice off huge pots and carrying baskets full of plastic bowls and cups. Even my slight stature towered over her diminutive frame.

All our work was performed outside in deep, gray stone sinks next to the kitchen. The water was only cold and when we ran out of soap, sand was used to get the dishes clean. Only the heaviest afternoon rain would send us scurrying inside.

Before my September departure, Nely had given birth to her second child, a daughter named Karina. Her older son, David, was quite the little gentleman among day care three-year olds. As a teenager, he still retains that quality.

I wish I could say that Nely went on to bigger and better things, but the average education level in her growing up years was about third grade. Thus, her work options were limited and she relied on skills learned in the home.

During a subsequent visit, I was downtown at rush hour and was startled to hear someone call my name. I turned around to see Nely standing next to a crate supporting a basket full of warm tamales wrapped several to a plastic bag. She was in a crowd of other vendors almost swallowed up by waiting bus passengers. She knew where to hawk her wares. You can guess what my take-home supper was that evening.

Nely's shack community numbered about twenty-five thousand people, most of them, internal refugees from the civil war with nothing to go back to. On yet another visit, Nely appeared at the parish with a brand new baby in her arms. My friend, a parish worker, was procuring an emergency supply of food for her. This consisted of beans, rice, sugar, and oil. Nely escorted us to her corrugated metal ("lamina") hut, secured by a padlock. Nely showed us how a man had broken in one night and violated her while the two children were asleep. "Angel" came nine months later.

Another Salvadoran tenet is that children are innocent and are not to be blamed for the crime of the adult. Holding tightly to that and to her baby, Nely raised her third child. I usually met Nely at Church on Sunday where David served as an altar boy.

There was another downtown meeting amid vendors, their customers, and the commuting crowd at tiny Morazon Park. Again, I heard my name and there was Nely with her older son. They were pushing a big cart and grappling with trash cans to empty the city's downtown garbage. It was official. Nely even wore a uniform and David was lending a hand and muscle after his morning school session.

Evidently, the tamales are not a thing of the past. David accompanies his mother at the already dark supper hour as they sell tamales from door to door in the adjacent neighborhood.