ROXANA

ROXANA


31.05.1994

I had been saying for months that Roxana was pregnant but nobody agreed. Roxana started off as the office cleaner, but she soon showed an aptitude for operating the radio so first she combined both functions and now is the full-time radio operator.  However, on Monday May 23 she asked to speak to Robert and told him that she was indeed pregnant - and was due to give birth in the first week of June.  She asked if he would hold her job for her for one month if she sent someone in to do the work for her.  He agreed.  She also asked to speak to me and I went to see her in the afternoon.

Roxana is from Riberalta in El Beni, the northern plains of the Amazon bordering with Brazil.  Her parents got divorced some years ago and about a year ago she left her home and came to Ivirgarzama where her father was living with his new partner who is from Pando.  When she arrived, her younger sister, who is now 15 and already living with her father, told her that things were awful in the house and that her step-mother made her do all the heavy work and the washing.  The younger sister decided to leave and return to her mother.  She is now back at school.  

Roxana did not stay long either.  She soon left and went to Chimoré where she has an uncle.  This uncle who works on one of the river boats plying the route to El Beni and back, is married to "una de pollera" i.e. an Andean indigenous woman and lives in his mother-in-law's house.  "They always told me that "las de pollera" were "malvadas" (bad) but I never believed it. Now I know it is true."  This little remark reveals the ever present conflict between the "collas" or people from the altiplano and the valley of Cochabamba and the "cambas" or people from the tropical region of Bolivia.  

Roxana offered to look after her two little nieces, but the treatment meted by the mother-in-law was such (she said she had no need to feed someone else's mouth and was even mean with the food given to her own family) that she decided she would not stay.  When her uncle came back from one of his trips, she told him what she had decided and he did not object, although he knew that she had no place to go.

She had a boyfrined, called David, who worked for the electricity company ELFEC, and he offered to let her stay in his room.  So, she took the bed which her father had given her and moved in there.  Nothing happened for some time but eventually it did and the baby is the result.  


The boyfriend, who is now out of work, has agreed to recognize paternity and give the child his name, but he says he is now going away to find work, and basically doesn't want to know any more about it.  Roxana does not want to beg him to stay or any such thing so she was in a quandary about what to do.  David's mother had offered to look after the baby after the first month, but I pointed out to Roxana that this lady lived a good hour's journey away, which meant that she would never see the child except at week-ends maybe, and if the relationship with David finally came to a close, there could be a problem over jurisdiction of the child if she left it to his mother.  Another point is that what she would really be doing would be handing over a slave for life, because that is what the child would become once it grew up, being obliged to work and do everything in return for its keep.

She rents a little room for 45Bs. (US$6)a month, so what she has now decided to do is take a girl to look after the baby while she is at work. That will cost her 100Bs. a month.  Since her room is close to the office she will be able to see the baby at lunch-time as well as in the morning and at night.

Robert gave her a month's salary in advance (600Bs.) so that she would have enough to pay the clinic in Cochabamba.  She did not want to have the baby in the local clinic at Ibuelo because of every 10 children born there 8 die.  However, the baby came a few days earlier than expected and the clinic she went to charged 900Bs. so we have had to send her more money to be able to pay.  We had found out about a clinic run by nuns who charge 200Bs. for the birth and 13Bs. per day for board.  This would have been better but the harm is done now and she will be short of money.  

A little baby girl , named Dayana, was born on Friday May 27.