I can't catch my breath!

A few months back I Blogged (See: Lima - The City that Never Sleeps) about a woman and her family who have been crippled by a number of tradegies. Her name is Margaretia and her story is one of thousands of similarly tragic stories about poverty and a lack of access to resources.

On Saturday we visited Margaretia and her four children. The drive up to the community where she lives is on broken roads and past crumbling houses. She is 42-years old, but has been trapped in the body of a woman many years her senior. She is barely able to catch her breath - and has been confined to the familys small shack of a home for most of the last 2-years. Afraid to stress the tubing that is her life-line and her connection to a tank of oxygen.

The floor of their home (like that of many of their neighbors) is dirt. The new walls that provide protection from the elements were a recent donaiton from the Anglican Church - along with a new corrugated roof to protect them from the sun. In the past they have depended upon woven ratan mats and a plastic cover to protect them from the cold and wind of the exposed sand hills.

The day we arrived - Margareita was sitting in her chair in the first room of the home gasping for breath. She had been to the hospital the day before and the doctors told her that it would be best to place her into the hospital until she could regain her strength and "normalize" (not that she is ever able to completely breathe normally) her breaths. She refused - "what would I do with my children?"

Her frail body is strained by the increased metabolic demand to fight for breath. She seems almost defeated by the challnege of working so hard to keep air in her lungs. Yet, she continues to comfort her two small children and mentor the two older adolescents. She knows that one day their lives will be dramatically changed; for one day (perhaps soon) she will no longer be able to fight the fight she needs to in order to breath.

The lives of the people living in the peri-urban squatter communites of Lima are filled with stories like Margarieta - and the work to bring compassion and justice to these forgotten individuals must go on. HBI is working in collaboraiton with the Anglican Church of Peru to create a "saftey net" to help coordinate care, collaborate resources and develop hope for the thousands of people who suffer in silence. People like Margareita and her beautiful children.

Thank you for continuing to support the work of HBI and our many in-country parnters. Please consider Margareita and her family in your thoughts and prayers. Together we can make a difference - and together we can change the world, one person at a time!