A Place for ‘Displaced’ Children : Frenchwoman Helps Guatemalan Youth Build New Lives

“ Abuela , Abuela “: The cry echoed through the heart of Zone 1, this troubled city’s inner slum, as at least 10 children ran from different directions to greet the small woman in the gray four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Their eyes lit up as the woman they call “Grandmother” talked to them in Spanish laced with a thick French accent, joked with them and showered them with love.

The children were just a handful of the hundreds who were dirty and ragged, most of them infected with body lice and intestinal parasites. Their frail bodies were racked with chronic coughing--symptoms of respiratory disease--and all held in their hand the ubiquitous and familiar handkerchief doused in paint thinner, the cheapest local drug used to alleviate the pain of coldness, hunger and solitude.

For Yvette Pierpaoli, 49, who arrived in the streets of this capital city two years ago, the scene is familiar. This native of France, who spent part of her adolescent years on the streets of Paris, cut her teeth, so to speak, among the “displaced” families not in France, but in Cambodia, where she helped those fleeing to the city from the war-torn countryside.

City’s Own Problem

During the past two years she has helped Guatemala City residents wake up to their own serious social problem, in a country already torn by civil unrest, by aiding the forgotten children.

These homeless and sometimes belligerent children come from different parts of this sprawling country to congregate in the city, where they form tightknit gangs and groups to protect--or exploit--one another.

All have been abandoned by--or have themselves abandoned--their parents and families. They live on the streets, beg from the gutters and eat from the garbage dumps. They sleep in doorways and alleys, usually entangled together to ward off the dark and the cold, because the city is not located in the hot jungle but in the colder mountains, where the vast majority of Guatemalans live.

Pierpaoli began her work in Phnom Penh during the ‘70s, when U.S. bombs ravishing the Cambodian countryside sent into Phnom thousands of refugees, including hundreds of children who lost their families in the chaos.

‘Like a Transit Center’

“That was how the whole story began,” Pierpaoli said. “My house in Cambodia was like a transit center, with 22 to 25 lost or orphaned children there at all times.”

Her heart drawn to them, she tried as best she could to reunite the young ones with their families or find them new homes.

After the fall of Phnom Penh, Pierpaoli went to Bangkok, Thailand, where she ran a thriving import-export business while continuing her mercy work. Priests and missionaries living in the refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border brought her many of the abandoned children they found in the camps.

In 1985, as the situation eased, Pierpaoli decided to leave Bangkok and devote herself full time to aiding abandoned children. She went to Paris and set up Project Tomorrow, her own relief organization.

But where to start?

“I could not make up my mind where to go,” Pierpaoli said. “One day it is the famine in Ethiopia, the next the Tamils, the next the kids who were being tortured in India. I wanted to help everything at the same time.”

To sort this out, Pierpaoli went on retreat in a French convent to wait for some sign as to the direction of her future. After three days of deep thought, she still had no inkling. Then the nuns brought a man to lunch with her--a man whom they had met on the convent grounds.

Visiting Missionary

“At first I was furious at the thought of an intruder,” she said. “But soon after he arrived, I forgot my distress and I decided to concentrate on a good lunch.”

And hours of talk.

The man, a missionary working in the highlands of Guatemala, “told me about all the suffering from the civil war there. There were 100,000 orphans and not enough relief organizations to help them,” Pierpaoli said. “I decided right away that that was my ‘sign,’ so I told him that I was going to Guatemala to start a project for children. He said that it must have been God that sent me because he had been praying all night that someone would go and help those children.”

Within 24 hours, Pierpaoli was on her way. She arrived in Guatemala City almost as empty-handed as the children she was there to help.

Although there were no statistics to confirm it, her initial finding, she said, showed that there were at least 500 children in the inner city either partially or completely abandoned. There were a few private and government homes for abandoned children, but none had the capacity to take in any large percentage of all those living in the street.

Fear of Institutions

According to Pierpaoli, the handful of programs were also not designed to effectively face the particular problems of this population, particularly the street children’s resistance to losing their freedom and their fear of institutionalization. Many of them had been in and escaped from as many as three different programs.

And so in February, 1986, after a four-month investigation and with constant urging from the Guatemalan judge magistrate of the juvenile court, a day center with a Guatemalan staff of 13 was opened in the heart of the city, near the slum. It was called the Novena.

“We were hoping two or three kids would show up, but the first day 40 children came. And then it did not stop. It was like a crazy house,” said Kate Spence, Pierpaoli’s partner. “They were all very dirty, full of lice and parasites. All of them had serious health problems--skin infections, respiratory and venereal diseases.”

“And extremely aggressive, always fighting us, fighting themselves. Always wanting to kill each other, kill us, kill the staff,” Pierpaoli added. “But underneath all of this aggression was an insatiable desire for the love and care they never had.”

Open-Door Policy

Girls and boys from ages 5 to 18 were welcomed as long as they did not bring arms or drugs into the facility. The Novena’s open-door policy implied that each child had the freedom to come and go as he or she wished. Although encouraged to participate in different programs, they were free to decide how to employ their time.

The first year, 454 children attended the program. There were 353 boys, the average age being 13, and 101 girls, average age 15. Ten percent were orphaned as a result of the guerrilla conflict in Guatemala’s Highlands; 20% had been abandoned and 70% had abandoned their families following abuse and maltreatment by a stepmother or stepfather, sexual abuse, poverty or complete disinterest toward them. Many were children of prostitutes or alcoholics; they went to the streets to look for a better means of subsistence.

The most common survival work was shining shoes. Some sold newspapers or flowers, others sang on the buses with the hope of receiving a few coins. Many lived by theft, begging or prostitution.

Winning Their Trust

Little by little the team of women at Novena were able to win the trust of these children. Respect and acceptance of communal living and personal hygiene greatly increased. The level of aggression dropped and a spirit of confidence and friendship with the Novena team developed.

“After a few months we really knew the kids and loved them,” Spence said. “We knew, though, that the next step was to develop a live-in program that placed demands on the children. We did not want to be paternalistic--we did not want to provide food and a place for the children to sleep and then have them out on the streets stealing and using drugs.”

The problem was that whatever good had been gained during the day at the center was lost at night on the streets.

And thus began the center’s new phase: a live-in dormitory for children who were committed to study and to work or to receive vocational training. It was primarily for those who had made the decision to leave behind the life of the streets.

Need for Local Support

Pierpaoli feels strongly that Novena should be supported both financially and technically by Guatemalans.

“We’ve come to help them to organize themselves,” she said. “But it is their problem and the long-term solution should be in their hands.”

As for the children, she said: “The greatest challenge is to develop a program that doesn’t take away their spirit--that allows them to channel the energies they have and does not inhibit their freedom,” Spence said. “Those kids are strong. They’re survivors and the minute they feel enclosed, they want out. It’s almost a seventh sense they have.”

“They must feel that the door is open and they can come and go,” Pierpaoli added. “We must also create a sense of belonging to replace what they lose when they leave the gang in the streets--a family.”

There are still many children who come and go. The pull from the streets is sometimes much greater than the love and stability provided by this program.

“They are very demanding, very special, like very rich spoiled children. They want what they want and right now,” said Vivian de Cadenas, Novena’s social worker. “They never had any limits imposed on them. They always satisfy their desires immediately. If they want to eat, they steal. If you say no to them, they will just go.”

Girls More Difficult

The Novena’s greatest difficulty has been with the younger children between the ages of 7 and 13, because they are still very successful in begging and stealing in the street. Also, girls are much more difficult as candidates for rehabilitation. Prostitution is easy and they make more money and have more friends than they would at a factory job. Sometimes, though as in the case of a 15-year-old mother, an unwanted pregnancy can be the motivation necessary to change her life.

She came to the first phase of the Novena at the age of 13. She had been thrown into prostitution at a very young age by the death of her parents. The staff of the Novena had tried to find a job for her, but she soon left it, and soon became pregnant. She knew she could either abandon her child and continue life as a prostitute, or that the child would be the chance for a new start.

She chose a new start.

“She was very, very happy about it,” said Pierpaoli, who is now the child’s godmother.

“She wants her daughter to be proud of her and that is the motivation that is changing her life,” she continued. “The first thing that she said to her child was--’I guarantee you as long as I am alive, you’ll never have to go to the streets.’ ”

The young woman’s new life is considered a success story by the Novena team. She is now off the streets, sharing a two-room house with her sister and brother-in-law. The Novena donates money for her monthly support.

Eighty percent of the initial number of children who came to the new center just a few months ago have remained as part of the live-in facility. The majority of them are well on their way down the road to rehabilitation.

Pierpaoli admits that it is a small number, but “at least it is a start.”

She recalls her years in Paris when she was on the streets, with no money and no food. “I was always helping people around me. I was always a success, not financially or socially--it’s something you have inside. Either you have it or you don’t.” And her pledge is to create an opportunity for all of those children--who, as she did, “have what it takes to make this change.”

Leaving the Guatemalan project in the hands of Guatemalans, Pierpaoli’s next move is to Bolivia, where she is planning a similar project; then she expects to take her efforts to the Philippines.