I’m sitting at the kitchen table doing my “tarea” with Grease and listening to American music on my computer. It is endlessly entertaining to hear someone who speaks Spanish sing along to popular American music (as I’m sure they would love to laugh at me trying to sing along to Spanish music). Grease is wearing a Hannah Montana tank-top, so I wish I had some of her music to play for her, but unfortunately that is not part of my I-tunes library.

We had several interesting conversations during training today, much of which will be relevant in our work in youth development. Apparently marriage licenses are issued here without much consistency, so our language instructor informed us that many men have multiple wives and families. She explained that men will be married in one district, and then get married again in another district without getting a divorce because there is no coordination or consistency in the record keeping between districts. Some men have multiple families and children, but give little support to any of them. Although there is a system of child support, fathers can avoid paying quite easily, leaving many single mothers without means to support their children. Unlike the US, there is no foster care system, and orphanages can be extremely difficult to access, so many children are left in extreme poverty/living on the streets. A boy who couldn’t have been more than 12 came on the bus yesterday on our way back from Lima and sang about how he was abandoned by his parents and left to care for his little sister. Although there is definite poverty and homelessness in the US, it is uncommon to see such young children alone and without any kind of support. It may be a bit of a stretch to associate multiple marriages and the machismo culture with child abandonment, but lacking paternal responsibility seems to be a causal factor.