Last night I had a very sad chat with my host Mom. We were talking about how some people get excited about getting pregnant. She told me that out of her 9 children there wasn't a single one she was ever excited about, she said each time she was just disappointed. She had her first child when she was 15 with a man who she didn't love or even like, her mother had married her off in hopes that it would lessen the burden of her own children in the house. The man badly abused her. She said that at 15 she was just a kid and didn't know what to do and was so scared of the responsibility of a child, then even worse with her second and then worse with the third. After the third, her first husband left her and she found herself living with her Mom again trying to support 3 children. At this time she met my current host Dad and he was willing to marry her even though she already had 3 children, this is actually a foreign concept I have found. Many men are very machisto and don't have any interest in a woman who have children already. It's like they are dried up old ladies. However, my host Dad liked her and they continued to have 6 more children together. My host mom said even with her current husband having more children was never exciting it was more mouths to feed when they could barely feed the ones they had. However, my host Dad believes that birth control is only for "sluts". How nice ...right?
Funny thing though, is I feel that you find many more less female "sluts", then you find of male sluts while living in the campo. For example, my host Dad has another kid about the same age of my youngest host sister he fathered with a woman in my town. So does the husband of my host sister and many of the other men simply living on my street. My site mate Brittany's host Dad is believed to have a whole other family that he splits his time with.
I know cheating isn't that foreign of a concept, our own country has it's fair share of the same problems. It just seems like it's incredibly more frequent here. Some of the repercutions are dangerous as well. For example, my boyfriend was working in a small town in the sierra when they got a call about a man that had been shot. Turns out the story was that he was a single man who was sleeping with a married woman, and the married woman's husband and friends came to his house to kill him. So when Edgar got there all that was left was the man outside of his house dead on the ground of gunshot wounds. Moral of story...don't sleep with married people. And it's not the first time that this sort of thing has happened, like in one of my previous blogs a girl was thought to be posioned because her father was sleeping around as well.
So what is my philosphy on the fidelity issues of the campo people? I have many different theories. First is that many of these couples get married young because they got pregnant young, and many times when a couple is found to be pregnant they are instantly considered married. The families of the young couples strongly encourage it. Therefore, a one night fling turns into a lifetime together and in many situations neither spouse ever wanted that life together. So with time, one or both of the spouses strays from the other because they aren't happy or there isn't any type of relations happening in the home anyway.
There is also another concept, I realized from some of my sessions in the school that the teenagers are virtually unaware of birth control or any type of contraceptive and absolutely clueless to what abstinence is. Unfortunately due to the extremely timid nature of the girls I think a lot of times they get pressured into having sex with their boyfriend without having enough self esteem or assertiveness to stand up for themselves. Without knowing they can protect themselves they end up pregnant and again stuck with their partner for a lifetime. Also, since they live in the campo and most of the men work to provide for the family, when things go sour in the relationship the woman has virtually zero options to leave her husband. So more often then not, the woman turns a blind eye to her husband's infidelity for lack of options. It's really sad.
Even more sad, is in a community like mine the spouses know the person they are being cheated on with, and so does everyone else in the community. It is a sad life to live. It is also very sad that most people have zero trust in others. For example, when I met my boyfriend, I am constantly asked whether or not he has another family, possibly kids in the city. In fact I am still asked this question up to this day after many months together. It is very hard for the people in my community to trust others, and it is very frustrating at time to defend or try and convince them that there are good, honest, and fair people in this world. But based on the number of cases in my community, I understand the mistrust.
My hope is that as this country develops women, children, families are given more legal rights. And that a spouse does not just have to turn their heads and bare an unhappy marriage. And that the people will be more acceptable of the "single mom".
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