I spent years mentoring and supporting girls in Mexico, trying to help them get an education. I was not very proficient at it at first, but I learned how to do it better as time went on, and my spanish improved. Women in Mexico (and many other places all over the world) are just disenfranchised. Sometimes it stems from the culture of poverty. Sometimes from cultural imperatives. Both in Africa, and in Mexico, there is the idea that why would girls need to be well educated, after all, they were destined to be wives and mothers, and what good would an education do them? And that in itself, is an important thing. They are who raises the next generation. And since the beginning of civilization, as we know it, women have been doing that job without the encumberments of education. On the other hand, there are some who aspire to something different. And those were the ones that I was trying to reach. In a culture where curiosity and ownership of your life are things that are not much encouraged, it leaves girls with less choices. Here is a story of a girl who wanted something different.
I met Tania when she was about 8 or 9 years old. She seemed a shy understated girl. I was already working with her older sister, who was much more loquacious than Tania, to try and help her stay in school and graduate without first becoming pregnant. As I worked with the older sister, Tania was there hearing the things I had to teach. When she was in middle school, I was chatting with her one day, in front of her house, and she said, “When I get older, I want to be a nurse.”
“That is a great idea, Tania,” I said. It was so rare for a girl from the colonia to say something like that. Most of the girls that I knew there, believed that they had few opportunities open to them, other than try to find a man who would take care of them. And in that colonia, the husbandly options were not very good.I hoped that her desire to be a nurse could give her some autonomy. And so, I decided to add her to the train of girls that I was already trying to give opportunities to succeed.
When she graduated from middle school, I asked her what she wanted to do. “I want to be a nurse, padrino,” she said. Ok, well that means first she would need to get thru high school. High school in the local school at that time, seemed more a place where boys had the opportunity to review and select which girl they would try to… well, honestly… become owner of, and have sex with, which mostly led to pregnancy, and the end of the girls education. It was the saddest thing that that was true. Once a girl became pregnant, her opportunities to do anything else with her life pretty much came to a screeching halt. In a culture of poverty, child care while you continued your education was not an easy thing to find. There was no money for it. And no time for studying after school, as you were expected to cook and clean for your man, and take care of the baby, and this was not a part time job. I lost a lot of girls to boyfriends and pregnancy. I tried things like talking with their moms, about taking care of the baby while the girl was in classes, and buying breast pumps so the baby would be able to eat while their mom was studying. Mostly to no avail. Girls getting pregnant at 15 years old was so ubiquitous there, that I took to referring to the local boys out looking for conquests, as “inseminators”.
Tania, it seemed, had not fallen for the need to have a boyfriend for the status it gave you among your peers. She just wanted to be a nurse. She majored in Informatica, which was basically, secretarial studies, in high school, learning Microsoft Word, and Powerpoint, and Excel. She seemed to like it alright, and did well enough to get decent grades. And graduated with her certificate in these things. So, again, I asked her at her graduation party with her family, “What do you want to do next?”
I never try to push a girl in any direction. It never works. Instead I kept as my basic philosophy… “Who is the owner of your life?” I tried all the ways that I knew, to help girls see ways to take control of their lives, and taught them brainstorming, and evaluation of options, and decision making. But it was up to them to decide what to do. And thru it all, I believed in them, and tried to help them feel good about being in charge.
“I want to be a nurse, Padrino!’ she told me.
“Good, Tania! How do we go about bringing that into reality?”
“Well, padrino,” she said “I don’t know about you, but I have found a course in Nursing at the college in town, and have enrolled for classes, and I need 1200 pesos by tuesday in order to get started.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I guess she had been listening to all my talk about being the owner of your life after all. So I gave her the money, and made sure that for the next 3 years, her school fees were paid, books bought, and uniforms bought, first the school uniform, and later nursing duds. In fact, Tania herself paid her fees, and bought her books and uniforms, and all I did was make sure the money was there when she needed it. She completely took charge of her education. And she seemed to thrive on doing it. And was thrilled about the things she was learning. I was so proud of her.
During nursing school, she had times when she would be dropped in the morning at the entrance to a dusty, poor colonia, and spend the day walking from door to door with her thermos of vaccines, and her box of needles, and vaccinate children. She did volunteer work in the Red Cross, the nearest thing to a hospital at that time, in the town, in which she dealt with gun shot wounds, and births, and was even sent out on the EMS ambulances to triage people at serious car accidents, of which there are many because of the poor driving skills in mexico.
And finally one day I was invited to the graduation ceremony, and with great pride in her for her drive and focus, watched her walk up to the platform and receive her nurses cap and her graduation certificate. She had done it all for herself. All I had done was believe in her, and encourage her, and put in the money so it could happen.
To those of you who are parents, this probably doesn’t seem like a big deal. But I never had kids of my own, and to me it was a miracle.
Tania has been working as a nurse ever since. She seems to not have lost the thrill of learning, and it makes my heart smile when I ask her how the job is going, and her face lights up as she tells me the newest things she is learning at her job.
Nurses matter. 