Socorro Guit

(A-97) Status: Not Sponsored
Needs: medical care, a home, water filter, food
To help Socorro with these needs, please click here.
To sponsor her to eat in the Feeding Program, click here.
For more stories and photos of the ancianos in the Feeding Program, please consider purchasing a book compiled of our participants. All profits go to the Elderly. You can preview the book here.

UPDATE March 12, 2013: Socorro received the $200 to have her medical situation amended. She was found to have a blood infection, parasites, and blood pressure. She was treated for all of these and a wound on her leg that had been infected. The doctor was unable to treat the cyst on her palate, as he would have to perform surgery on it, and Socorro did not want to. Thank you so much for helping her to be able to receive treatment!
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March 1, 2013: After another visit to Socorro on word that she had fallen and was experiencing severe stomach pain in addition to this, Mayan Families will be taking Socorro to the clinic to get her stitches, evaluate her stomach pain, and have the mass on her palette checked out. We estimate that the consultation, transportation, and procedures will cost up to $200, an unreal amount of money for Socorro and her family. She is afraid to take out a loan, and would rather her ailments go ignored than face being a financial burden for years to come. Despite her protests and unwillingness to visit a qualified doctor in the City, her family is begging her to go.

Please consider donating to Soccoro's medical expenses, and the help she desperately needs. Visit www.mayanfamilies.org/donatenow and write A-97 medical in the Other box. Thank you!
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She was alone in the house when she suffered a stroke two months ago. After losing much of the use of her hands, she is still alone. She is still alone despite living with two daughters and four of their children, who share one room crowded by the two beds they all share.

She said that she had worked everyday since her husband died half a century ago--not one day she didn't work, she said. But now she can't work. She's sick: she can't work her hands, she can't speak well because of a cyst on her upper palette. She can't work for herself, and there is no one to work for her.

The City is too far to go for her, what the doctors told her to do.

All five of her daughters-- the two widows who live with her and the three married ones who live apart-- got together to take her. It was a great expense for all of them, since they work little and can barely support their children. But she would not go: she didn't have the strength, she said.

The trip would've entailed four reckless rides for more than three hours on chicken buses to get to the hospital, stuffed among hundreds of people, over-capacity. Socorro refused. If she doesn't want to go, her daughter said, what can we do?

Socorro sighs and says her life...is very sad. "My legs are weak, I don't have any strength...it's too bad I didn't have any sons," she said, implying that it's easier for men to make money and thereby care for their mothers as they age.

The five daughters argue over the deed to the small room crammed with firewood. If it turns over to the widows, who live there, they might be able to build a room on top of it. Because when the kids grow up, where are they going to sleep? Says one.

When asked if the Feeding Program has improved her life, she says "I don't have everything. I will never have everything, but at least I have this food." When there was no program, she used to eat just one tortilla with salt a day.