Dreadful news

I found out yesterday that one of my secondary school students committed suicide last week. I’m shocked, to say the least, and would like to cry, but my eyes are dry of tears. The poor girl (let us call her María) poisoned herself at the age of 15, with her whole life ahead of her. She was one of the very few female students I had, so I remember her well. I still cannot believe I will never see her again, it all feels so surreal.

María killed herself on Tuesday evening, and she attended English classes the same morning. I still remember her face when I gave back exams. Her grade was not particularly good, but she passed. I smiled at her when handing out the exam paper and said “Well done, congratulations”. Her face lit up and she smiled back. I had no idea María was feeling so bad; she had friends at school and looked happy enough.

Rumour has it that María had been tricked into leaving for Lima during the summer holidays (i.e. in February). She had been promised work there, but the job offer turned out to be a hoax. Instead, María was raped and got pregnant. Now, four to five months later, she decided to take her life, possibly to avoid the shame of having a baby born out of wedlock. Abortion is illegal in Peru, and clandestine abortions are too expensive for the poor. Now that I think of it, María did look chubbier than the other girls, but never suspected she was four or five months pregnant.

During the academic year 2006-07 I worked as a global educator for Taksvärkki ry, going from school to school to inform youngsters about the annual Taksvärkki campaign. That year, the money collected went to a development project in Guatemala the aim of which was to prevent the sexual abuse of children and teenagers. At all the schools I visited, the example I used to illustrate the problem was that young girls are persuaded to move away from their communities to a big city and instead of the promised nice jobs in the service branch they are forced to become prostitutes. That is the typical story, and it makes me so angry to think that that was exactly what happened to María. The Taksvärkki project seeks to inform young people about such dangers, and I wish there had been a similar project in rural Cajamarca.