New Hope and Health for Adán - #putchildrenfirst
At the SOS Children’s Village in Cuzco, each house has been given a name in Quechua, Peru’s main indigenous language. Carmen’s house is called ‘Hatun Sonqo,’ or Big Heart, reflecting the bravery her SOS son Adán has shown in overcoming his health challenges.
Adán arrived in Cuzco from a mountainous community called Chapata, only accessible by foot, when he was one year old. Malnourished and physically weak, the boy could only mumble instead of forming his first words. “The doctor told me that I needed to look after him a lot,” Carmen remembers. “He said that if I didn’t dedicate myself to his care wholeheartedly he would end up physically or mentally disabled.”
When Adán’s biological mother died, his father didn’t know how to care for him and had to go out every day to work. He would leave his son in the community’s kitchen area, believing that would be the safest place for the child. Although his father was careful to make sure that the wood-fuelled cooking fire was out, Adán still breathed in smoke fumes in the airless room, and was not receiving key nutrients.
When he came to Cuzco, Adán had to be fed every two hours, and rejected most of the food that he wasn’t used to. Carmen was determined, though, to bring the fragile child back to health. “I used to say to him ‘I don’t want this to happen to you ever again. And if you’re in my arms, it won’t.’”
20% of Peruvian children experience moderate to severe stunting, which means that they are considerably smaller than usual for their age. Adán’s height and weight are still lower than those of his peers, but the boy, now twelve, is sociable, energetic, and enthusiastic about sports, especially swimming. The doctors say that his adolescence is a “second chance” to have a growth spurt, and Carmen notes happily that he is already starting to eat more.
When Carmen and Adán went back to the community where he was born, elderly women embraced the pair in floods of tears. They had been convinced that the small child could never have survived his ordeal. “For those who don’t know the story – what he and I have both lived through,” Carmen says, “I don’t think they would believe it!”
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