your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“I have been living in this small temporary shelter since I was born. Now I am 30 years old.”
I want to share a little bit about Annitta. She’s 30 and living in a small village in Sri Lanka called Mahilavattavan with her husband and their two kids, a 12 year old girl and a 7 year old boy.
That line, you just have to stop and think about it for a second. Her whole life, from the day she was born right up until now, she has never lived anywhere else. A temporary shelter is exactly what it sounds like, it was never built to last, it lets in the heat, it offers very little when the rain comes, and it just about holds together. That has been her whole life, and she is 30 now with kids of her own still living in that same place.
Her husband does seasonal labour so the work comes and goes, and a while back he had an accident and spent three months in hospital. There were no savings so she was buying food on credit just to get through those months while he recovered.
When he got better they borrowed 600,000 rupees from local money lenders at 10 percent monthly interest hoping to send him abroad for work and finally build a proper home. The work never came through the way they hoped and now that debt with the interest growing every month is just sitting over everything.
Annitta is working as a preschool teacher bringing home 6000 rupees and her husband sends back what he can, and that is honestly how they are getting by right now. Between the daily expenses and that loan there is just not a lot left over.
A proper home for her kids, that is all she really wants.