your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
He left three months after our youngest was born. Now there’s no support at all. I’m the one struggling and raising all these children.
In the middle of the day, Gayavathani walks out to collect water because there is none close to her home. The house, provided by the government, has no toilet, and its walls and doors are beginning to crumble.
Gayavathani is 37 and is raising four children. Kethujan 16, Nojan13, Krishandan 10 and Sathushtika who is six. She is also raising her late sister’s daughter after both of the child’s parents died.
Her husband left six years ago, three months after their youngest child was born. Before he left, he drank his wages, fought and took things from the house. “Even with a five-thousand-rupee wage, only five rupees would come home,” she recalls.
Since then, Gayavathani has carried responsibility for the household. She tends other people’s milking cattle and goats, earning between 3,000 and 5,000 rupees a month, depending on the month. “It’s not enough. What can I do? We eat what we have,” she shares.
To make food last, she cooks once and divides it across three meals. When an urgent expense arises, she borrows 500 or 2,000 rupees from a neighbour, then repays it gradually from her cattle-tending wages.
Even this work has become more difficult because she is afraid to leave home unattended. An organisation previously provided her with goats, but someone came and stole two of them. With only one goat remaining, she stays home to protect it instead of going out to earn as she otherwise could. “No sleep at night. There’s no one to call,” she explains.
The children walk a long distance to school along a route without a proper road, with three of them sharing one broken bicycle given to them by an uncle. During temple seasons, the older children also walk the temple path selling camphor to help the family.
Gayavathani did not study beyond the first grade, but she wants something different for her children. She tells them that if even one of them continues their education, she will be there to support them.
And so, she keeps going: tending cattle, borrowing and repaying what she can, stretching one pot of food across the day and staying close enough to home to protect the little the family still has. What she wants is to earn enough to raise the children securely. Until then, finding enough food and income remains her responsibility.
Your support over the next two years can help Gayavathani work towards a steadier source of income and greater household stability.
