your family update
You Backed them and things began to change
“After my husband died, I was left with four children and no way to feed them”
Vimaleswari is 69 and lives in Vilavuttam, a village in the East of Sri Lanka. She lives with her great-grandchild, who is 22. Her son’s wife died when the child was only six months old, so Vimaleswari has been raising her since then.
Before her great-granddaughter started working, Vimaleswari went out to do all kinds of work to feed her family. She ground flour in town, threshed grain in the fields, and did wage work, carrying stones and worked as help wherever she could. There were times when they only had one meal a day, but she kept going because there was no other way.
Her husband passed away twenty-five years ago. At that time, she had four children, the youngest twelve and the eldest sixteen. It was hard then, even to make enough money for food. Still, she made sure the children ate and grew up well, working hard every day to manage the household.
Now her great-granddaughter has found work. She brings groceries on credit and pays when she gets her salary. Vimaleswari doesn’t go out to work anymore because she is older and cannot do heavy work.
She really hopes to see her great-granddaughter have a home one day and get married. She wants her to live well and be taken care of, even after Vimaleswari is gone. Vimaleswari has spent her life raising children and her great-grandchild. She knows how to manage what she has and keeps thinking about how to give her granddaughter a better future.