Status: 04/28/2022 03:58 am
Because Peru has one of the highest corona mortality rates in the world, many orphans have lived in the Andean country since the pandemic. They are traumatized and dependent on the help of relatives.
Milagros, José Luis, Santos and Kiara are sitting around a board game on the bare stone floor. They laugh. It’s one of the few moments when the four siblings seem carefree. Because her fate has been dramatic since her mother fell ill with Covid-19. Since then, the eight children have lived with their aunt Gabriela, in a tiny stone-floored house on the outskirts of Peru’s capital, Lima.
Gabriela Zarate doesn’t let her nieces and nephews play outside in front of the house. “That would be far too dangerous. There are criminals in our neighborhood of Villa El Salvador who kidnap children,” explains the 30-year-old. “I have to get the little ones through. I promised my sister that.”
Then she tells of June 2020 when her younger sister Katherine was infected with the corona virus. At that time, the health system in Peru had collapsed, which is why Katherine was turned away at the hospital gates. So Gabriela took her single sister and children in without further ado and wanted to nurse them back to health on a mattress with her.
Gabriela Zarate lives with nine children – only five of them are her own. The other four are the corona orphans of their sister Katherine, who died of Covid-19.
Image: Verena von Schönfeldt
Oxygen – too expensive for many
As Katherine’s breathing got worse, Gabriela tried to buy oxygen. But that was scarce in Peru at the time. You could only buy him on the streets – on the black market at horrendous prices that the sisters could not afford. Katherine’s last wish was for Gabriela to take care of her four children so that they don’t end up in a home – because the father is serving a prison sentence. Then she died in agony.
Since then, Gabriela has been raising the four children alongside her five of her own. In the cramped house of her uncle, where they live, there is hardly room for so many people, but Gabriela and her husband do not have the money for larger accommodation. He works as a driver of a three-wheeled mototaxis that keeps breaking down. The brakes are just defective. To earn some extra money, Gabriela recycles rubbish. “But it’s getting harder and harder to find anything useful,” she complains.
More than 210,000 corona dead
After all: For each of the four children, she receives a state orphan’s pension of 50 euros per month. That’s enough for fruit, vegetables, pasta and transport to school. She often gets dinner from a neighborhood soup kitchen because it’s cheaper there. At home, she then mixes in rice to make the meal more nutritious.
The fate of Gabriela’s nieces and nephews is not unique. The Andean country was hit hard by the pandemic like no other. In a global comparison, the deaths per 100,000 inhabitants are nowhere as high as in Peru: more than 210,000 deaths in a population of almost 33 million.
The rickety mototaxi is one of the Zarate family’s sources of income – but it always needs repairs.
Image: Verena von Schönfeldt
The causes lie on the one hand in the country’s precarious health system and on the other hand in the huge informal sector: this hardly allowed anyone to stay in quarantine at home until the hospitals were relieved. Katherine had been selling sweets as a hawker. They watched their children die, which has traumatized everyone to this day. Corona orphans are now everywhere in Peru because many single mothers have died of Covid-19.
“I don’t know how to do it,” complains Gabriela. She can hardly pursue a regular job because her nine children take up most of her time. After all, they have dreams: 13-year-old Santos wants to be a police officer, he says while sitting over his homework.