The Widow on the Post Office Stairs

I have another slice of Bolivian life to share tonight, though a sad one.

Several times a week I visit the Cochabamba post office, which is the only way to receive mail (no home delivery here). Every day that I go I stop to talk a bit with a woman named Santusa. Gray and bent, wrinkled with large gaps in her smile, I’d guess her to be in her mid-70s. She sits day after day on the concrete post office steps, not asking for money, but with a hat in her hand waiting for whatever small change passersby might voluntarily toss in.

I try to imagine what it is like to sit there day in and day out and have most people just ignore you altogether. Most all of us have tried to imagine it but we really can’t unless we have been there. I always make a point to add to my change a short visit and a gentle touch of her hand, just to make some sort of contact with her.

Today as I arrived at the steps Santusa was there, but wearing a cheap black square of nylon draped across her head. I recognized immediately the symbol of mourning.

“Santusa, what happened?”

“Mi veijito ha muerto (my old man died).”

Her old man was her husband Severino, who died on Saturday, was buried on Sunday and whose widow was back in her begging spot three days later.

Others have lost their husband or wife. Others have had to beg for spare change. But seeing Santusa there draped in black was a reminder to me about how hard life is for so many in the world, how grinding abject poverty can be for those who endure it.

Is there any cause in the world, aside from the prevention of war, more worthy of our attention that helping those who by the random luck of being born poor live with such indignity?