I reviewed a case study from the web site www.childhoodpoverty.org. I chose to read the case study from Bakyt: Missing out on school and play because of poverty. This article talked about an 11-year-old boy living in southern Kyrgyzstan, in a town called Kokyangak. In Bakyt’s family, the children are the main breadwinners. He and his two older brothers work in a coal mine. Bakyt’s mother is disabled and cannot walk. She receives a monthly pension of about 450 Soms. Bakyt’s parents are divorced, and his father does not pay any child support and does not provide any support to the family. Bakyt’s grandmother is old and sick. The family lives in a two bedroom home.
An insight that I have gain from reading about this family is that the children had no other choice to be in the work field at an early age. If the children did not work their family would not have had a chance of survival due to the mother and grandmother being disabled. The family ate the minimal of food that they had. For breakfast, Bakyt has tea with bread, and for dinner the family usually eats fried potatoes or fried macaroni and bread with tea. They do not consume butter at all and drink tea without sugar. They cannot afford to buy much tea, so they dry the tea bags and re-use them several times. Reading this part of the article made me think how people in general take things for granted. This family is surviving barely and the children are not receiving their education because they are trying to provide for their family. Poverty exists all over the world and there are people out her that are wasteful when it comes to food and money.
Health is another issue that the family had which was a result of poverty. Due to malnutrition and hard physical work, Bakyt and his sister are often ill, and last winter they both suffered from bronchitis. They were treated at the local hospital, and the medicine and treatment were free. Bakyt is very concerned about his family’s poor health: “Thoughts about my mother’s disease and the fact that he cannot help her always bother him. The grandmother health is poor as well and she is sickly and cannot walk either. Those who are poor should not get sick and if you are not healthy and do not have money nobody needs you. Bakyt thought that in his case with our mother, nobody needed her except his family. When I think about the health care system we have in our country, I feel sad because I work with families that have Medicaid or Medicare and will not go to the doctors as they should. There are families out here and many countries that are not given the opportunity to have health check up or any medical assistance.
The article made we look at things in a different prospective especially when it came to children being the provider for the family. I never thought about children working in the fields to take care of their families. I realized that poverty exists all over the world and children are held accountable for taken care or their families.
