Women abandoned

The longer I´m here and the more I get to know people, the more I learn about their lives. I´ve had a lot of lingering questions about the stories of the women who work at AMUCOBU. I learn bits and pieces of their lives, like Fatima´s been separated from her husband for awhile, Alicia has one daughter and lives alone, Theres has 3 daughters and no husband... Suddenly this week, almost all of the women who work here opened up to me and shared something of their past. On Tuesday after work, I walked over to Doña Esmeralda's house around the corner. She was sitting on the couch chatting with Ana about Leddys, who´d been crying all day because her aunt had left for a trip to Panama (Leddys sleeps with her aunt Judy and uncle Gustavo every night). Alicia, who lives across the street came over and we started chatting about her daughter´s birthday piñata party this past weekend. She talked about how she and her sister had been crying together about their father, who abandoned their mother and 3 children for another woman when she was 2, cutting off pretty much all contact and support until Alicia was 12. When she was 15 he moved to LA and again cut off all aid and contact, but continued to support the children he had with his other girlfriend. She said that it really hurt her and her sister that he wasn´t at all interested in their lives and left their mother to struggle alone, despite her pleas for assistance from him. She said it hurt her even more that her own daughter also doesn´t have a father and that she only has one last name instead of the normal two (kids take the names of both their father and mother here). Her daughter constantly asks about her father, and asked if he was going to come to her piñata party. Alicia can´t bear to tell her the truth, that her father is not going to be a part of her life (someone else told me that the father of her daughter was married at the time and promised to leave his wife, but didn´t). Theres´husband also abandoned her for the US, but he still calls and sends money for their 4 children. He left one day without telling her... Only after 4 days did she realize he was gone. Every day this week someone has told me a story of abandonment... You can imagine how many more stories there are...