With one of her slippers broken and tears welling up in her eyes, a girl of around 15 was running left and right in panic.

1 TL and Child Laborers

With one of her slippers broken and tears welling up in her eyes, a girl of around 15 was running left and right in panic.  When we asked what she was worried about and her reply was that she had lost her 1 TL this could surely be the title of our article we must share with friends of children.

We are writing from Ordu about the hazelnut workers.

I don’t know the girl’s name and I didn’t ask, but I am finding out her story, all of their affective stories.  They are burning, and we are burning in our hearts, in our minds with them.

Children and families are coming and going.  We know that hazelnuts are first picked on the plain and then further up.  As the families climb up the hills some of them bring their tents with them.  We don’t always have answers to the question asked of us by city theoreticians weather we have “measured the development of the children”.  We can’t measure but we see that anything positive brought to them is reciprocated with positivity.   We observe the power of love, the changing and developing power of love.  In children we right away see the positive response.

Nomadic agricultural workers, families, women live under extremely difficult conditions where they come from and where they go.  The things we see are not befitting the times we live in, our great and beautiful country or humanity.

10, maybe 15 square meter tents are filled with such striking images that we experience a tide of thoughts as to what, how, who will solve the problems and what we can do.

On the one hand there is abject poverty and on the other hand there are socio-cultural problems beyond poverty.  There are families that are doing alright because they have accepted child labor as part of life/making a living. A child may bring home an income of 5-6 thousand lira.  Schools shut their eyes to nonattendance. Before you feel your anger rise, think about what you would do if you were a teacher.  If you were to report absences, especially girls would be taken out of school for good and with no consequences.

Here is another possible title to our article…There are pregnant women living in the tents.  They obey their elders and there are very many children.  It never stops. There are no follow-ups on pregnancies.  Those living in the same tent as their father in-laws hide their pregnancies as best as they can believing to show it would be shameful and one day the ‘unknown’ becomes the ‘known’ and the babies arrive.  In a few days the women go back to their ‘other holy work’- carrying water, cooking and housework in their lives.  The new babies meet life under these circumstances.

We also hail child brides, mothers…

There are many of those also and these women don’t find being one of maybe three wives unusual.  The husbands live ‘fairly’ between their more than one tents.

There is another work than can’t be ignored.  Girls under the age of 12 are responsible for taking care of their siblings and the tents’ chores. 10-12 year old girls with scrawny child bodies carry their siblings around…  They are the ones responsible for carrying everything that needs to be carried.

Children marrying at 15-16 thinking they are leaving difficulty behind or because they are forced into it…
 

We started the article with 1 TL… For the 15 year old girl…You may remember our questions… Thankfully one of us had found the 1 TL and they were looking for the owner.  When we found her, she didn’t look like she believed us but she took the 1 TL she had lost with a twinkle in her eyes…

Dr. Bülent İLİK
Social Service Specialist/ÇYDD Headquarters Executive Committee Member