Good Planning

Obviously there is a lot to be said for chance, for systems that are screwed up, for life’s difficulties. I am in fact here examining how it is that people are creating a new system which works better for them, since much of what we operate in is well, pretty much fucked.
However, despite this, it is interesting to see and think about how one’s individual life choices also play a big part in how oppressed or unoppressed, how comfortable or uncomfortable, and how many choices one has. I have been thinking about this a lot as regards Mayra, the head of the household where I have been staying for the last month. She is 38 years old, has four sons, a house, 17 manzanas of land, a small store, and is the president of the cooperative. Although she definitely struggles at times to make ends meet, she manages, and manages well.
Being placed in the same situation, or worse, as many of her countrymen and women, Mayra has struggled and overcome, and has planned all along. Despite the fact that she only attended school until the fourth grade, when she went to work harvesting tobacco for the international cigar companies based in Nicaragua, Mayra thought to start saving a portion of her wages every paycheck by the age of 14. At this time, she, like her mother and countless others, was earning barely subsistence wages working as a cook in a hacienda kitchen on a coffee plantation. She woke up at 1 am to start making the first of three daily rounds of 1400 tortillas, for all of the haciendas workers. However, with the money she saved, at the end of the Sandinista period, she succeeded in purchasing her own small farm with the money that she had saved.
At Age 17, she had her first son. Eight years later, she had her last, and opted to have the free operation that would keep her from having more children. Fortunately, this has limited the size of Mayra’s family enough that she had been able to, with help from the coop, support all of her children in going to high school, an incredible feat in a country where once again the illiteracy rate is approaching 50%.
At the times of the coffee crisis, Mayra also continued to work her coffee, trying to up the quality even as the international price for coffee plummeted. After three years in the early 90’s, when the price of coffee rose again, she was able to earn enough off of her coffee sales to purchase a few more manzanas, rather than having to work to recoup coffee plants that had been left idle for the last few harvests.
Each of these examples shows foresight even in the face of great obstacles. By saving Mayra was able to secure herself and her family a place to live. By limiting the number of children she was to have, she made herself more able to provide for them, unlike some others, who, with 21 children, openly admit that they have no thought of being able to send all of them to school. In addition to this, persevering with her crops despite huge hardship also paid off for Mayra, as she just continued her work, undeterred by her then desperate situation.
How much of one’s success is determined by life circumstances? By external factors? How much depends on making good decisions, on thinking ahead? It is obviously impossible to know, and the questions have innumerable answers, but it is also clear that it is easier to deal with 4 children that 14. Where is the line between individual responsibility and social responsibility? If the government were to make it possible for women to limit the number of children they have, (which it doesn’t), is it the fault of the parents that they have too many children to be able to send them all to school? So many questions, all about human individuals and individual responses and situations, with no single question, and no single answer…