The Street Seller: Colombia
Pablo's Story

Pablo is 14 years old. He lives in a very poor part of Bogota [Colombia's capital city] with his mother and four brothers and sisters. His mother works full time in a coffee factory. His father is a violent alcoholic, who left home a short time ago.

This is Pablo's story:

We moved from place to place when I was young

I was born in Cali [Colombia's third city] but my family didn't spend more than a year in one place until I was seven years old. My father could never keep his job, so we moved eight times. We children and our mother had to earn money for the family to live. If we didn't bring home enough money, our father beat us - hard. One time he beat me so badly that I couldn't work for several days. Now he doesn't come home any more.

While we were moving around I went to school sometimes, but it wasn't easy for me to make friends with the other children. I also had a lot of discipline problems.

When I was seven years old, we settled in an area where coffee is grown. I started to work with my mother. I picked coffee and worked in the packing factory for five years.

ALCOHOLIC (n): someone who very often drinks too much alcohol; someone addicted to alcohol.

DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS: problems with teachers because of breaking the rules or not doing what you were told

Now I work in a street market in Bogota

When I was twelve years old we moved here, to Bogota. A lot of children in my neighbourhood worked as porters and vendors in Bogota's largest street market, so I went along with them. About 200 kids work in that market.

Every day, I get up at 5.30 a.m. It takes nearly two hours to get to the market by bus, and I start work at eight. My work is to unload the trucks which bring the food to the market. I try to unload fruit trucks, because I don't like carrying meat.

The truck drivers pay us money or, if we choose it, they give us fruit and other things that we can sell. Some of my friends take the money and go home, but I take the fruit and work all day. I can make a lot more money by selling the fruit.

The market sellers don't like us to sell fruit because we offer better prices than they do. They throw rotten vegetables at us and they try to chase us away.

Sometimes, the security guards don't allow us to work at all because the law says we are too young. If we try to get into the market, they hit us with sticks until we run away - but it is easy for us to lose the guards and start selling things again. We work in pairs: one kid sells things, while the other kid watches for the men with sticks.

PORTERS: people whose job is carrying things.

VENDORS: people whose job is selling things.

To UNLOAD a fruit truck is to take fruit off a truck.

ROTTEN: no longer fresh / bad.

SECURITY GUARDS: people whose job is keeping order and protecting a place (in this case the market). They are like a kind of private police.

I have to work

Although I like my job and I have a lot of friends on the market, I don't choose to work. I work because I must, to help my mother and to pay for my food and so on. I want to go to school. I think my father should pay for my education, so that I don't have to work on the market. I want to be a systems engineer, but how can I?

It's wrong that children have to work, but we do. It is even more wrong that people try to stop us working. If I can, I work all day and finish around seven o'clock in the evening. Afterwards my friends and I play football to relax, but I also have to help clean the house and make dinner, so I don't get much free time.

My life is very tiring, but I enjoy myself. I earn between $5 and $8 per day and I use the money to buy food and clothes. I don't drink or take drugs. I would like to save money for school, but I can't do that right now because my mother is sick. She has a problem with her breasts.

SYSTEMS ENGINEER: a person who studies how businesses operate and designs ways to make them better.

TIRING (adj): something that makes you physically tired.

Pablo's secret

Pablo does not tell us about the biggest problem that threatens his future. Pablo's social worker says that Pablo is slowly going blind. If he doesn't have surgery to correct the problem, he will be unable to see by the time he is twenty years old.

The social worker explained: "When Pablo says that he wants to save money to go to school, in his heart he really wants to save so that he can have surgery."