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Peggy Moran of Collinsville shows memorabilia from her trips to Peru, where she does missionary work. A member of the Henry County Electoral Board, Moran thinks more people would cast ballots in elections if they only knew what Peruvians endure to vote. (Bulletin photo by Mickey Powell) |
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Monday, November 16, 2009
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
Peggy Moran thinks more people locally would go to the polls on Election Day if they only knew what people in countries such as Peru have to go through to vote.
Voter turnout in the Nov. 3 election was 41 percent in Patrick County and 36 percent in both Henry County and Martinsville, local registrars reported.
In Peru, turnout always is virtually 100 percent because voting is mandatory in that impoverished South American nation, said Moran, who frequently does missionary work there and serves on the Henry County Electoral Board.
Peruvians must register to vote where they are born, and they must vote in that place for the rest of their lives, said Moran, of Collinsville.
As a result, some Peruvians travel 12 hours or more to cast their ballots, Moran said. Due to poverty, it is hard for many people to afford such trips, she said.
If they do not vote, they face stiff penalties. Along with heavy fines, they may not be able to work to support themselves and their families, she said.
When people vote in Peru, their voter registration cards are stamped. After an election, employers and potential employers check a person’s card to see if it is stamped. No stamp may mean no job, Moran said.
In contrast, people in the United States can choose whether to vote, and elections officials here make it easy to cast ballots, she noted.
For instance, U.S. citizens are allowed to vote wherever they live, no matter where they were born. If they are disabled and have a hard time getting out of their vehicles at polling places, poll workers will bring ballots out to them. Those who cannot visit a poll on Election Day can vote by absentee ballots, which they mail back to their local elections office, according to Moran.
“We live in the best country in the world. We are blessed to live here,” she said. So “we have an obligation to cast our votes” when elections are held.
Moran, 66, has regularly visited Peru for the past six years. She estimated that if she tallied all the time she spent there last year, it would add up to more than five months. She pays her expenses to get there and return.
She volunteers to do “whatever needs to be done” to help poverty-stricken Peruvians, she said, from delivering food and supplies to helping out in soup kitchens and medical clinics to distributing Bibles.
Much of her service is with the New Life Children’s Home, operated by missionaries Mike and Chelene Kennedy in Cieneguilla, Peru. The home provides love, housing, nutritious meals and a Christian education to children who are rescued after being abandoned by their families, she said.
The ultimate goal is to get those children adopted, and most eventually are, Moran said.
But to stay at the home, a child must be sponsored, she said. She welcomes anyone who is interested in sponsoring a child or making a contribution to the home to call her at 647-8350 or e-mail her at pbmoran@gmail.com.
Peru has about 30 million citizens. About 17 million live in the capital, Lima, which Moran described as a generally wealthy city with shopping centers and major hotels.
But poverty is rampant, she said, noting “there are hundreds of thousands of little shanty homes,” many in the Andes Mountains in places where it has not rained since the 1960s and people must drink processed sea water, which they buy. Mountainsides are parched and barren of plants, she said.
As many as a dozen people live in some of the shanty homes, which are no larger than an average-sized living room in a U.S. house. Shanties are built of wood but, based on photographs she showed, resemble the large cardboard boxes that refrigerators are shipped in.
Shanty-home villages in the mountains are within a 15 to 20 minute drive of Peru’s presidential palace and “within eye’s view,” Moran said.
Despite Lima’s wealth, more than 700,000 children walk the streets there, having been abandoned when their parents died or by parents who no longer could afford to take care of them, said Moran.
Some of the children will do simple tasks, such as washing the windshield of a passing car, just for a little money to buy some food, she said.
A small amount of rice and vegetables that an average person in the United States would eat in a week might last a Peruvian person a month, Moran said. Still, she recalled talking to one girl who had not eaten in five days.
The government tries to rescue as many abandoned children as it can. But the kids who are rescued are sent to government-run “holding centers” that “just get them off the streets,” Moran said. “They don’t eat properly” in the centers and are not given health care or an education, she said.
There is a lot of crime in Peru, such as stealing, she said “because they are so desperate” to survive amidst the poverty.
Yet Peruvians generally are mild-mannered, friendly people, and government officials are grateful for foreigners’ help, she said.
She is unable to explain the disparity between Lima’s wealth and poverty elsewhere in the nation, or why the government cannot — or will not — do more to help impoverished people.
“It’s just something you can’t understand,” she said.
The poverty there makes her realize how fortunate she is to live in the United States.
First-time visitors to Peru have told her “they have a greater appreciation of the United States ... once they work in a Third World country,” Moran said.
She said she thinks young people in this country should be required to visit a Third World country before graduating from high school so they will better appreciate the luxuries they have in life. |
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