My Story

Hello! I greet you affectionately through this and I hope you are doing well. My name is Maria Toj Cux. I was born on November 26th, 1986, and I am 38 years old. I am a widow. My husband passed away 4 years ago due to alcoholism. I have four children: three boys and one girl. Two of them have special needs. Yeison is six years old. He can't speak, walk or see well. He needs to use diapers, but I do not have enough economic resources to buy them. Petrona has speech problems, and also due to low resources, she has cannot receive therapy or some help with her speech. I raise some hens, and sometimes, I sell them. Thanks to God, my older son Manuel works and provides for our family; he works as a day laborer. He is 16 years old but does his best to help me to supply the home needs. This situation is very hard for our family because I cannot go to work, and our resources are limited to buy clothes and all the essentials at home.

We do not have beds, chairs or furniture; I have improvised some wooden boards and we sleep on them. We cook and eat on the ground. I suffer from pain in my belly and feet, I have some hearing loss in my left ear. I have cannot visited a doctor for lack of resources. Thanks to God, we have the blessed to have our own house. It is small; we just have one room and one kitchen. It is made of adobe walls, tin sheet roof and dirt floor. There is no running water or electricity. So, we get water from a natural stream with the help of a hose, and we use candles or fatwood for light. We are a very needy family and the greatest needs are clothes, shoes, beds, a table, chairs and food. We walk one hour to get to the feeding program. Thank you for reading my information. I hope you find it interesting.

Many blessings,

Maria Toj Cux

Translated by: Magnolia Gómez, AAC Secretary / Guatemala.