A story about Illiteracy

I remember many years ago, a young teenage girl aged about 15 was working in our family as a helper. She was new to our place, in fact it was her first time to see a "city". She grew up in a very poor environment. Her father is a farmer and her mother wash clothes of richer people - "labandera". She finished until grade 2 only and cannot read well.

Before my mother accept her to work, we asked her parents if it is fine with them to send their daughter to work even if she did not have a good education yet; and she was still very young. Her mother said, "that is what the best for us right now, we needed enough money for our daily living. I'm allowing her to work for our sake. Please accept her as your helper" to my mother. Lets keep her in the name Sarah, not her real name.

She has been a good and obedient helper to us. After a few weeks of pf work, our trust to her is increased. We taught her many things with regards to her work. We taught her how to buy things in the market and she did a good job. She did all things for us so perfectly.

One day, we sent her to the same market where she used to go to buy the things we needed. It was a usual afternoon for her. But one thing that is not usual that time - she was asked to buy some three pads of intermediate paper in some paper station near the market. We know the very fact that it would be her first time to buy that stuff and so my mother gave her detailed instructions as to the 'whats' and 'wheres' including the 'hows'. When asked if she understood, she answered YES. She was asked if she had questions, she said none. And so there she goes to the market with our full trust.

After almost four hours, she did not return back home. We searched for her in the market and to the stores where we usually buy the things we needed. The vendor said, "oh, she was here earlier to buy some stuffs". We asked again in the other stalls, and we received the same reply. We searched for her almost all the corners of the market and found no Sarah. The vendors said she'd been here and bought the things she needed to buy, therefore she went to the market and bought the things she needs to buy.

She really did not came back that evening until we found her early in the morning sleeping outside our house. She looked tired and a bit dirty with every thing she bought the other day laid in the ground. We woke her up and asked her what happened...

Find out more next week....