Despite suffering knee problems and hypertension, 69-year-old Nicaraguan asylum-seeker Esperanza* used to get up at dawn every day to pick coffee to support her family in Costa Rica.
“Being old makes it hard to do the kinds of jobs we have to do to keep food on the table,” says the grandmother of 10 who fled Nicaragua in 2018 after a government crackdown on street protests there.
“Picking coffee is very physically demanding, and at our age it’s very difficult to be out there in the fields all day, sometimes freezing and shivering under the pouring rain. If we were younger, it would be easier,” she said.
As older people seeking safety in a foreign country, life was already “a daily struggle” for Esperanza and her husband, who also escaped to Costa Rica. And now with the COVID-19 pandemic, that situation has only grown tougher.
As lockdown hit, Esperanza’s work dried up and she and her husband fell behind on payments for the room they rented and were threatened with eviction.
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