Great you've downloaded this edition of assignment from the BBC World Service.

Traveling to Lemurs in experience, I spent hours gridlocked in traffic with drivers

tooting their horns. When I finally made it to the outskirts of the city,

I found tiny houses precariously perched on hills, often with no running water.

It's there that I met many of the people in this program to hear their stories about the

children who've been left behind in Peru's hidden pandemic. They're struggling to survive

after their mothers or fathers died because of COVID. But what struck me was their resilience

and the love that other members of their family are giving them to help them through this very

difficult time. You're listening to assignment on the BBC World Service. I'm Jane Chambers.

I'm been introduced to Gabriella and her brood of children, all crowded around the door as I enter.

Curious to have a foreign visitor after so many months of lockdowns in Peru.

They live at the end of a row of tiny houses near a railway track on the outskirts of the capital city,

Lima. I'm just having a bit of a tour of the house.

There's a kitchen but also the bed where Gabriella sleeps with her husband and the baby and at the

back we've got lots of bunk beds. I got a bunk bed where two boys sleep on top and two

boys sleep on the bottom. In the other bedroom the girls sleep.

It's incredible how Gabriella and her husband have managed to squeeze them all in and make the

limited space work. But until a year ago they were a much smaller family. Four of the children

belonged to her sister. She was one of the early victims of the coronavirus pandemic.

When my sister was dying of COVID she asked me to look after her children. She didn't want them

to end up in a children's home and I didn't either. At first my husband said no to having all

four of them so the youngest one went to live with my cousin but she shaved off all of her hair.

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