One day at a time...

Chat told me the other day that I need to find another hobby after I told her of my frustration with the parents of these street kids. She said, “Why don’t you go bum around Europe?” “Europe? That’s just geography, because I am bumming around already.” And I must really look like a bum, because today, after I came out of the pharmacy to get one of the boys (who was waiting for me outside the door) some medicine, the guard asked me if the boy was my son. “Yes he is.” I said, while I made the boy pop the pill into his mouth in front of the guard.

Because it has been raining a lot lately and the weather is colder at night, almost all the street kids are having a fever on and off while constantly coughing and spitting phlegm. I get angry, frustrated and heartbroken, because I feel so inadequate to help with their physical illness but mostly because I know that more than anything, they need to be emotionally coached to get past the hurt of being abandoned. Here’s one typical example: Rio, is 14 years old. His father was killed when he was 10. A year later, his mother started living with another man who is a drunk and beats them up. Rio then run away, and began living on the street. Every week I see him and the other street kids, and every week he says the same thing, “you forgot about me already, did you?”

Last Sunday, he told me he is saving some money so he can go back to the province where his uncle lives. I told him I will take him there or pay for his fare if he promise to start a new life and not come back to the city. But first I had to talk to his other uncle who works here in the city, because there’s no use sending him to the mountain if he is not welcomed there. True enough, the uncle said they don’t want the responsibility. “He only finished 2nd grade.” I asked him if he would reconsider and talk to the other uncle; I appealed to his conscience. “How can Rio start a new life if no one will help him, and how can someone deny him another chance at a decent life?” Well, today I put Rio on the bus back to his province. I told him that if he promise to do good and stay 3 months, I will go up there and celebrate his birthday with a cake, and I will enroll him in school.

In the meantime, I don’t allow myself to worry too much about tomorrow because I am not guaranteed that I will still be alive when tomorrow comes. There’s a greater chance that I will be bumming around Europe than Rio graduating elementary school. But then again, who knows?