Skip to main content

Never lose hope

Sometimes it's hard not to lose hope.
Last week I had to tell a 10 year old I would not give him his monthly food supply until he would go back to school and would show up every morning. He is an orphan, his mum abandoned him, his stepmother tried to still from him. Sister Aparecida is now the one who feeds him, dresses him and sends him to school. But temptation is too big and the week he gets the food he does not go to school and stays home eating. Since it was exams week, we had to delay the food...
Yesterday we went to look for the house of a 2nd grade kid who stopped showing up at school. Yesterday he came and said his dad did not let him come to school because he had to make some money everyday to take home. When we went to his house we knew why he came yesterday: his dad was away. Sister Isabel has promised to come back Sunday but today the kid was in the streets again. The dad was back.
Today, as I left the pre-school in the morning, a policemen asked me to give a ride to a lost kid. He said someone would get him on a car to a place more than an hour away. Fearful of taking a lost kid but unable to say no, I ended up taking him to the police station downtown. The kid was too scared and confused to speak. He spoke no portuguese and my scarce dialect was but enough to find out his name. The worse part is we noticed he was retarded. I made sure the police would indeed take him back and send him home but I guess I will wonder if he will ever get there.
It is hard not to loose hope in a place like this but it is hard not to hope that things can improve. I trust they will, I pray that they will, I hope someone will listen and join my efforts. As they say in Mozambique, "tamos juntos" (we are together), it is all we can try to do, put little gestures and hope great helps will come out.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We are not afraid.. are we not?

I see signs saying we are not afraid. Londoners are tough and endured the bombings of WWII. But those Londoners are hardly the same as the ones here today. Yes people in general are resilient, more than we think we can be when looking outside out. That is anywhere in the world, not just in London. And truth be said there is merit in not letting fear control our lives and terrorism win.  Well I just walked into the district line, 5 stations away from Parsons Green and I am afraid. I am not shaking, crying or running away. But I am afraid mostly because it is all so natural. Life must go on I said, as I decided I was not going to cancel my lunch and avoid the tube. But that is what makes it scary. Life goes on and in an effort to not be afraid we recklessly do not change our habits and rely on the stats that more people die on the road then on terrorist attacks. Reality is, the law of probability does not matter because terrorist events are binary.  So I think about my frie...
1 comment
Read more

Flying Sunday

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard...
2 comments
Read more

What happened?

Yes, something had to happen to keep me away from here for this long. I had been behaving so well blogging more and more and now what? Very simple, Francesco was born! In a day full of emotions, tears of joy and setbacks Francesco greeted me with his wide open eyes and his calm ways (at least for now). Everyone struggles to point Mum and Dad’s features in him but all I care about is himself. He has long been waited for in this world and I was proud to follow closely his first 4 days. Now, I have to limit myself to technology and hope Patricia likes to skype to make sure I see him growing, crying, moving and smiling. It will be a month until I see him again, precisely a month from the 12th of November and I will miss experiencing his first triumphs to win my sister’s heart. He has barely been here and I miss him already!
Post a Comment
Read more