Street Kids
Street Kids
(blog entry)
Yes they do not look like street kids, because they have been taken in fed, clothed educated and rehabilitated.
Hearing them sing about Mama was heart breaking. Many of us broke into tears, even the men.
This is old stuff but it apparently has not seen the light of day ( which means it had not been blogged by me)
The Children Nobody Wanted
What I remember most about her are her eyes. Large dark brown eyes in the sweetest face I could ever imagine. She was all of four years old. Father John held her in his arms as he told her story.
Some few months ago this child was found in the streets of Lebanon with her two younger siblings.In her three and something years, she had been thrown out into the streets with her two younger siblings. She cared for them for some days before being rescued and sent to this home . She had kept herself and her siblings alive by feeding them and herself with water from the drains.
She and her siblings suffered from a severe gastroenteritis but they lived , and her she was, with her large brown eyes and curly black hair tied back from her face by a pretty ribbon and her clean chubby body in a pretty dress.Who could have done this, who could have thrown out this little girl and her baby sister and brother? They investigated and this is what they found:
A desperate mother whose husband was imprisoned, who had no means to feed them and herself and in her lack of resources, and in her lack of humanity for having to live a life less than human , had deemed it necessary to throw out her children in order to survive in a land where she was herself not a citizen and had no rights….
More and more people are becoming stateless, landless,jobless..through no fault of their own except for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Can you then look at a human being who is without his/her humanity and then blame them for being so, for not having a humanity because they have had very little human rights?
I know you can still blame them.
I know you can still blame them for being crooks and desperados who beat and rape and plunder and bring into this world more inhuman human beings, creatures with no rights, creatures thrown into streets, exploited and made use of, growing up to be replicas of their parents.
What do we do about this flotsam and jetsam , this scum of the humankind?
The Evangelical Society of Lebanon decided to pick them up and house them, cloth them, feed them, educate them, rehabilitate them…rehabilitate little children some of whom had become sex addicts, drug addicts, thieves and thugs, some as young as three years old.
They had a clinical psychologist to help them deal with their traumas, a lawyer who looked into their cases..in Lebanon Street children are deemed to be criminals by law…yes ,this little kids had police case files. ..Other staff included cooks and teachers and caregivers. Some were employed, some were carefully picked volunteers who loved children and could deal with them with love and patience.
It cost a lot of money, a whole lot of money which was not forthcoming from the Government and was not even chanelled to them from foreign NGOs because it was policy in Lebanon that non citizens could not receive the foreign funds meant to help them.The huge dilapidated multistory building that housed this children’s home was built on the side of the hill.It was comfortable, cheerful ,clean but shabby with its paint peeling and its furniture needing repair.
How did this group manage.? Father John said, only by a miracle and a prayer did they manage all they had done.
They had room for only 100 children .
Most of the children were Muslim and some of their origins were only known by the way they looked, the dialect they spoke and their names.
We looked into the classroom of the four year old boys and girls, in their standard blue teeshirts and pants. Teacher asked if they would sing for us. They were happy to do so! Teacher took them to the hall where they sat in a small group, huddled like little kittens and then proceeded to sing a song about Mama. A song of praise to Mama..What Mama I thought? Yet the love and longing for Mama rang through their sweet children’s voices, straight to my heart, piercing my heart, breaking it to pieces until I had to turn my face away, contorted in grief,a grief I must not show to these motherless children.
