throw-away children
September 21, 2009 | T. Suzanne Eller
I remember driving down the street in El Salvador. A little girl stood by the side of the road, her long thin legs exposed to the thigh.
“She’s a prostitute,” the missionary said. “Most likely mom or dad is addicted.”
I looked back. I saw little faces in a nearby bush sprouting out of the hot sidewalk.
That trip I spent a lot of time at the rescue house, painting, working in the hot sun. I traveled to the slums with the team who brought nourishment, both spiritual and physical, to children and families. We spent time at the King’s Castle, a beautiful oasis for children in the stark reality of suffering.
I cried myself to sleep every night that trip. It was simply overwhelming — the needs. I had seen poverty before on other trips. Happy families with little compared to our exorbitant lifestyles in the US, but never throw-away children. Never hoards of children begging in the streets. Never baby girls prostituting themselves to feed daddy’s addiction. Never children with burn marks, missing limbs, and strap marks across their flesh.
This weekend I watched Slumdog Millionaire, a movie about a boy from India who against all odds won 20,000,000 rupees on the show ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’. But his prize wasn’t money. It was the final freedom for a little girl, now a young woman, who had suffered along with him as “slumdogs”.
As we watched my husband nodded his head when I asked, “Really? Could children suffer so much there?” It was even worse than what I saw in El Salvador.
“I’ve been close to there,” he said, remembering his trip to Bangladesh. “I’ve seen blind children begging and singing in the streets. I’ve seen those crowds of children with beat up silver pans begging for money.”
What can one person do? It’s a question that anyone exposed to suffering asks, but particularly when a child suffers.
Yesterday I told my mother-in-law about Buli, the little girl I sponsor from India. I told her how that $38 a month takes care of her physical and educational needs, how it makes her safe.
“How is that possible,” she asked. “$38, really?”
Really.
It’s one thing we can all do. It’s one dinner out for the fam at a pizza place. It’s less than one month’s cable.
It removes the label “throwaway” and replaces it with nurtured, fed, safe, a child with a future.
It’s a real-life rescue for one child that is life changing — and it’s tangible.
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Absolutely, positively heart-wrenching. I wonder what I will witness in Cambodia next month.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:23 amThanks for sharing that Suzie…
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:31 pmAbsolutely, positively heart-wrenching. I wonder what I will witness in Cambodia next month.
October 5th, 2009 at 5:12 pm