Quarrels! That’s what’s different! We’ve been playing dominos for twenty minutes and not an improper word has been spoken, no one has been punched and no stones have been thrown.
A year ago my work consisted of preventing slaughters and massacres between twelve year olds and today I am playing an innocent game with exactly the same children.
Just to be sure, I glance around me once again, and they really are the same faces, the same Walter, the same Sami. Today they are laughing and they smell of lemon soap. Last year it was all crying, fighting and stinking to high heaven.
What happened? Is it really that simple? Build a nest; dump a bunch of kids in it, problem solved? No, it is not that simple, as time goes by, I get a better understanding of how serious the problems are that we face, to what awful depths these children have fallen and of the huge task required to help them get some sunshine in their lives again.
When I’ve been working for three days altogether, in the Las Flores rehabilitation centre. Francisco, the night guard is suffering from flu and with the typical over-enthusiasm of a beginner, I offer to stay over with him for the night.
He agrees and within the hour I happily saunter in with Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography and a towel neatly wrapped up under my arm, in the naive conviction that I am back in the same sort of exciting school camp as before. Sure enough, I can still quietly read in my own comfy bedroom, while the restfully rhythmic sound in the background of 25 peacefully sleeping ex street children will slowly let me drift into sleep.
I was soon to discover that I had a somewhat over-romantic idea of what was going to be a Spartan night.
“What did you have in mind with that book?” asks Francisco, laughing and sniffing at the same time.
“Well, I usually like to read a bit before I go to sleep”, I answer, while feeling the first inklings of suspicion.
“Bas, how are you going to read? You’ll be in the kid’s dormitory, the lights are turned off at nine”.
“…In the evening…?” is the only thing that I can find to say in my astonishment.
“Yes, in the evening, but you may choose whether you want to stay with the big or with the small boys!”
I didn’t realize then, that a bunch of big boys crammed into a room in the tropics smell infinitely worse than a gang of small boys, and because I still had the vague assumption that maybe, just maybe, the light in the big boys’ room would be turned off a little later, so that I could possibly snatch a quick chapter of Gandhi, my mind was easily made up.
“Francisco, I’ll share with the big boys, because they are undoubtedly harder to control and could do with a little extra supervision!”
Moments later, when I want to take a refreshing shower so I can jump into my bed nice and clean, another painful little scene takes place. Francisco came back, with that slightly sarcastic expression on his face and a half smile on his mouth. “Bas, where are you going with that towel?”
“Well you see Francisco, I kind of like to scrub the sweat from work off my body before I lay down, to make sure that I don’t stink in between all those lads”.
The vague smile now turns into a broad grin when he explains that we have no running water at night, so if I wish to ‘shower’, I can do so with a bowl of water behind the building, where at that precise moment twenty nippers are fooling around in vicious water battles…
Now, it seems to me that they too will not be clean behind the ears tonight and I soon lose the appetite to wash myself when I catch sight of the rough-and tumble.
Fifteen minutes later I’m back in the bedroom, smelly but courageous.
I’m lying next to Sami and suddenly the memories start flooding my mind. At once I am thrown one year back in time, when Las Flores didn’t exist and Sami and his friends had to roam the streets. In my minds’ eye I can still see him, sleeping on some cardboard in the porch of the bakery, where he laid down in the hope of getting a lump of bread when they open. This hope, however, is usually shattered with a kick to his behind or a bucket of water over his head.
Sami, shivering with cold in a tropical rainstorm, hanging onto me to find some warmth that I cannot offer him, because he’s soaked to the skin and makes me just as cold as he is. Sami, sobbing his heart out with frustration and pain, because some adult has beaten him up to buy booze from the proceeds of his begging. Sami was eleven.
Now he is twelve and in rehabilitation center Las Flores he has been given his own bed, and a photo on the wall so he can be absolutely sure that it is his bed and no one else’s. Under the impression that he has fallen asleep by now, I secretly open one eye to see if I can maybe detect a silent smile of happiness playing on his lips. To my embarrassment, he is looking at me with curiosity at the exact same moment, and for a few timid seconds we are silently staring at one another. Being a child, Sami is least affected by shame and with a huge grin he breaks through the awkwardness, swings his arm in the air, to meet mine half-way in a solid high five. A few minutes later I can hear the purr of his gentle snoring.
A Western European child would die of grief where Sami lives. Sami has no bedroom of his own, no pocket money, no mobile phone, no Playstation, he doesn’t even have parents to care for him. He does have a pair of Nikes though, but when he got them they smelled a bit of the sweat from the American teenager who had thrown them away, and one of the soles had to be glued back on.
Nevertheless Sami is happy most of the time, I can see it in his eyes every time I look at him. He gets three meals a day and three extra snacks, sometimes a mango or an orange, or, if our food allowance is almost exhausted, a lolly or a chocolate. We have purified water so he’ll no longer run the risk of getting cholera or typhoid, but if he does fall ill, we will take him to the doctor. He can play soccer, draw cartoons with markers, and twice a day there is running water so he can take a shower.
But, even more importantly, he doesn’t get beaten up by nasty big men anymore. Never again has he to be scared that he might get raped while he is all alone sleeping in an obscure little park. At Las Flores he can get a hug when he wants one and if not that’s fine too. If he lives with us for long enough, we can teach him how to read and write, and because he gets in touch with so many Westerners, he can even take English and computer classes, an almost unheard of luxury in Honduras.
Not long ago, in a brief moment of seriousness, he said to me “Hey Bas man, I’m gonna stay, it’s cool here ya know!”
