“I’ll neeeeeeeever run off, ya know that?” Cristian cuddles his head in my neck, but warily avoids making eye contact.
While visiting the project, our secretary Tielke Ausems has decided to offer all the children full dental treatment. When one lives in the gutter, one is usually too busy surviving to think about brushing ones teeth and thanks to his lengthy street career, little Cristian, full of misplaced pride and feeling special, heads the list with sixteen (16!!) cavities and two decayed molars.
Spending hours in the chair with such a mouth full of trouble, he clearly deserves a little outing between two shots, and together we head for the cyber-cafe to have a look at the Homeless Child website. Like most of our children he can neither read nor write, but apparently this doesn’t in the least reduce the pleasure of the experience, and I can see his eyes light up when I explain that people in a far away and rich country are able to see how he lives, that some of these people even give a bit of their time or their money because they find it unfair that he, Cristian, has had to sleep on cardboard and sniff glue to blur the hunger cramps since he was five.
“I’ll neeeeeeeever run off, he repeats. Of course I believe this and I let him walk the block back to the dental clinic on his own, it’ll give me a chance to pick up e-mail. That was naïve of me. When I’m back at the dentists fifteen minutes later, the boy isn’t there. Convinced of his good will I calmly walk around a block or two, assuming that the poor lamb got lost and is now forlornly waiting for his guardian angel from Holland to come and save him. That too was naïve.
Cristian is from the large neighbouring town of San Pedro Sula and the temptation is just too great, he is being sucked back into the freedom of the street, back to the ecstasy of the narcotics, even if that once again means no bed, no bath, no food, more mistreatment, more begging.
While searching the area I slowly start to realize the painful consequences of my act, and with my tail between my legs I head to the office to call in for help. How do I explain this? Everyone makes mistakes and one can lose tons of things, sunglasses, keys, even a car. But a child..you don’t lose a child do you? Apparently I can!
To make matters worse, the whole scene repeats itself when a mere three days later two more little lads make a break for it, while the director, who had especially come to keep an eye on them, is off to the bathroom and the dentist has her head bent over the umpteenth cavity of the umpteenth kid.
Thankfully, the rest of the club is now stable enough. Even though they become restless, they do not suddenly give in to rebellion or the desire to follow the example of the three crafty ones. This first group of children have been living in the centre, Las Flores, for a few months, where they are prepared for a life with order and structure, a life with school and vocational training. They receive occupational therapy from the moment they get up until they go to bed, to keep their minds off the glue or other drugs, to improve their attention and concentration, to sow the seeds of self-respect and make the world a colourful place again.
For the vast majority this system is functioning. It is magical to witness how naturally an average ten year old slips back into the child he is and engages in endless marble competitions or “who-can-most-beautifully-write-his-name” games; one would almost forget that each single one of them has lived in the gutter, preyed upon by adults like abused animals.
Abused, by the shop owner who beats them up for having stolen an apple to soothe the hunger cramps, by the police, who in turn are pressured by the shop owner to get rid of those “filthy bastards”, by the gang-member covered in tattoos who’s threatening to put a knife between their ribs if they don’t beg enough money for his liking, and by the paedophile who gives them a few worthless pennies in exchange for what is called “survival sex”.
The extent to which this takes place is hard to determine, but the fact that in our group of 25 there’s only one girl speaks volumes. As long as any family ties are maintained, girls tend to be more attached to their homes than their male counterparts, but as soon as they expose themselves to the dangers of the street they often become slave to a network of prostitution from which they can virtually not extricate themselves. That doesn’t mean that boys have nothing to fear. I’ve been told that one of ours was always mincing around in the park with a tiny handbag around his shoulder with his face heavily made up. He’s twelve.
In the meanwhile the three crafty ones are still gone. Because the two female dentists are as concerned as we are and because they feel partly responsible, they jump into their car with teacher Aurora and myself. Let’s go to San Pedro Sula , let’s go find “our” kids.
But how does one do that? How does one find a child? Where do you start looking in a city of over half a million, where some 1500 children roam the streets in neighbourhoods that are under armed rule of frightful gangs, neighbourhoods that are therefore no go zones for us?
Before we left, Aurora had gathered some information from a few of our most seasoned ex-street-urchins and they unanimously referred to “the little park”. It was said to be the central meeting place for the group Cristian and Co. once were part of.
That so called little park turned out to be an obscure piece of wasteland, squatted on by some fifteen children aged from eight to about sixteen. A little fire was busily burning away, utterly unnecessary in broad daylight in a place where year round temperatures never drop below 30 degrees (85 F). A bottle of booze is passed around. Half of them have a small bag of glue hanging from their mouths, and they all stare straight at us, their eyes full of menace and fear.
We too are scared. We stand there transfixed for endless seconds, not knowing how to proceed, feeling as if we are separated from the children by an invisible but real barrier, until one of them shatters the gulf between us with an unsure smile and a few cautious steps in our direction. Courageous Aurora steps through a hole in the fence, the lady dentists and I following in her wake.
“Howarya?”, asks the boldest one in his typical street slang.
“Andya?” I reply, acting the tough guy. It comes out pathetically; street children’s language simply doesn’t belong in the mouth of big white men, especially those handicapped with a thick foreign accent. Luckily he can appreciate my effort and once the ice is broken we start to gently enquire whether they have seen the three boys.
Meanwhile one of the smallest children hangs on to my leg.
“Mister, Mister, are you with Proniño?”
Surprised that the little lad knows the name of the project in the smaller town half an hour from there, I look down at him with a hint of suspicion.
“Yeah, we’re with Proniño son”
“Mister, Mister, can I come with you then?”
I am confused because too much is happening simultaneously. Aurora and the dentists are engaged in a heated debate with a few of the youths to learn the possible whereabouts of Cristian and Co. One kid is stoking up the fire. A boy and a girl, no more than thirteen years old, are ostentatiously snogging (for our non-British readers: French kissing that is.) in the hopes of shocking us.
“So, why’d'ya wanna come?” I ask.
“Because you have the greatest place, you’re super-cool”. He blurts it out with such conviction that my suspicion turns into gratitude. Curious, I ask why he thinks so.
“Well, my best friend lives there and he told me! Denis, ya know him I’m sure? Denis lives with you guys. Denis is my all time best friend and Denis is also the best football player in town but I’m second best Mister, so can I come? Cause Denis has lived here in the little park too and he’s with you now so then now I too can come as well of course? I don’t eat much ya know, I only just turned nine. Oh yeah, and I’m very quiet too!”
That last remark stretches the truth a bit far and daunted by the chatterbox I glance round to Aurora the teacher, she looks dubious too.
“Maybe not yet okay?” I brush his remarks aside, while a vague sense of guilt creeps up on me. An estimated 100 million street children wander the globe. Twenty-five of those live with us now, is it really impossible to squeeze in a tiny twenty-sixth?
The lady dentists drag my thoughts back to the problem at hand. Our boys are likely to be around the cathedral, near the town square.
The square is so immense that we decide to split up to improve our chances. The two dentists take the northern side, while Aurora starts to comb through the central part and the remaining share, right opposite the cathedral, is for me. Crowds are milling around. Shrivelled old men have taken possession of the rusty steel benches that are strategically placed in the shade of the trees to settle their fierce domino competitions. Children impeccably dressed in school uniform are play fighting, while street vendors fall over one another to offer a bizarre choice of merchandise. You can buy TV aerials, ready plucked hens, plastic belts, copied ABBA cd’s in Spanish, newspapers, and lottery tickets. Especially lottery tickets. The poorer the people, the more the lottery industry flourishes. Hope keeps man alive, and spending..
