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In the first part of the story, Ramiro has left the center and Kike told about the assassination of his father, that he had witnessed.

With Kike’s past in mind, there’s no need to know Ramiro’s. Every child bears his own, unique story, and each additional year in the streets is another agonizing step toward the abyss, the bottom of which is an early, horrendous death. Most children try to forget their past, like Kike. Ramiro simply couldn’t. Too much history, not enough hope to bury it.

Now Ramiro is standing in front of a fence. On the other side, the safe side, stands Christi. A year after her volunteer work, she has come back with a little group of Dutch people who wished to visit the project. Christi organizes trips all over the world for companies that are looking for a special outing, and now she uses her

know-how to share her experience with others, free of charge.

That night, we had gone for dinner at an outdoor restaurant that is enclosed by a fence to keep beggars and hungry children from shattering the wealthy guests’ illusion of luxury with their piercing looks and dirty, held-up hands. Like in other, infamous places in the world, they have built a barrier because the differences between people who share the same land are more poignant than the community can cope with.

But a fence is not a wall and through the holes Ramiro’s questioning gaze fixes on Christi’s. For seconds, their eyes remain locked while Christi is being drawn to the fence, carried by a memory that doesn’t correspond to today’s truth. Now, last year’s flourishing teenager only exists in her imagination; the twinkling eyes have become dim and vacant, as if someone has turned the lights off just as dusk is setting in.

Christi doesn’t understand, or maybe she understands all too well; whereas a mere fence separates their bodies, their lives unwind in different worlds. Never again will Ramiro be part of Christi’s surroundings, never will he be able to climb out of the ravine that the cruelty of his life has thrown him into.

The restaurant owner tells us that the boy has recently robbed his cook with a knife, in broad daylight. His eyes were hazy with drugs, his hands trembled from hunger, or maybe from fear. The reward, eighty cents, was just enough for a next ration of glue, for a next little step toward a premature, violent death. Ramiro is not allowed inside the gate. The owner apologizes, but how could anyone blame him?

Christi rushes back to our table and asks our guests to offer their leftovers. Fried banana, lumps of meat, a few scraps of carrot salad and even a drop of soda. It looks like a treasure to her and off she is with all that wealth. Until she looks into Ramiro’s eyes again, through the fence. Only then the truth imposes itself. Ruthlessly, sharply, inevitably. What benefit does an adolescent get from a bite of fruit, a gnawed off piece of cutlet, a bottom of lukewarm soft drink, if he has no parents? No home, no bed, no life?

Around her finger, Christi’s wearing a ring made of tiny, plastic beads. Just like the one Ramiro had made for her the summer before, to thank her for all she had done, and of course, for the cool cap she had offered him. But it’s not the same ring. Another boy made this one, a new, smaller boy, one that still has a future impatiently waiting for him. Ramiro’s eyes shine brightly, for a brief moment, when he sees the ring. When he touches it, time comes to a halt, and their worlds melt into one, like a fairy tale. But the truth outruns the dream, again. Ramiro turns around. He loafs off, back into his own world, toward his grave, and Christi stays behind the gate, lost in her sadness.

Kike’s eyes hastily cross mine; all the attention has made him shy. Today’s a special day. He will be getting new shoes, handmade to fit his crooked foot, and paid for by the American surgeon, who wanted to help him any way she could. Never before was he given a present, and his head’s reeling with questions.

“Are you sure I will get them, maybe the shoemaker forgot to make them! What are we to do if he has forgotten?”

“Kike, the shoemaker hasn’t forgotten. You’re hugely important so I’m sure he’ll have thought of it!”

Important? Him? He has no clue as to why he would possibly be important to anyone but he so much wants to believe it that he’s beaming.

“And do you think I can play soccer now, with the others? Or will I still have to make drawings? To be honest, I don’t really like all the drawing, did you know that?”

There’s the shoemaker. For the occasion, we had bought some socks at the market. Fake Nike’s for a euro a pair, legal in Honduras, or almost. Then it’s too much for Kike, suddenly he quietly weeps. I’m amazed. Tearlessly he told about his father getting killed while he was standing next to him, mechanically he spoke of the woman who disabled his foot with a stone’s throw on the head. But for new shoes he still has tears to cry, to be a real child for a while.

He makes the first steps hesitantly, like a man on the moon. Then he realizes that he doesn’t tumble forward, he doesn’t trip over, even when he tries to go faster. Soon enough he jumps around and the smile on his face makes me think of Christi behind that fence, only weeks before. Back then, for a moment, Christi couldn’t see that there are more laughs than tears, more love than fears, many more successes than failures. For every child that drops out, four seize their chance and build a future.

Ramiro didn’t make it. He steals, he sniffs, he starves. I sincerely wish for him to die soon and without pain. Is that tough? There is no choice. Proniño has done everything to help Ramiro. Ramiro was destroyed before he even got a chance to grow up, and the destruction was crueler than all of Proniño’s love and attention could heal. In a land where for some a child is worth less than the lead in the bullet that kills him, it isn’t possible to offer every child the future he deserves.

But Kike has a fair chance. And Pedro, Juan, Jorge and many others. Recently, a dormitory for girls was built. As soon as there is enough money for their educators, the food, school and clothes, we will also be able to welcome Rosalia, Agneta, Nelly and their girlfriends in the center.

There is much more light than darkness, much more future than past.

Merrily an excited child’s voice wakes me up from my reflections.

“Bas, Bas, why don’t you follow me in the car, I’ll run ahead! Let’s see if you can catch up!”

Kike runs off, heading for his future. You want to come along?

Give a child a chance, offer the world some balance!

She’s a beautiful woman. She’s in her forties, but she has the looks of a thirty something and the giggly lightness of an ageless teen. She’s traveled in more countries than most of us in two life times. Christi, she’s from the Netherlands. Christi’s crying and the tears make her even more beautiful.

Just before she started her own company in 2004, she flew to Honduras to volunteer in a nutrition center for malnourished infants. For six weeks, Christi carried around dirty diapers, washed 26 pairs of baby bottoms each morning, and while her little ones were sleeping, she often came to visit the boys of Proniño, the project that Homeless Child supports in Honduras.

He was her favorite. Ramiro was quite a star at fourteen; we’d secretly nicknamed him “college kid”. Ramiro liked cool clothes and whenever a new load of aid supplies came in, threw himself at it to have the first choice. To him, it didn’t matter that his prize was nonchalantly thrown into a container as a cast-off by some spoilt little American or European teenager, it still felt new. Fifteen minutes of scrubbing on the stone washboard and the old sweat was gone.

But Ramiro didn’t make it. Ramiro became a cast-off himself. His past was darker than all the light of a future could ever illuminate. Right after his fifteenth birthday he ran off, two layers of his beloved clothes wrapped tight around his body. The first layer to sell, the second to keep warm under the cool skies of the lonely night. But the second was traded for the quick fix of drugs and a filthy old rag.

The love of the educators, Christi’s hugs, the group spirit, it was good but it wasn’t enough. When he was seven Ramiro ended up in the streets and we only found him five years later. No one knows what happened in between and no one will ever know.

Kike. His foot is crooked and a visiting orthopedic surgeon from the United States has promised to have a look at it. On our way to the clinic I ask him whether he was born with that foot.

“No, a woman did that, with a stone”.

“A woman? With a stone? What do you mean?” I am amazed and think that I must have misunderstood.

“I was sleeping in a porch. Then this woman woke me up, it was really early, and she chased me away. When I was on the other side of the street, I said something mean to her, I was so mad”.

He takes a sip of the orange squash I bought him. When I take a child to see the doctor, I often buy him a treat. The so-called ‘sick bonus’.

“And then the woman grabbed a stone, a real big one, and she threw it right at my head, here”. He points at a hook-shaped, badly healed scar above his left eyebrow. “Then I fainted and when I woke up my foot was crooked. And my face was full of blood, disgusting!”

“Bas, do you think it was God’s punishment? Because I had shouted at that woman?”

The question is innocent, it carries no judgment. Nascent drops of sweat bead on his forehead and fight for room with dust blowing up from the dirt road. Expectation glows from his big child’s eyes, as if I am to decide the verdict for him.

“No sweetheart, I don’t think so. I think you deserve a well working straight foot. Let’s ask the doctor if she can take care of that!”

But the doctor is powerless. The stone of judgment, that was thrown three years before, has caused brain damage that flexes the muscle of his foot continuously. Surgery in the United States would offer relief, but there’s no money for that, nor the compulsory visa. Kike is resigned. He’s been stumbling through life like that for three years and hardly remembers other times. He’s even taught himself, by means of a trick, to run, well, a little at least. And when it’s soccer time, he’s allowed to draw pictures, that’s nice too, isn’t it?

When we drive back home, I ask about his father.

“One day this other guy came and he had a row with daddy. Then they fought but the other guy had an axe so he won, of course.”

“Ah, he threatened your father with the axe, you mean?”

“No, he raised it far above his head and then he let it down on daddy’s face with all his force”. Kike is using his hands to demonstrate the effect on his own face. A trickle of dried up orangeade draws a line from the nail of his index finger to the palm of his hand. It matches wonderfully with his cinnamon colored skin.

“Like this Bas, with the sharp side of the axe right into dad’s forehead. It went through his nose too.” His hands illustrate his story once again, as if that’s needed. “And then his whole face was split in two halves and he was dead. And his nose was gone too.”

“Wow”. That’s all I manage to utter.

“And then the other guy ran off, but he had left the axe behind. It was full of blood and parts of daddy’s nose stuck to it, that was so filthy! Well, and I was standing next to him when it happened, but I couldn’t do a thing. I was little back then, I couldn’t defend daddy”.

Kike is eleven. He was eight when it happened.

“So then I simply decided to forget that it ever happened. That’s better, don’t you think?”

“Yes buddy, that’s better, try to forget. And if you ever wish to talk about it later, you always can”.

I need to get out of the car. The small space that I am sharing with Kike becomes too oppressive; he’s leaning against me but I cannot offer him the love that he is looking for, his father will not come back. We go for pizza, an extra bonus. I can’t swallow even the smallest bite, but Kike seemingly isn’t bothered. He’s playing on the restaurant’s slide, with his crooked foot. Has he truly forgotten about the split face? I’m afraid not.

Give a child a chance, offer the world some balance!