Freedom: February 2015

Today was a particularly hard day. On Sundays we feed homeless children living in a slum next to the railroad tracks. These children typically dig through the trash to for their meals. It’s a tragic picture. Beautiful, bright-eyed little boys and girls ages 3 months to 13 years old, covered in dirt, playing amongst the ruins. They are uninhibited by the broken glass, dead rats and barbed wire as they chase each other around the tracks.

Street kids have a distinct look. The difference is in their eyes. They possess an untamed beauty, as if they hold a raw truth the rest of us can’t see. The reality is their lives ARE untamed and raw. They live a reality I can't even pretend to know.

The children start to swarm as we pull pots of rice and dhal from the backseat of our car. They fight to help carry the makeshift water jug made from a plastic garbage pail. We remove our shoes and climb the ledge to the small little Hindu temple where we set-up an assembly line of rice, dhal, salt, chillies and bananas. The children are told they wash their hands with soap and water (from our little bucket)before they can eat. You have to regulate the water station because they try to drink the water, which although might be cleaner than the water they typically drink is not potable.

With clean hands they crowd around the feeding line. Children of 4 years old carry babies of 12 months. They look at you with their dirty little faces and runny noses smiling as you dish them a warm home-made meal.

Some of the older boys show up high. The depravity and hopelessness of their existence drives many kids in the slums to huff white-out in a desperate attempt to escape their reality. You see them walking around with rags up to their faces, inhaling chemical hope. Some look as young as 9 or 10.

Today, a woman frantically told our translator her husband had been burned and wanted to know if we could come see him. I followed her around a broken barbed fence over sharp stones and human feces near the train tracks. Pigs and naked barefoot children walked around me until we reached a pile of stone pylons covered with a ripped tarp and about 10 people gathered around a man in his mid 20’s. His face, arms and torso were covered in 3^rd degree burns. His skin was sloughed off leaving him to shiver under the hot sun. He was emaciated and dehydrated, his eyes sealed shut by melted eyelids.

My stomach made the all too familiar ascent into my chest as I took it all in. His clothes caught fire after from a cooking fire about 11 days ago. Apparently he was treated at a hospital for 2 days after which time they sent the family “home” because they could not afford to pay for a longer stay.

His wife poured the contents of a plastic bag at my feet. It included a liter bag of IV saline, IV antibiotics and IV pain medicine. He had a few oral antibiotics and vitamin C. This is what he was given for his recovery. Whom the doctors expected to give him IV medications was unclear. He lay there shaking and moaning, surrounded by flies with nothing but a dirty sari covering his body.

His wife asked me if I could help. Could I get him admitted to a hospital? Could I give them more medicine or creams? I instantly knew his outlook was grim to say the least. I felt so incredibly small, so helpless, so powerless in an area I’m supposed to be good at. He was beyond hope, even if I could get this man to a hospital, he would most likely lay on a dirty mattress on the ward floor waiting to die from infection and dehydration. His fluid loss was extensive, he looked cachectic and likely septic.

In my head I churned over the logistics of getting him to a hospital. Could I get him off the tracks and into a car without causing more suffering? How does the system work here? Will they even admit him? Surely he must have been worse when they sent him out in the first place.

At a loss, I told them to keep him hydrated, give him fluids every hour, and keep him covered. Make sure he continues his oral antibiotics and try to get him to eat. I admitted I wasn’t sure I could do much, but that I’d try.

I left feeling defeated, totally inadequate and sick over the gravity of suffering in this world. They say one person can make a difference; you change the world one small action at a time. But sometimes your small actions don’t feel big enough.

How do you know you when you are doing everything you can do? You could spend 24 hours a day trying to alleviate suffering and still find yourself surrounded by it. Yet if you stop, can’t you argue you could’ve continued longer? How do you know when you need to keep pushing and when you just need to light a candle and say a prayer?

I don’t have the answers. I feel small and my soul feels heavy. Helen Keller said, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

I called my good friend Kristin. She's been living here for 4 years, she serves these families in the slum. She helped formulate a plan for tomorrow. For tonight, I lit a candle and said a prayer. For now...it's all I can do.