*Knock, knock,
knock* “Would you like another kid? Here take this one. I would have kept him if he’d been a girl.”
---Child number 5. Sounds
unrealistic. But it happens here to
Lyndal frequently.
There’s
another mission organization here in Curahuasi run by Lyndal, one of the ladies
who also working in the radiology department of Diospi. She’s taken in several kids that either don’t
have parents, or more commonly, the parents can’t care for. Child protective services don’t exist here in
Peru. If they did, I imagine they’d of
taken the majority of the kids into government custody already. Little kids (only 3 years old) are wandering
the streets at night, only sometimes with “older siblings” (up to 8 or 9 years
of age). I think the majority of the
people are not married. The use the word
“conviviente”, which means like “live in (boy or girl friend). That’s the marital
status of the majority, and consequently there are a lot of single moms taking
care of a lot of kids, often times from various dads, and with little help. And so a number of kids have ended up under
the custody of Lyndal.
One of
the young guys, Elvis, now works as a security guard at Diospi. He had a Steven-Johnson reaction (a severe,
life-threatening reaction) to a medicine and all his skin peeled off. His dad had two families. When Elvis’ mom died his dad left him and his
brother (he was 16 or 17 at the time) and went to live with his other “wife.” Lyndal found Elvis very sick at home with hardly
any food or resources. She offered to
continue to come by for dressing changes in his house or he could stay in her
house with the other kids she cared for.
He came and stayed with her for a while.
This is
only a couple of countless stories.
Lyndal’s dream and the dream of Alcanzando la Mano is an orphanage where
they can better care for and address the needs of the kids here that have been
born into very unhealthy and dangerous social situations. [There’s a family who lives down the street
from me that my previous roommate, Lisa, worked with a lot. It’s a woman with 4 kids. Lisa says from different men. And probably all from rape situations. They were previously staying in an abandoned
house that was open, without protection.
Men easily came and went at night.
The family tried to earn money working their field, but it was never
enough.]
The
pictures above are from the ground breaking ceremony of the land where the
orphanage will be build. All the churches in town were invited to take part in
the ceremony and pray of the land and the children’s home. Yesterday was the first day of work. There’s not a lot of money, but they’re
moving forward in faith. All year they
are open for teams interested in helping with the construction. If you’re interested in forming a group to
come down and work or would like to support them financially just shoot me an
email (ari.cale@gmail.com).
No comments:
Post a Comment