No such thing as hopeless

Today, I have been at site for five months. I have been in country for seven and a half months. It sounds like a lot of time. One would think that not much more could surprise me; that I would know and understand the culture for the most part. It’s not true. The past week has been wrought with more culture shock and has left me spinning.

The work itself has been coming along. In fact, the week has been quite busy. I am now working with a group of kids who are participating in some sort of English presentation with other schools. Along with music, I have now introduced poetry to the kids. We’re working on the poem, “If,” by Rudyard Kipling. It’s always been one of my favorites. The meter and the rhyme is pleasing to the ear and the sentiment is striking. It basically details which characteristics make a person great. It says reach for greatness but don’t think of yourself better than anyone else. It says work hard but don’t put too much value in material things. Dream big, but don’t let it own you. Be virtuous, but stay grounded. It says keep going, when you’ve got nothing left.

Well, that’s all well and good Rudyard, but what happens when you start out with nothing? I knew going into this that these kids are poor. Their families don’t have much in terms of material wealth. However, for some reason, this week I’ve started to learn and understand in what kind of environment some of these kids are really living. It’s actually quite disturbing. Yes, some of the kids live with drug dealers and thieves. Some of them are living in their own private hell. The stories people tell are heart breaking and unreal. There are kids who live with men who constantly abuse them. There are kids who are neglected because their parents are too doped up to take care of them. There are kids who go house-to-house with their parents trying to sell stolen merchandise. And then there are the kids whose mothers are just giving them away like they are litter of puppies. The only difference between the puppies and the kids is that with puppies, their mother doesn’t give them away, crazy humans do. Sometimes all I can think is, “You’re too little to live like that.” Which is silly, all of these kids are too young to live like that. Nobody should live like that.

I understand my job. I understand that I am here to promote self-esteem, well-being, education, and all those things that people need to grow into well-adjusted adults. The hard part is doing all of that while knowing that they are going back to broken homes. Part of the problem is that nobody is helping them. They fall by the wayside because when “the man” is brought in to intervene, either nothing happens, or they put a band-aid on the problem that eventually falls off and leaves the wound to fester and get worse. It’s no wonder these kids are angry and disinterested. They should be angry. They have no reason to put much trust in adults. Adults are their problem.

Sometimes the situation makes me question what the hell I think I’m doing here. Starting a youth group is not going to get a girl out of a bad household. Doing a camp is not going to help a little boy’s parents to stop selling and doing drugs. My exercise class is not going to feed that kid who is always hungry. How am I even helping? What kind of difference is my presence having? It seems kind of ridiculous. It seems almost hopeless.

So what am I supposed to do? Give up? Go home and never look back? No. The truth is, I can’t give up on these kids. As I get to know them, I find that I can’t help but get invested in them. There is no such thing as hopeless.

So I go on. I smile and laugh with the kids and hope to impart something positive in their lives. I work hoping that these kids can realize that one day there may be a way out of the madness; that it doesn’t have to go on this way. It may be a long way away, but one day they will be men and women making their own decisions about their lives and hopefully making good decisions about their own kids’ lives. I know not everyone’s going to break the cycle. Many are going to grow up and do exactly what their parents do. I know I’m not here saving anybody. I’m just hoping that I can be a catalyst for a mental breakthrough. I hope that they can find the proverbial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I just hope that with my work I am providing things to help them get through it, because the reality is, some of them are just going through everyday surviving.

I can only keep doing the little things. I can only keep doing my small projects and slowly make connections with as many as I can. I can only encourage them to believe in themselves. I might be the one positive thing they have going on in a very bleak day. So what am I going to do? Well, today I will work with a few of these kids to memorize lines to our very amazing poem and just hope the message reaches them.