June 3, 2008

Armando shook my hand last week. He even gave me a rather timid “high-five.” I was so happy I almost cried for joy.

I first met Armando a little over a year ago when I visited the little community-based pre-school he attends. As I entered the room, this little 5-year-old screamed in terror and ran behind the teacher’s desk where he crouched down trembling and crying. My attempts to console him only made things worse. After that, any time he heard one of the other kids say “ya viene Douglas” (Here comes Doug), he would tremble and cry before I even got to the room.

I visited that school several times over the next few weeks, making arrangements for a delegation to visit and work there. The delegation was a team of nursing students from Yale School of Nursing, and while they were there, they did a complete physical evaluation of all the kids in the school.

This school is located in one of the poorest areas of the city. Most of the children live in what is left of buildings that were damaged by the earthquake 35 years ago but have never been repaired or torn down. This little community-based school is a small island of hope and care in a high-crime, high-violence area.

My original thought was that Armando was seriously traumatized by family violence, but the teachers were sure that this was not the case. When I met the family during Armando’s physical exam, I came to agree with the teachers. Armando’s parents are kind and gentle people, living on a street of drug deals and violence. Like most of the children in this pre-school, Armando’s parents work in the “market,” a sprawling area of over 70 city blocks, where it is possible to buy or sell anything, legal or illegal.

There are very few steady jobs in the market; most people get by on whatever job they can find for a few hours or a day. A man might earn a few coins here or there for unloading a truck, and many of the women work late into the night to cook something to sell the next day.  To make the situation even worse, many of these people have migrated to the city from small rural communities where their births were never registered. Since the birth was never registered, these people can’t get a “cedula,” i.e. the national identity card. Without the cedula, they can never vote or even be considered for a full time “normal” job, even if they had the qualifications for it. They are simply non-existent in terms of the law. Armando’s parents fall into this category, stuck in the informal economy and never able to participate in anything more.

Anger and violence breed in the market and in the ruins of the earthquake-damaged buildings. Poverty breeds despair, and the despair breeds violence. Armando was so fearful of the violence all around him that any man, especially a man with a beard (even as grey as mine) often sent him in screaming and crying. I made sure that one of the women translators worked with Armando, instead of me.

Armando and Doug at the school where Doug has been taking nursing students from the Yale School of Nursing.

Part of what the nursing students did was arrange for follow-up care for the children they identified as having medical or emotional problems. Because Armando’s parents had the help of this team of nurses and a referral from a doctor from the Ministry of Health, Armando was referred to a child psychologist. Many children are not so lucky. Without this kind of help it is very difficult for parents to do a good job of following up on the health care needs of their children.  Many parents, especially single parents, are so caught up in the daily demands of making a living that they can’t afford to take a day off from work. Parents can’t let two or three other children go hungry so that the mother can spend all day waiting for one child to see a doctor.

Armando’s parents did follow up, and he had several appointments with his psychologist. He is still a pretty timid little boy. When I saw him last week it was with a group of dental hygienists, and he was very afraid of those procedures. But he sometimes smiles now, and he shook my hand without crying, and didn’t cry even when I spoke with his mother for a few minutes.

I rejoice over Armando’s progress. But I worry for the thousands of other children in similar situations. Some seem to grow up without fear—but is that a good thing? Maybe some fear is necessary in situations in which they live. What is the right amount, the emotional place where a child can grow, recognizing the danger all around, but still going forward without the paralysis of fear? I hope that Armando is growing toward that point.

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 263