sapo

anatomy of saturday night

day of the child

We have been laughing all week, every time one of us accidentally says ´´the day of the child´´ in English. Día del niño just doesn´t translate with the same feeling.

Today is el día del niño here in honduras. Last friday the princess stopped by my house, this time in much better spirits. We ate dinner and then she was telling me about what they do to celebrate the holiday. She washed all of the dishes and i paid here $1 so that she could buy a bottle of soda to bring to the party at school so she could participate in the celebration. She told me that she would be in the drama because the teacher always chooses her because she is good at acting. She will play the part of the sister of the child with no name. The drama illustrates the Rights of the Child. According to her memory, these are the rights of the child:

The right to a name
The right to play
The right to education
The right to be loved
The right to a house
The right to food
The right to be protected and safe

It is sad to know that each of these rights is a delicate and often missing reality in her life and in the lives of many other kids in my neighborhood and in the world. Her right to play is often taken away because she is responsible for cooking the food for her brothers and sisters and often has to do the wash too. Her right to be loved is jeopardized by the broken relationships with her family and the abandonment of her father. Her right to a house is a fragile reality, the wood home with a dirt floor is vulnerable to floods each time it rains. Her right to food is often just a dream. There may be several days a week when she doesn´t eat. Her right to protection and safety are absent.

Check out these two photo essays from UNICEF about the Rights of the Child

mother teresa

I was just reading through the most recent issue of Time magazine and was captivated my the article about Mother Teresa. It highlights new information about her inner life and the long, long period of darkness that she felt. I highly recommend it and I will definitely read the new book that is supposed to come out.

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
— Mother Teresa to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979

bearing the mark

She came to my house last night, the princess. A young heir to the Kingdom, only 12 years old. Everything about her was exactly as He had said, her robes, her spirit, the way she lived, the way she carried herself. It was maybe what you would call a royal moment, how I felt when she told me abouot her life, when I held her in my arms. It was royal because in her I could see exactly what the King was about. I could see exactly what He meant when He said that the Kingdom was hers. That for princess daughters such as her, He had worked and planned and sacrificed to establish his rule and his reality-one that was nothing but good. It was her He was thinking of all along. It is her He is working for now.

I wept too because everything about her was exactly as He had said. Her robes are despair and her spirit is broken and her life is poverty and and captivity and her attitude is humility. I wept because she doesn’t even know that she is a princess with a Good King Father. Instead she only sees that she is a young girl living in slum, about to be abandoned by her last care taking parent. Her arms were like sticks, her shoulderblades sticking out like fins underneath my hug. Her heart and body are broken by the verbal and physical abuse from her family and neighbors. I wept when she told me “She tells me that she doesn’t love me and that I am a bad person. She feeds the others and not me.” I wept when she told me how they had pushed her in the gutter and beat her up.