Delirious

I was wrong. The first night of saturation was not the most difficult. They all are.

It was a Friday night and the first place we started for saturation was a food market. The market was closed for the night, but there was quite a bit of buzz because most of the food stands double as homes. People were washing their clothes, sleeping on their tables, and gathered around drinking San Miguels and singing karaoke. The buzz in the market is no longer surprising.

It was the woman lying in the middle of the parking lot with her son who looked about 12 years old. Diapers are rare here because they are so expensive so you’ll see many kids running around with no pants on, but once they are potty trained they definitely start wearing pants. This 12 year old did not have pants on which seemed weird to me. Both of them were skin and bones and their hair in tangled messes. The staff started to speak to her in Tagalog and she frantically started collecting everything she had - the boy and a plastic bag with maybe one thing in it.

The woman started cradling her son as if he was a baby and started screaming at the top of her lungs. I kept imagining her asking who we thought we were to tell her how to live or raise her child. Even with the shrieks the boy continued to lay limp in her arms. It was then that I actually thought he might be dead. I watched and watched for movement to tell me she was not holding her dead child. Minutes passed by, which seemed like hours, before I finally saw the boy’s arm move and let out a sigh of relief.

We tried to bring her into the van so we could bring her to the shelter for food, but she kept fighting it with what little strength she had. After about 20 minutes we finally got her into the van where I learned that she was so delirious from a lack of food and water that she actually thought her soon was only two years old. We were able to feed her and her son that night, but I couldn’t help but wonder what they would do tomorrow or the next day.

Sadly, this story is not unique. Francis’s mother comes to the center about once a week for rice as well. As she is shoveling rice in her mouth she stares at me blankly with her glossed over eyes and mumbles as Francis sits next to me shaking because he is crying so hard. She has just walked an hour to get there in the heat that often reaches 100 degrees. I want to tell him everything will be okay, but I know it would be a lie.

If there are any positives to this story it is the support the gang gives each other. A few of the boys will always stop by to check on Francis. They understand.