This is Innocent. He is one of the older boys at program. He is 15 years old although sometimes I feel like he acts a lot older. He works hard helping his friend Abby (an older boy that API has been able to hire) to cook food for the 60 or so street boys that come to program. He is quite responsible. He works hard on his English and because of that he is quite good. I have heard bits and pieces of his story as I have got to know him. His story is somewhat typical of many street boys. Broken family relationships, broken hearts, broken dreams. But the thing I admire about Innocent is that he still dares to dream. And not just a little bit, he dreams a lot. His dream is to go back to school.
He made it to primary 5 (about the same as grade 5) before he had to drop out. Part of his hope in coming to the streets of Kampala is that he would find a sponsor to put him back in school. This hope is not uncommon for street kids, but can sometimes be dauntingly unrealistic due to the sheer amount of boys on the streets. Sometime in the first month I was here I started giving him English worksheets at program because he was so eager and self motivated. Since then he has also gotten a few of the other older boys interested in this as well.
Monday last week Innocent was having a hard day. I think it would be fair to say that I had had an equally hard day just a few days before. Sometimes the things you find in common with street boys leave you realizing that our lives, while so different in some ways, are so very similar in others. It turns out we have both lost out fathers not so very long ago, and the date of their passing was only days apart. Maybe I was meant to be an encouragement to Innocent. We talked about it for a while, sitting outside of program. He cried a little though he did not want to. I cried a little too. We talked about random things like cranes and guitars. We talked about family and his dream.
The thing is that Innocent's dream has really been on my heart. A boy that wants to go back to school so bad that he thinks about it for hours every day really should get the chance. You are surrounded by so much need on the streets. If you look at it as a whole is becomes overwhelmingly ominous. But then sometimes I look at individual kids and it be comes easier to see my way.
Maybe it was a sign, maybe randomness, I am not sure. Whatever it was it gave me a push in the right direction. When my brother Tim arrived Monday night he brought with him some mail for me. One of the envelopes had an address on it but no return. My mom thinking it was a letter for me had sent it along. When I opened it there was no letter, but to my surprise there were bills.
Putting a kid in school here is relatively cheap. Around $50/month will cover their school fees as well as supplies and clothes for school. A Perfect Injustice does help out with school fees for kids if they have sponsors in that area. I have been thinking it over a lot and I want to use this money to begin putting Innocent back in school (thank you to whoever you were that sent me this!).
David (the director of API) thinks that the best solution for Innocent is to try to find a good relative with whom he can stay while he goes to school for the next number of years. His family life is less than ideal and it seems like putting him back with them might be harmful for him, but African culture is very communal in it's caring of it's children. I think the struggle often is that relatives, although they care about the children that are in their family circles,simply don't have the means to provide for them. But if the means were supplied it frees them up to give the relational element that the kids really need.
Innocent doesn't know this yet, but we want to give him his dream. It is a matter of logistics at this point. We will tell him soon. And I really wonder what his reaction will be.
So many of the boys at program have dreams. And now, as I get to know them better I start to see their hopes individually. It is so beautiful that they dream despite everything that has happened to them. And when I see it I am so proud of them. And then I wonder what I can do. What I should do. What any of us should do...
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