Easter

Last Easter was easily the most homesick I've ever been in my life.  Luckily, this Easter was much, much better!  

The last time I was visiting the kids at Gift of Love, I met another visitor, Brother Cyrus, and a couple he was showing around.  Brother Cyrus is from Kenya but has been living and working at Missionaries of the Poor for almost four years and the couple he was escorting was a Filipino couple who have been living in California for years.  They are here for Holy Week and are donating their time, money, and love to the kids and residents of Missionaries of the Poor and Missionaries of Charity (Gift of Love).  

After talking to them for a while that day, they invited me to come check out Missionaries of the Poor.  I took Brother Cyrus up on his offer this morning and took along three 272 volunteers who are in the area for Holy Week: Candy, Dani & Ricky.

We toured the men's, women's, and children's homes and visited with each group for a little while before touring the rest of the beautiful grounds.  The place is really nice with lots of great landscaping all around.  We visited their church where they worship with Reggae music (because their "mission" was founded in Jamaica):

 

We also visited their animal area where they have the usual-- chickens, pigeons, ducks-- and the unusual-- turkeys and ... an ostrich!

 

In a different area, they also have a monkey who likes to drink from water bottles:

Once the tour was over, we met up with the Californian couple I met previously at Gift of Love.  They have been staying at Missionaries of the Poor and were going with Brother Cyrus to deliver medicine to Gift of Love.  On our way back to town, we made a stop first at a housing compound next to the city dump... a place I've never seen before and didn't know existed.

The wall in the picture below was about 6 feet tall and the dump stretched for hundreds of meters.  I couldn't even begin to estimate how much land it covered or how high it was piled.

The people who live in the shanty "houses" next to the dump earn money by scavenging through the discarded materials in the dump.  Brother Cyrus said they normally earn no more than 100 pesos (~$2.50) per day.  He had told the couple about a family he knows there in the compound who never washed their clothes, or those of their children, because they can't afford to buy soap.  

The husband and (possibly mentally/psychologically challenged) mother have 12 children.

Before reaching the dump area, Brother Cyrus stopped at a tindahan because the couple wanted to buy soap and detergent for the family.  We walked through the two streets of the compound, looking for the family Brother Cyrus had visited before.

 

After doing a full lap, Brother Cyrus realized he hadn't recognized the house because they had made some changes to it and built it up a bit.  This is the built up version:

Brother Cyrus, the couple, and I went inside to visit the family and there we found a handful of beautiful little children-- some of them very happy to have visitors, others very distracted and focused on their bowl of rice.  This little girl had beautiful curls and was such a sweetheart:

 Taking pictures of kids and showing them the results almost never fails in getting them to smile and warm up to me!  Worked like a charm today!

 

This family of 14 lives in a structure that is a little larger than my bedroom.  There are holes in the old, thatched nipa hut roof.  The walls (one of which didn't exist last time Brother Cyrus was there) are made of scavenged corrugated metal tied to bamboo poles.  They have a concrete slab for the floor but the walls don't quite meet the floor in most places.  If it rains hard, or at all, this place lets it in.  There is one elevated platform that is shielded by old ratty sheets hung from the ceiling.  This is probably where the parents and youngest kids sleep.  I didn't ask and I didn't see any sleeping mats, so I have to assume most of the family sleeps on the concrete floor.  There is a small shelf on the back wall that holds religious images and one academic award, earned by the eldest son before he had to stop going to school.  Once that son entered high school, the school fees were too much for the family to afford.  He wants to go back to school.  He wants to be a lawyer.

The mother was out when we stopped by the house.  One of the kids told us she--together with her 3 month old baby--was in the dump. 

Most of the kids at Missionaries of the Poor are abandoned and will live there their whole lives.  The majority of the kids, all boys except for two, have medical issues and are immobile.  Most have CP.

One boy was found, abandoned, in the dump when he was 4.  He had been there for a week with no food or water.  When the police found him and brought him to MoP, they didn't think he would survive.  Today, seven years later, I saw a very lively little boy running around the center and giving us high fives. 

One boy was taken from his family as a toddler after having been discovered in a chicken coop.  It was obvious he had spent a lot of time in there with the chickens because he walked like a chicken and ate like one.

One boy was born without a mouth and was abandoned because his family didn't know how to care for him.  That same child is blind in one eye after having been stabbed with a pencil by a sibling.

One little boy with burn scars all over his face was removed from his family after he pulled a container of boiling water down from the counter, spilling it on himself when no one was paying attention to him.

It's really hard not to be completely heartbroken after hearing so many stories like this.  There are so many children in this country, in the world, who will never have a chance to make anything of themselves...simply because of where they were born.  

Yes, there are plenty of people, agencies, organizations, etc. who make a difference in some places.  But there is SO MUCH NEED.