Street Kids

Yes they do not look like street kids, because they have been taken in fed, clothed educated and rehabilitated.
Hearing them sing about Mama was heart breaking. Many of us broke into tears, even the men.







This is old stuff but it apparently has not seen the light of day ( which means it had not been blogged by me)

The Children Nobody Wanted

What I remember most about her are her eyes. Large dark brown eyes in the sweetest face I could ever imagine. She was all of four years old. Father John held her in his arms as he told her story.
Some few months ago this child was found in the streets of Lebanon with her two younger siblings.In her three and something years, she had been thrown out into the streets with her two younger siblings. She cared for them for some days before being rescued and sent to this home . She had kept herself and her siblings alive by feeding them and herself with water from the drains.
She and her siblings suffered from a severe gastroenteritis but they lived , and her she was, with her large brown eyes and curly black hair tied back from her face by a pretty ribbon and her clean chubby body in a pretty dress.Who could have done this, who could have thrown out this little girl and her baby sister and brother? They investigated and this is what they found:
A desperate mother whose husband was imprisoned, who had no means to feed them and herself and in her lack of resources, and in her lack of humanity for having to live a life less than human , had deemed it necessary to throw out her children in order to survive in a land where she was herself not a citizen and had no rights....
More and more people are becoming stateless, landless,jobless..through no fault of their own except for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Can you then look at a human being who is without his/her humanity and then blame them for being so, for not having a humanity because they have had very little human rights?
I know you can still blame them.
I know you can still blame them for being crooks and desperados who beat and rape and plunder and bring into this world more inhuman human beings, creatures with no rights, creatures thrown into streets, exploited and made use of, growing up to be replicas of their parents.
What do we do about this flotsam and jetsam , this scum of the humankind?
The Evangelical Society of Lebanon decided to pick them up and house them, cloth them, feed them, educate them, rehabilitate them...rehabilitate little children some of whom had become sex addicts, drug addicts, thieves and thugs, some as young as three years old.
They had a clinical psychologist to help them deal with their traumas, a lawyer who looked into their cases..in Lebanon Street children are deemed to be criminals by law...yes ,this little kids had police case files. ..Other staff included cooks and teachers and caregivers. Some were employed, some were carefully picked volunteers who loved children and could deal with them with love and patience.
It cost a lot of money, a whole lot of money which was not forthcoming from the Government and was not even chanelled to them from foreign NGOs because it was policy in Lebanon that non citizens could not receive the foreign funds meant to help them.The huge dilapidated multistory building that housed this children's home was built on the side of the hill.It was comfortable, cheerful ,clean but shabby with its paint peeling and its furniture needing repair.
How did this group manage.? Father John said, only by a miracle and a prayer did they manage all they had done.
They had room for only 100 children .
Most of the children were Muslim and some of their origins were only known by the way they looked, the dialect they spoke and their names.
We looked into the classroom of the four year old boys and girls, in their standard blue teeshirts and pants. Teacher asked if they would sing for us. They were happy to do so! Teacher took them to the hall where they sat in a small group, huddled like little kittens and then proceeded to sing a song about Mama. A song of praise to Mama..What Mama I thought? Yet the love and longing for Mama rang through their sweet children's voices, straight to my heart, piercing my heart, breaking it to pieces until I had to turn my face away, contorted in grief,a grief I must not show to these motherless children.

You want to know about their religion?
They were not converted, religion was not taught to them, what was taught was universal human ethics but those who requested to learn about their own religions were given the means to do so. They were given their prayer clothes and their access to the mosque.
Father John said, it is not meant that their freedom of religion is to be taken away from them.

Why are there kids out on the streets parentless in our society ?I saw them in Lebanon, in Cape Town and in Bombay. Here ? I am not so sure , they are not as visible.Here I am reflecting on the Lebanese kids I saw.
Street children are present in every society. In some worse that others.They are symptoms of the inhumanity of humanity where poverty becomes depravity. The Prophet SAW used to pray, Lord, protect me from the poverty that leads astray. That desperation that makes one less than human, that desperation that depraves.
War! In 1976 Lebanon was a beautiful and rich place. The Switzerland of the Middle East. Banking was Lebanon's chief industry. Up until today rich Lebanese are all over the world. If there is one thing I learned, it is that there are more Lebanese living in Brazil than there are in Lebanon.More thant 10 milliion Lebanese are in Canada, Brazil and Australia and, only 3 million are in Lebanon!
They ran away, they left Lebanon because of civil war after civil war! Why ? Simply because of a difference in religion. Then indeed, with neighbours like Syria and Israel, ready to interfer with Lebanese politics , it was a troubled area right up till 1089 or even up to 1990. You can see the scars of these wars in the city of Beirut and in the Lebanese psyche, and you can also see the Palestinian people, some still living in the refugee camps , in Shabra and Shatilla.

Poor people, people without rights nor citizenship, without rights to school, to jobs, not even rights to human dignity.They are exempt from tax, fed and given free water and electricity at the expence of Lebanese tax payers burdened by a war torn economy. Poor people, some of whom have lost their humanity and have become the scum of society, crooks , criminals, rapists and even worst!
They are hated by most Lebanese for good reason , some of the civil wars started with them!
If we want to play the blame game we can go on and on and it reminds me of the chilldhood song I used to sing, Oh Katak Oh Katak....
So you are think perhaps those who took them in have bad intentions? I do not have that thought. I think they mean well , as best as they understand it.
Why do we like to see bad intentions behind good acts? Who gives us the right? Intentions are hidden deep within our hearts.
They are not for anyone to know, sometimes intentions hide themselves even from the doer and only God knows.
When I do inquiry and examine my heart, I sometimes realise my intentions and the intentions within the intentions. Even within my own self I have to dig and dig and dig to find the intention...and it is by intention that God judges our deeds, God judges, but it is not one person judging another!
Is one person responsible for the deeds of their forefathers? Is it then in our collective psyche that we plant prejudice of one race against another? Do we look upon people and see their race, their religion and we forget who they are and what they are, fellow humans , humans that God in his Mercy has honoured..Laqad Karamna Bani Adam....we have honoured the tribe of Adam....
Ina Akramakum indallahi At Qa kum,,,,The most honorable among you in God;s sight is the most Godfearing, the one who does not judge others, who is too busy doing good deeds for God ;s sake...
Spend more time my friends following the examples of those who do good and understand that they reflect the true Muslim even if they call themselves by a a name other than Islam.
Do not seek the intentions of others but seek instead your intentions,
Look at another as God's children , to help , to protect , to honor and to befriend.
Understand what evil you see is only what is also found in your own self for this is what is taught us, that we are mirrors of each other.
Nurelhuda
Lebanon Diary July 2004