The Lawyer

The girls have begun to ask me to take them home with me. “I go with you,” one will yell. Another will push her away. “No, mee!” They crawl up my legs, pull at my arms, play with my hair, and plop in my lap. "You take mee, mee, dah plane. To Amareecah. I go with you."

I know a part of their desire to leave with me is that I am gentle with them. I hold their hands softly, reprimand quietly, kiss the tops of their heads when they are upset. I don’t think they’ve gotten much kindness during their difficult young lives. But I’m not so vain as to believe the children want to leave their country and everything they know, just because I’m so great. They are motivated by the vague idea of getting away from there, from their lives as they’ve turned out so far.

One little girl, we’ll call her Rebecca, is older and speaks pretty good English. Rebecca told me that she wants to become a lawyer. She says once she has gotten out of the shelter and back to her grandma's, and once she has sold enough peppers to buy her uniform and schoolbooks, and once she has worked her way through law school, and once she has obtained her degree, she will come find me in the U.S. to prove that she accomplished it- and wouldn’t I be proud of her?

I told her out loud I would be very proud of her when she came to find me in the US with her degree- yet in my mind, I was wondering how many hundreds of thousands of peppers it would take to pay for an entire education from the eighth grade through law school.

The obstacles these children face are overwhelming. It is against my nature to admit I'm feeling this way, but it seems like most of the children are damned no matter how much of an effort they will make to change their lives. The system is against them. It normally seems to favor the parent’s side of the story and has poorly enforced laws concerning the compulsory nature of education and the rights of a child. It’s normal to assume that if a child claims he or she has been “beaten”, that the beating was no more serious than the child’s offense and the child must’ve deserved whatever punishment was given. If a child has run away, it is because the child is “naughty”, or because of a bad spirit who has taken up residence in the child’s soul when the child wasn’t being vigilant against evil.

Adults seem to have too little concern for what type of situation would motivate a child to choose a street life over their home life.

The odds are stacked against these children. I find myself wondering for how many years Rebecca will be able to maintain her resolve to attend school, and how she will feel if and when she finally is forced to give up her dreams. She has no encouragement or support from a stable parent figure. She has been alone in this fight for an education her entire life. How long can a child be expected to keep fighting that losing battle alone?

Of course, that is not to say that I will not encourage her to follow her dreams. Indeed, some of the children are blessed in that they do find a supportive family member. Some, through their dogged determination, may even be able to find a financial sponsor to help them reach their goals. So I will encourage these children to chase their dreams for as long as they desire, for as long as they still can. I will do everything in my power to help them along their way, in the short time I am here.

But in order to understand these children’s reality, it is essential to consider the reason why everyone is so thrilled when a child earns a college degree here. It’s because an education is not a likely outcome, for any of them. When one child is able to change his or her life for the better, it is a success story, but it’s also a fluke, a rarity, a miracle… whatever term you prefer for an unlikely, one-in-a-million kind of happy ending.

If this trip has done anything, it has cemented my desire to adopt. These children are all so beautiful, but they are wasting away in this system. I know a lot of them have more problems then they wish to let on. But I believe if Zach and I have the opportunity to adopt a child or a baby, we could be such a happy family- and we would have contributed just a little bit more to the world than if we had only cared for our biological children. I'm so looking forward to my wedding and then starting a family- and I know more strongly than ever that adoption will be a key element to completing our family.