This is Maxson, he is 7 years old. His mother came to see Selvi last week to beg her to take two of her children, Maxson and his sister Mini aged 9. Selvi told her she could only take one as she is trying to keep to one child per family, so the mother sent her son. He is so thin and little for his age, but has settled in very well. Still, he looked so sad and nervous when he arrived at the St. Adrian's Reachout Centre.
Yesterday Maxson didn’t come home from school with the other children and we were worried about him. He turned up much later saying he couldn’t find his bus pass so he’d walked the kilometre from school alone with his heavy bag, barefoot. He has no shoes. Selvi told him to go home and fetch his mother. She came, told her story and cried to Selvi.
She has four children. The eldest girl, aged 12, is in an orphanage, then Mini, Maxson and a one year old baby. Her husband doesn’t work. He is apparently too ‘weak’ (depressed?) and she really has no money to live on. Selvi told her she should laminate the bus pass but she says she doesn’t have 2 rupees to do this. She sobbed bitterly as she said how ashamed she feels to have no money to feed her children. She is so very grateful to have a new Tsunami house. The family have always lived in a leaking hut and she never thought she would have such a beautiful house. (Intervida, a Spanish NGO built many houses in the village but people refused to move to them as they are on land way up at the back of the village a long way from the sea.) So Maxson’s family got lucky and got the keys to a proper house for the first time in their lives!!! But there is no money coming in.
This family is a low caste scheduled caste, lower even than the backward caste. They are despised by everyone and there can be no equality for these people. They can’t even wear shoes in front of the higher castes. The government has given cloth to this family to make school uniforms, but the mother says she doesn’t have the money to fetch the clothes from the tailor. The school term began in June so Maxson wears his ordinary clothes, a source of shame to them.
Fortunately, just yesterday we had bought some flip flops in Nagercoil for this little boy and you should have seen his delight as he opened the box and tried them on! He wrote his name very beautifully in Tamil on HIS shoes. A smart little boy! Then he put them away again in his school bag. We have seen such a joyous transformation in this little child in one week. At first, he was so withdrawn, anxious and unresponsive. Today he is shining, laughing, coming to us for hugs and a kiss and the work of the centre feels so right and wonderful!
Of course we have decided that Maxson’s sister Mini can come to SARC!!! How can we refuse this little girl an opportunity to eat, to play, to laugh, perhaps even to have a future? The girls' room is already full up, but the children who sleep on mats on the floor there will just have to shift over to make space for one more.
And we, meanwhile, shall just have to raise more money as we're going ahead now with plans to build a new hall upstairs for the resident girls.
(Note: This entry was written by Jill Hemmings.)
I think that to receive the home loans from creditors you should have a good motivation. However, once I have got a college loan, because I was willing to buy a bike.
Posted by: Hillary20Weiss | 27 July 2011 at 21:41