Last Friday night my friend and I were grabbing a quick meal at McDonalds and were nearly finished when a teenaged boy approached our table and asked for money.
McDonald's is a magnet for street children who come and beg for money or sometimes food. It's not an unusual occurrence and one that has happened to me many times.
I asked him what he wanted the money for and he told me he needed to buy some new shoes. He then pointed down to his pair which were definitely decrepit looking and were starting to fall apart.
I noticed the McDonald's employee eying him so I motioned him to sit with us and started to ask him more questions about his life. He told me that his name was Sasha and that he had come to Kyiv from a small village and had been living on the streets for three months. At night he slept either in the train station or an internet club. He said he was sixteen years old. I asked him if he had been in school and he said he had been in an orphanage. Because he had mentioned a mother, I assumed at this point he is what we call a "social orphan." His mother could not care for him so he was put in an institutional orphanage. When these children are sixteen, they are released and usually have little to no life skills to make their way in the world. Their family has no way to support them or teach them how to live on their own so they migrate into street life trying to find their way.
I asked him if he would be willing to get off the street permanently if he had the chance. He said, "Of course I would. I don't like living like this." He proudly told me that he did not inhale glue or drink alcohol like the other kids. He said that when he had some money he would buy sandwiches and bottles of juice from kiosks on the street. I asked him if he was hungry and if so, we could buy him a meal. He declined. He said he wasn't hungry and he was focusing on getting enough money for his shoes and then he would worry about his next meal.
I told him about our organization and asked him again if he was interested in seeing if we could help him. He again agreed, so I called the Director of our Rehab Center to find out what the next step would be. Because he was sixteen and therefore by Ukrainian law, legally an adult, I was not sure how we could help.
Sveta talked to him for a long time on the phone, and he opened up with her and told her much of what he had already told me. Turns out he knew exactly where our Rehab Center was and told her the address. He even knew some of the teenaged boys that live there! Sveta invited him to come to the center himself to talk and then they decide how they could help him.
When he got off the phone, he became extremely depressed. His whole demeanor changed. I encouraged him to come to our Center. (We can't force him, living on the streets is like an addiction and he has to make the choice to come.) He became very deflated. I could tell all the positive energy and the need to make a positive choice in his life was overwhelming him and it was time to pull back from our conversation. I gave him some money so he would have enough to get to the Center on public transportation and told him I hoped that I would see him at the Center.
3 comments:
That is so touching. I hope he went in for help. Praying for them all.
Very well written and touching...I wonder why he became so sad after you all extended the helping hand to him? Did he realize he did not have the inner strength needed to turn his life around and get off the streets and he could no longer blame others for this?
Living on the streets is very tough psychologically and addictive so yes, the option to change their life when they feel that they have no good options to begin with is very overwhelming and is not a simple decision. That is why we have a Day Center where children can build relationships with staff and over time this helps them see and prepare how to make the choice to get off the streets. They need this stage and sometimes it's three steps forward and five steps back for quite a while....
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