Said

Let me introduce you all to a two year old boy called Said. This boy is the son of the cleaning girl at the house beside where Benny, Marissa and Jessica live. His situation breaks my heart to a million pieces. You see, its a long history of power struggles and hierarchy. The owner of the house does not pay the 22 year old cleaning girl adequate funds so she is really trapped there with no options to leave and find work elsewhere. She lives there and works there and that is her life. However, her son´s life is unbearable. She puts him on a hard chair as soon as he wakes up and forces him to sit there, completely still and without sound for the entire duration of the day, day in day out, that is his existence. He moves, he makes a sound, he gets slapped. Every day his bright eyes lose another spark. It is imperative that two year olds explore, communicate, learn motor skills and develop. To be imprisoned on a chair to the point of intense fear is simply criminal. The only thing this boy has is his thumb. He loves to suck his thumb and yesterday his mother noticed this and put his thumb in hot sauce so that he would cry in agony when he brought it to his lips only to wipe the tears away from his eyes with the same hand and spread the pain all over. Cherry and Jenet that live there in that house are tormented by a helpless feeling for him. They have bought him toys and books only to see them be locked up in the bedroom by his mother. Last weekend they begged her to let them take him out to the park for an hour and she finally permitted it. The experience they described to me was overwhelming. This little boy just stood there for many minutes taking the world outside in, deadly afraid to move a muscle in fear of being slapped. The pictures of his visit to the park are unbelievable. A smile from ear to ear figuring out all that the playground had to offer. But after their short hour of freedom together, he had to go back to his hell on the chair.
It just makes me think of all the men on the streets and how their upbringings must have been like. A boy who is brought up in a family full of love and respect doesn´t feel the need to sit on a street corner and belittle and demoralize girls walking by. It is the little boys like Said, supressed and unloved that need the power high of degrading people to make themselves feel important and worth something. To watch Said, so perfect and loving, morph just a little bit more into a broken spirit kills me because I see his future and it is not bright. Its a cruel cruel cycle this being brought up in a supressed environment because when they do grow up that will be all they´ve ever known.
This is why we have to keep organizations like FUNARTE alive. Everyday the great people of Funarte set out to give that kid a fighting chance at discovery and expression, sometimes its the only chance that kid will ever have. Once a week kids of every demographic taste what it is to be loved and appreciated. They taste what it is like to have wonderful conversations and to feel important and worth something to someone. To go out to the FUNARTE studio in the country and see those kids that have walked some two hours just to get there for the hour of art class is so moving. You can tell they feel safe and at home there. Its their happy place, their escape. I´m so proud to be apart of this organization. So so so proud.

xoxo,
S