Today I saw a baby girl no more than one year old crawling
in the street. I knew she was a baby girl because she was completely naked, her
hands and knees covered in black soot. That’s how she’ll start her life on
earth. I can’t stand seeing that and I can’t stand thinking about how
vulnerable she’ll be to abuse of all kinds as she grows older and tries to make
it on the streets. That’s a beautiful, innocent baby and they’ll have her down
there crawling around in the trash, where men take a piss. In the dusty,
polluted street with muddy puddles that make your feet itch. That’s the future
she has ahead of her and I can’t even wrap my brain around the idea because
there are so many of these kids living on the streets and it seems that they
have no more value than stray dogs.
This happened to me shortly after I received a card from a
relative back home celebrating the birth of a new baby boy. This baby is so
lucky. He has a family who adores him. He has probably received plenty of new
clothes and nice toys. He has a warm crib to sleep in, a mother and father who
work hard to put food on the table. Upon hearing about this new birth in my
family I felt a strong maternal instinct, wondering if and when I would ever
have children and how I would want to celebrate my child’s arrival into this
world. Yet it’s evident that there are already so many children who need help,
so isn't it with that little girl that my duty should lie?
In our everyday life it’s so easy for us to separate ourselves
from that level of poverty. We can rationalize the whole experience as being a
problem too big for us to handle, too widespread for our actions to make a
difference, but that’s just not good enough. No child deserves to grow up on
the street. That’s a human being, that’s somebody’s baby.
