Special Children

Eric, age 6

There are some experiences that are difficult to translate into words due to the jumble of emotions and thoughts they evoke.  Before starting our work at Camp Hope this morning, the social worker took us to homes of three of their students.  Each of these children introduced themselves to us at Camp Hope before we left--there was Eric, age 6, with a syndrome that I've never heard of, his perfect mind housed in a small, twisted body.  When Dr. Mimi does her checkup on him later today, he tells her he is going to be a doctor when he grows up.  He has extraordinarily large brown eyes with long lashes, an Incan nose and a sharp little chin that gives him an elfin look.  His voice is very soft as he repeats the words that he has clearly practiced many times...in Spanish..."Good Morning, my name is Eric. I am six years old".   I was pretty much sold by then.  His father is with him, and he has the adult version of Eric's face, but with a perfect body.

We head up the mountainside to the fields of cement houses about which I previously mused--do they have roads up there?  The answer is yes, they do--think San Francisco streets but pitched much steeper.  We drive up and up and up the mountainside on cobbled streets past densely packed neighborhoods dotted with small vegetable shops, soda vendors and grocery stores.  The roads are not wide enough for two cars, which does not deter these drivers at all.  I've learned to just stop watching.  We continue our climb past the last of the painted cement homes to the unpainted, unfinished gray cinder block structures that are anchored to the steep hillside with rebar pillars rising up into the thinning air.   We turn off the cobbled street (these cobbled streets are a marvel themselves) and turn straight up the hillside onto a muddy, potholed dirt road much better suited to a Land Rover.  Our van does not make it very far up the hill.  We get out and follow Eric's father further up the hill to a row of cinderblock where individual homes are demarcated only by the colorful laundry hanging out to dry in the intense sun of 10,000 feet.  We are warmly greeted by Eric's grandfather, elegant in his poor clothes.  Each of us receive a gracious handshake with a cheek smack before being escorted up a set of very steep steps to a dirt landing.  Precariously stacked cement cobble stones create a wobbly set of steps up to the door.  The interior of the home is dimly lit just with sunshine through their one window by the front door.  The floor is rough, unpolished grey cement; the walls grey cinderblocks with mortor. Bare unlit bulbs hang from holes in the ribbed, cement ceiling.  A knickknack rack hangs on the grey living room wall, displaying delicately painted china cups.  The room is too small to receive us all and the host remains outside on the dirt ledge.  The air in the home is almost unbreathable due to cement dust.

Eric has Kniest dysplasia, an uncommon genetic dwarfism
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/kniest-dysplasia

Standing with Martin as the translator,  Eric's father explains that Eric previously lived with his mother until she died of influenza not quite two years ago.  Eric and his father now live with the grandparents, as they cannot make it alone.  They share this tiny little cement abode, each dreaming of a brighter future--Eric's father is attending university.  Eric needs surgery to help straighten his tiny leg bones which are not growing--he started walking only about 9 months ago.

 They struggle to pay the $35 a month for Eric to go to school at Camp Hope, because he receives not only an education there, but also physical therapy and help navigating the public medical system.  The public schools have 50 children to a classroom and no support for a child with disabilities.  After touring the tiny, dark, cement home, the grandfather asks us to climb up another set of incredibly steep stairs lined with scavenged eclectic  containers of flowers to his rooftop--he smiles as he shares his vista; Quito spreads unending below us.  If this were San Francisco, this is where the million dollar homes would perch.  Here, this is where the illegal homes are built for squatters who barely eek out a living.  I have no idea how they get water and electricity up here to the thousands of poor who share this mountainside in incredibly close quarters--house after house after house stacked over, under and next to each other.

A beautiful German Shepard perches on one of the roofs,  his monotonous barks blend with loud pop music; the children who attend afternoon school play in doorways; mothers and older children wash clothes on the washing stones built into common courtyards.  I think that millions of children live like this across the world.  It is too much for my heart to hold.  I can think about Eric's father, who studies for a better future and hopes of surgery for his son; I can think about the grandfather, who holds his family together in a dry, safe--if dark--cement home on a high mountainside above Quito. I can think about Eric, who at age 6, has a dream.