VIII
The women
Abandoned
The artist's comment The setting is a shanty-town. The shack, painted in caustic colors, is set
under an unseen highway overpass, symbol of progress and wealth
which, meant for the well-being of the few, bypasses the life of so
many others. The
little girls have distinct expressions on their faces, from left to
right: the bewilderment of loneliness; the need for love
simultaneous with embarrassment and questioning; and the look of
tears held back. Each little girl casts a shadow in a different
direction as if each shadow were the product of a distinct source of
light. Each girl will
live out alone her unique unknown destiny. |
| A reflection by Brother Bernard Couvillion |
Hogar Corazonista Hermano Policarpo is a refuge for abandoned young people in Barranquilla sponsored jointly by the Augustinian Recollect Sisters and our Colombian district. There Sister Luz Dary Cardona introduced me to Juan Carlos, José, and Víctor, three teenagers of an insane mother. Before coming there five years ago, they had to tie up their mother during the day while they went out burglarizing the neighborhood for the family’s sustenance. I also met Leydis, a four-year-old girl who, because of the ignorance and
neglect of her mother, has burned and severely deformed hands. Alienation from parents is not limited to places of poverty. With a
divorce rate of nearly 50% and an illegitimacy average of around
30%, most children in the U.S. now come into the world with a
handicap unprecedented in any culture at any
period of human history: no stable family to speak of. What
we have now are children growing up not only outside families, but
children forced to grow up before they have had any real formation
at all. As a result of this phenomenon, some young people in the
first-world come to us more as refugees than as children. The hopelessness of children without parents is unspeakable in places of
war. In 1994 an estimated 114,000 Rwandan children were separated
from their families. In Bosnia-Herzegovina
and in Croatia, as a deliberate tactic to demoralize communities and
as a form of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ teenage girls were raped and
then made to bear ‘the enemy’s’ child. In some raids in Rwanda, virtually every adolescent girl who survived the
attack was subsequently raped. Many of them bore the children of
rape, and many of those children were abandoned. (www.oneworld.org) |
| We give voice to the prayer of abandoned children |
Lord,
hear a cause that is just, pay heed to my cry. No deceit is on my
lips. Guard me as the apple of your eye, hide me in the shadow of
your wings from the violent attack of the wicked. My foes encircle
me with deadly intent, their hearts shut tight. They advance against
me, and now they surround me. Their eyes are watching to strike me
to the ground like lions ready to claw or some young lion crouched
in hiding. Lord, arise, confront them, strike them down! Rescue my
soul from the wicked. |