Children

Today we finally got to go to the children's home where we will be volunteering.  We met the kids who live there and got a short tour.  When we arrived, the children had just been down for a nap, but we were shown their rooms and introduced anyways.  The children were in their underwear in bed as we were walked from room to room.  When we got to the last room, we met Walter.  He was about eight years old and was covered with terrible scars.  Most of his fingers on his right hand were gone, as were his toes.  His face and ear were disfigured with scar tissue that traveled down the entire side of his body.  I quietly asked what had happened to him.  They explained to me that his step mother had poured acid on him when he was a baby.  I'm not one to make try and make things seem more dramatic than they are, and I have heard a lot of awful stories.  But when I heard what happened to him, I almost started to cry.  When I asked why they just shrugged.  There was no real reason.  They said that that step mothers can be awful here, and sometimes things like that happen.  Walter was not developmentally disabled, he was at the children's home because of his scars and what had happened to him.
Things here are so different in a lot of good ways, and in a lot of awful ways.  One of the women who works at the children's home explained that a lot of times, disabled children are seen as being demon possessed, and can be abandoned.  I thought about my own sister who is developmentally disabled back home, and what would have happened to her if she lived here. 
Being here reminds me how big the world really is, and how good we are in America at pretending it is much smaller.