Dream Stealers

I wrote this a while back...something to keep you occupied while I get up to speed on my blogging.

“Don’t let anything steal your dream”

As I sat in my taxi, waiting at the light, this statement on the dirty tattered t-shirt of the street boy who was washing the windshield caught my eye. This slogan was written in a circle around the familiar image, for Americans, of an eagle clutching an olive branch in its beak. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I’m sure he had no idea what the shirt said, which made the bitter irony of the sight all the more striking.

This particular boy is one of the children living in a tunnel for run-off during the rainy season. Some of our staff have built relationships with the window-washers and the other children that live in the tunnel. I live near the rotunda where they work, and it’s been an interesting process to watch as they have moved from punk kids with dirty rags to thoughtful entrepreneurs, upgrading to actual squeegees and water, and working different areas as the traffic patterns change. Honestly, sometimes they’re still punks, but then again, they’re teenage boys with no positive parental guidance, so can you really blame them?

We’ve asked the street kids we work with what their dreams are, what their plans are for the future. They often times draw a blank, shrug their shoulders and change the subject. Some may respond “I want to play professional soccer” or “I’d like to be a hairdresser”. Even if they do have a hope for the future, they can’t see how to get there from where they are now.

How can someone steal something that never existed in the first place? It seems almost beyond comprehension that a child could grow up not dreaming of becoming something, of doing something incredible, whether it be feasible or not (be honest, how many of us wanted to be a superhero at some point in our childhood, not for some deep psychological reason, just because it would be totally awesome?!). I’m not sure if it’s a product of extreme poverty (whether in an intact family or living on the streets), lack of exposure to the possibilities, or whether these children have had their dreams crushed so many times, that they’ve just given up thinking that their lives could be any different.

Regardless of the circumstances leading to their often hopeless outlook for the futures, we seek to either restore hope or bring hope to them for the first time. At first, I felt like such a silly gringo, being frustrated with the fact that these kids didn’t have dreams, didn’t have a belief that they could be something besides a glue-sniffing street kid, the bottom rung of society.

Then I realized this wasn’t some ‘American dream’ transference issue, but rather based on what God says to each one of us, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) Truthfully, it’s a lot easier to believe this verse when you’re living in a comfy home, with a comfy job or going to a good school, when having enough food isn’t an issue, or when your life isn’t full of rejection and violence. It is true for all, nevertheless, although maybe harder for some to realize than others.

I’ve had to adjust my expectations, my hopes for them. It was hard for me to accept that, at least for now, one of our girls dream-come-true opportunities was to sell anticuchos (thinly sliced and grilled beef heart served with potatoes and peanut sauce) along the road by the university near her home. I do realize now that for her, it established a sense of pride, ownership, and acheivement, and that’s huge for a girl who spent 9 years living on the streets. For her to be able to provide a home and food for her young son, is a monumental step for her, and I don’t want my westernized thought process to diminish this major accomplishment in her life.

For those children who haven’t yet realized their potential, their value, their purpose, we’ve got a monumental task ahead of us to help them recognize just how awesome they are. Sometimes they crack us up, other times they bring us to tears, and there are those times we want to wring their necks, but we keep going, we keep hanging out, we keep searching for these kids, because you just never know when it’s going to ‘that time’, that one encounter where they finally get it, where something you might have said a million times before finally gets through the haze of glue, the pangs of hunger, the layers of dirt, and they are able to believe they matter to this world, that there’s something better for them, and that there truly are people who want to help them reach that potential, with no desire for anything in return.