Trekkie Travels

Please read and respond with your thoughts and opinions

hi guys
last night I left a salsa club just before midnight with my peruana 'mum' (I'm with the host family until the weekend) and 2 other students and we ran into a little boy sobbing in the street. Now before you even thing it we weren't in a tourist area, it was a nightclub only frequented by latinos and he didn't approach us for nything. It turned out his mother had thrown him out and he had nowhere to sleep. His clothes were thin and Cusco nights are bitter cold, his canvas shoes were ripped and worn and he had no socks underneath. He'd had nothing to eat all day and obviously hadn´t bathed for a while.
We took him to a cafe and bought him a meal which he ate politely but with such obvious hunger that it would break your heart.
There is a government shelter where the street kids can sleep if they have nowhere else and he was planning to go there and hope his mum would let him back in the house tomorrow.
The little boy's name was Jesus (pronounced heysoos) and his crime was forgetting to lock his bedroom door, he said he was 14 but looked more like 10 or 11.

We left him heading for the shelter and made him promise to meet me at my school at 4pm today. I waited for an hour with some shoes, pens, paper and sweeties but he didn´t come - I have no idea why or what happened to him.

All this prompted a lot of discussion with my 'mum' when we got home to our nice house full of food and copmfortable beds. Jesus´s story is not unusual and it is common for families with a lot of children not to eat some days as it's 'not their turn' The most important thing we can do to help these kids in the opinion of my 'mum' (and she's a lovely and wise lady) is to feed and educate the kids and create jobs for their fathers and/or mothers.

I've been told that many charities here suffer from the same corruption and misuse of donations as much of the government so what can be done. One of my options is to open a bank account here and control it myself with the help and advice of people which my 'mum' is arranging a meeting with for me.

So..... who among you would be willing to give me money or other help? to send a child to school here costs 100 soles a year, about 20 quid. A decent meal would only be a couple of quid and I paid a fiver for Jesus´s shoes.

Please think about all this and tell me what you think, post here or in the visitors book or email me (link is on www.incurabletrekkie.com) if you don't have my address. Please also send this to anyone you think may be interested.

thanks for listening
xx

posted by Incurable Trekkie @ 18:30