The really tough stuff...

Monday, week 3 in the project. Afternoon, helping with homework like every day. Nothing indicates that this day will end differently, for me that is. 16.00 ' o clock..a woman walks in with a boy, Leonardo, that I hadn't seen that day. He normally sits at my table with his brother. I didn't pay much attention at first to her conversation with another volunteer (woman from Ecuador). After I heard the words "hospital, and nearly dead" I couldn't help wanting to know what it was about. I wish I hadn't. The boy lifted his t-shirt and this moonlandscape on his back was available for everyone to see. Mutulated from the beginning till the end of his back. Aparantly his mother had thrown a pan with boiling water over him, without this being an accident. I froze, got nacious and felt really sick. It was the most awfull thing I've ever seen. What hit me the most was that nobody seemed to care much. The other children became a bit more agitated, but the volunteers and teachers didn't give it another thought....After the woman and boy left, everybody went on with their business as usual, like he had just shown his new shoes. I found myself in sort of a shock. I proceeded as well and finished helping this girl with cutting words with gi, ga, gu, gui, ge from a magazine (we also do this) but I lost myself in thinking of the boy. I saw the tears dripping on the white paper on the table with the cutted g-words. I pretended I had to go to the toilet and lost control..The pain he must have felt, not just from the burns, but from the act in itself. I don't want to judge, I don't know what happened, but his own mother...Later I tried to talk about it with the staff but they said that as horrible as it was I had to get used to this. And they went on with cutting little red hearts for Valentine's, the next day. So I started to cut little red hearts as well without feeling what I was doing, and my own heart told me that I should never get used to something like this. I don't ever want to think of this as something normal eventhough I know it happens all over the world. But seeing it from so close up is not the same as knowing. This tiny little body already mutulated for life, his big eyes on my faces while lifting his shirt. Just another monday in Ambato. Happy Valentine tomorrow...