Prodigal Son?

I hope this finds everyone doing well wherever you might be reading this from!

I want to write about a reencounter I had last Friday with a boy named Ivan whom I have loved dearly since the day I met him five years ago.

Ivan ran to the streets when he was 7 years old because his father beat his mother so badly that she ran from their home and no one has heard from her since. He began collecting scrap metal and plastic bottles on the streets of Kampala, as do so many children who have slipped through the cracks of their disintegrating family landscapes.

Ivan slept on the streets with boys who had run from their homes and their villages to seek independence and refuge in a life that ends up being filled with more suffering. He suffered regular beatings from Kampala’s City Council Police (with barbed wire, crowbars, or any object on hand). He started sniffing kyenge (jet fuel) as is common among children on the streets, because, as they state, it takes away fear, cold, and hunger (and is cheaper than a plate of food).

When I met Ivan in 2008, he had been taken off of the streets by a friend of mine who had started a home for boys, and he was back in school. He was shy and helpful and had the sweetest demeanor. He was one of those kids that steals your heart with his charm.

 When I came back in 2009, however, I found that Ivan had run from the group home and gone back to his father’s home, but soon found himself right back on the streets. I sat with him on a curb as the sun set over the chaos of the overcrowded slum where he resided. I had come back for three weeks to finish my thesis research and I was soon leaving again. I knew I could do nothing for Ivan, and as he averted my eyes and looked off into the distance, I sat with him and cried. I was looking at a ghost of the person I had known, with oversized clothing covering his lanky frame and cheekbones that spoke volumes of the suffering he endured and the drugs he still consumed.

Ivan in 2009 after having gone back to the streets.

When I came back in September, I went to look for Ivan, assuming I’d still find him on the streets since boys his age (he is now 17) virtually never get chances to live in homes or partake in rehabilitation programs. I found a man, Uncle Baka, in Kisenyi leading a Bible study/feeding program for street children and was overjoyed when he told me that he had in fact taken Ivan into his family’s home and that Ivan was working and learning how to weld. He explained to me that Ivan had gone back home, and his father had been so disgraced to see the “drug addict” and “thief” that his son had become that he took him to prison, hoping that he would “reform” there. Uncle Baka fought to get him out of prison and took him into his own home.

Ivan has been at Uncle Baka’s home for 7 months and he looks like an entirely different person. He is working and confident in himself, he has gained weight, and his eyes shine again the way they used to when I met him years ago. When I went to visit him at Uncle’s home, I couldn’t help but imagine what our world would be like if each family took in someone that everyone else had given up on. Ivan had been on the streets for 8 years and had been deemed hopeless by his own father, yet this family saw his potential and took him in. We write off so many people as hopeless cases, and we thus become the authors of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Isolation and discrimination will always breed hopelessness, whereas loving investment, trust, and dignified work can foster amazing changes in the lives of the so-called “lost causes.”

Last Friday I took Ivan back to the boys’ home where he used to stay so that he could see all of the people who love him still, though many thought that he was dead since they hadn’t heard from him since he ran. The reunion was bittersweet, as Ivan was reminded that many people love him, but also saw the world he left behind that he could have still been a part of, had he not run away.

Ivan with some of the people he hadn't seen for four years since he left the group home.

Ivan and I at his old group home.

On the way home, he told me that he wanted to go to his father’s home to see him. He told me that his father would be so happy to see that he had changed and that he was now working. Though it was getting late, we hopped on a boda (motorcycle) and rode to his father’s storefront shop (his father is a wealthy Catholic businessman with 10 children). When we finally arrived, Ivan knelt down to greet his father (a cultural sign of respect), and his father didn’t even pause his conversation to acknowledge his son. We spent an awkward half an hour there, where I did all of the talking, explaining how proud I was of Ivan for being hardworking and trustworthy, while his father shook his head, called him a thief, and assured me that he had never mistreated him. We soon got up to leave and as we were about to get on the bus to head home, Ivan called out “Good night father.” His father turned around to head back to his shop without speaking a single word. So much for the celebration of the return of the prodigal son.

I do not have children, but I cannot imagine bringing one into this world, and simply giving up on him/her. Thankfully for Ivan, there have been others willing to come in and pick up the pieces of his despair and patch them back together, but he will always long for his father’s acceptance, despite his abusive history.

If I ever settle down in one place, I hope that my home can be a place where the “hopeless” are again renewed, and where healing and forgiveness can do their slow work on hardened hearts.