Folks often ask about how kids come to
be in our orphanage. This post is not about that. This post is about
me getting my hair cut. I know, it sounds like I'm misleading you.
Yes, but at the same time I'm not misleading. This post is about
getting my hair cut and how kid's don't come to be in our
orphanage. See what I did there? This could be a very long post, but
I'm thinking this is just going to be not a long post. Again,
see it?
The first several times I got a
haircut, I went to people I knew that had a barbershop in the bairro
and paid a dollar for them to shave my head. This turned out to be
more complicated then it sounds. That's also part of the reason I
just never got a haircut. But then again, I've been not getting
haircuts since about 8th grade. I'd get a haircut at the
start of spring and another at the start of school. And most the time
it was just me or one of my brothers with the clippers in the garage
making me look like I was auditioning for the marines. It's just
easier that way.
Until one day I found somebody in
Nampula that could actually cut hair worth a dang. Sure, it would
have been easier to maybe go to one of the other missionaries in town
that has a wife that knows how to cut hair, but it's not just an
adventure that way. The guy I go, we now know each other by name and
he's always thrilled to see me and has tons of stories to tell
whenever I show up. His barber shop is right next to the hospital and
so there's always lots of crazy stories about people getting treated
after run-ins with the police or jilted ex-lovers or bandits. Its an
entertaining time for sure. He knows I work in the orphanage and is
always telling me how cool it is what I'm doing.
The last time I went in there he had
whole story lined up to tell. I could tell that this one was much
more somber by the tone he took as he started. It was two days before
I showed up for a haircut that this all took place. He said that he
came home one day to find his wife panicked and stressing out. It
turns out that she had set her kid down for a minute to run around
the corner and buy cooking oil. When she came back, her kid, age 4,
was gone. She had no idea if he had wandered off or got taken or was
just hiding. They looked all night and all night and finally wandered
into to an orphanage on his side of town where somebody had found him
wandering around and took him there not knowing who the kid was or
who he belonged to.
He was telling me that even though it
wasn't my orphanage and I'm on the other side of town, he's so
grateful and appreciative that it existed for him to be able to get
his kid back. He even try to give me a free haircut. I refused his
gratitude and paid a measly two dollars for the haircut. It was
really nice though to find people in Mozambique appreciative of the
ministry that the orphanage is.
That might lead you to wonder if we
ever wind up with lost and abandoned kids. The answer is no. Kind of
anticlimatic, huh. There's actually kind of a system in place for
that. Usually the kids just get taken to the courthouse and then info
gets sent out to the police and announcements get made on the radio.
Ideally, that's what is supposed to happen. However it is such a
frequent occurrence that the radio station will obligingly mention it
once or twice in passing and you'd be lucky to find a beat policeman
that has valuable information if you're looking for your kid.
What is much more common is for people
to come to the orphanage looking for a kid that was lost or
abandoned. They leave their contact and we call them if a kid ever
shows up, which has never happened. I don't know myself what is
happening with these situations. Kids as young as three and four go
missing, and everyday you hear about a lost child or children but
word never makes it out if they get found. There also seems to be way
more people showing up looking for a kid then presenting a kid that
was found. I just assume that because of these numbers there is just
a surplus of kids forever lost. Unfortunately that's the general
consensus among folks here.
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