As I was driving out today, I came across what we call “the boyz on the corner”. They all remember me as the condom lady from years past when Common Ground worked with them on reproductive health care.
The thing is…today we had a normal conversation. They weren’t all edgey. we talked about the “gangs” of La Carpio and how they longed for more peace and less violence. And how great it could be if we organized an activity where we could all just sit down together…who knows. ? Maybe the time has come, I thought. Finally. Maybe.
A mother, with her little baby she is breast feeding, and her oldest daughter who just earned her second degree in patient care. On her way to becoming a doctor. 16 years old…her 13 year old boy is in extreme screaming pain in the hospital after surgical intervention on which they “drained the liquid out of his médula”, she has to choose between staying in the hospital, caring for her other kids and going into witness protection. Which is required. We have provided food for her every day, paid for a woman to watch the kids, and given her the money for the moving truck. Also..our team has given her lunches and tracked down sacks for her to pack in. The ” plan ” of the OIJ is to take the kids in a van with her and her daughter out of the hospital in an ambulance and drive them all five hours away to a house at the edge of the highway in xxxxxx. An hour away from the nearest hospital, the nearest high school and five hours from the school where the daughter studies medicine. They will pay the rent for one f..ING month and then she is on her own. I’m trying to negotiate a house for her nearer to San Jose. I cannot imagine how her daughter will survive being bounced around in an ambulance four hours.
