The hardest part of the day was meeting Louis’s mother. To give a bit of context, Louis is a child with Cerebral Palsy who was recently moved into Mama Cocha due to the conglomerate efforts of several of the Team Peru parents. When he moved into the home last week he was 11 years old and he weighed a meagre 12 kilograms. He was on the verge of death. Amazingly he is doing better, but nevertheless had he not been moved into the home last week he would have been dead by now.

But, to my story: On April 1st, I was sitting with Louis and chatting with the surrogate mother: the one overseeing Louis’s recovery. Then the surrogate mother told me that this lady I was sitting next to was Louis’s mother; and I was stunned to silence. I looked at her and made eye contact with the mother for nearly five full seconds. Anger: that was my first thought. I wanted to yell at her. To scream and make her understand what injustice she had done by abandoning her child. To show her she was in the wrong.

But I caught myself. I realized she had no comprehension or awareness of what had been done wrong. To her no social injustice had been committed. And we sat in silence: my head spinning. The world stopped and my heart skipped a beat. I looked down at Louis. Gazed at his frail body and his hollow eyes as he laid there fighting off the Reaper.

Then I looked back up at his mother and managed to choke out, at a barely audible pitch: “Tienes un hijo bonito”. In English: “You have a beautiful son”. The only thing my wasted soul could do after that was stand up and walk out of the room.

How could she do this? Even a mother can be made to forget the pain of her own child with enough ignorance. My only hope is to one day eradicate this ignorance. To make people understand that disabled children are not a curse or part of some Divine Will.

And he is beautiful. I meant it. I can only hope that Louis’s mother will one day come to understand that.

Ben VD