The Grinch

GIDDY
I've been to Brazil 4 times. I've worked in the inner city projects of Tampa, I've seen poverty before. It's true that India doesn't really compare to those, but its not like I stepped of the plane and was shocked at what I saw. I wasn't heart broken like some of the other girls on my team were.
But, this week, on Thursday, something changed. My team went out to eat for lunch and saw a kid begging on the streets. A few of my team mates had met him a few days before and discovered his name was Giddy. So, we decided to invite him in to eat with us. As he walked to the door of the restaurant with us, he stopped and looked back at a man who was sitting on a motorcycle. The man smiled and waved him on in. As we were talking to the little boy through our broken Hindi, we discovered he had no family. No mother, father, brothers, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparents. Nothing. Then who was that man on the motorcycle? We asked how old he was. He didn't know. We asked if he went to school. The little boy, who looked no older than 10, said no. When we asked why not he just shrugged. We continued the rest of our meal watching him devour all the food on his plate. We played a few games with him and made a few faces at him. Despite his broken, rotten teeth, he had a precious little smile. I stared at him for a while thinking of all the potential he had and what his future would be like. I almost had to excuse myself from dinner to keep myself from tears. We made it through lunch and some of the girls wanted dessert form a place upstairs. I stayed back to think about everything that just happened.

What happens to little kids that get trafficked when they aren't working the streets? What do they do when they get older? How is it possible to get out of the trafficking cycle on your own? How can you not know how old you are or when your birthday is? The purpose of my trip is to stop things like this, but all I could do was give him lunch and some leftovers to take back to his pimp.

At that moment, my heart grew 3 sizes and broke all at the same time. I put my head in my hands and cried my eyes out in front of everyone. I couldn't hold it in anymore. The poverty and plight of India finally broke me. I hope I'm forever changed.