Waffle House. That is where my boys have been bugging me to go. Waffle House. Every time I give them a choice. So today I thought I would give in and go. You would have thought we gave them the moon.
At church today we saw a video about a boy named JR who was taken from his mom by his aunt. His aunt took him to town to a movie and then left him at the street corner saying she had to use the restroom and would be right back. She never came back. JR looked for her for hours. Then he spent a long time homeless sleeping on cardboard at night. A woman took pity on him and took him in. He is 11 in the video and every day he goes to the junkyard to get a cart. Then he goes around town digging through trash loading up his cart to sell to the junk man. He works from 6-4:30. He is only wearing flip flops. Some people burn their trash, so he tries to go through it carefully, but often ends up getting burned. He says that he typically makes 40 pesos a day. His new mother takes all of his money except for 5 pesos. The five pesos he can keep for himself. He says he works every day even Sundays. If he is tired he asks his mother if he can rest and she lets him stay home. JR faces dangers when he is searching for trash such as grown men trying to steal his money, fellow scavengers trying to steal his cart and crossing busy streets without getting hit by a car. The thing that JR said in the video that stuck with me was, "I am afraid to get hit by a car. I am more afraid to have the cart hit by a car. We would owe the Junk Man 500 pesos if that happens."
I was not emotionally ready for this video. It was really upsetting to think about kids doing this every day. My oldest will be 11 in June and I do not let him go off by himself anywhere like this child does.
Our activity for the class was to make a shelter or home. The teacher had gone around town looking for things in dumpsters and whatnot to make a shelter out of. She had a pile for each of us to create a home for all four of us in our group.
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