Reception and Action Center: "shots in your heart"

Acquired with patience  and "hard fought" for over my 11 months mission at the RAC, , a simple sentence sounds like a grand victory and makes my day: " kuyagweeeeen, Could You pleaaase, giiivemeee ... ".

Amanda, 10 years old, is willing to play the game while suppressing an incipient smile, dragging out the syllables of the salutation, imperative sesame so that I can grant her request. An ad libitum by her or any of the other children present each day at the RAC, it allows to have a pair scissors which name-is-come-back, an extra sheet of paper, glitter to adorn their compositions. Or whatever is  needed coming  from our small office that could serve the twenty plus children gathered there for activities. The very formal and almost anachronistic "would you be so kind to give me" is developing a wealth of joints Mary Jane, or the little Joy Joy. They too, play the game. I have always been surprised by the cooperation shown by these children, boys and girls from the streets of Manila, with me. We just happened to be in the same place at the same time and it was necessary to discover each other and make the best of it.

A curfew occurs every day from 10:00pm to 5:00am throughout the Metro-Manila area. The police can grab any minor discovered during those hours and bring them to the Reception Action Center. For them, this can be the start a long stay, depending on their parents’ willingness to fulfill the steps for their release, if indeed they are aware of this place, or if indeedthey still exist at all.

I discovered the Manila RAC in July 2013, six months after learning about the Virlanie Foundation and its various programs for street children. In the end, from an original commitment of 6 months, I ended up staying 11, along with several other volunteers. On my first day there, I found myself standing idly arms at my sides, discovering what would become my daily life.

Behind the gates of this casually kept building, hidden from the view of people, pushed back into a dead end, there is a courtyard with ragged and sickly children going barefoot, who come running to you in order to hug you. An immutable host protocol. From that day, a ritual began that will be as much expected from them  as from me. On the left, on the first and only floor of the decrepit building with its faded colors, children, boys and girls, faces stuck between the bars of fences that do not carry  the name of prison, stare at the outside looking for potential relatives or friends. Some of them will join our activities. The rest, the majority, will be crammed into a dining hall to be watch  DVD’s (often very violent, eyes between 2 and 12 years old) they will stare at it a little groggy, barely out of their get away  into direct sleep. At worst, the majority will spend the day on the floor, in the heat. A jug of water, no bed, no pillow, one bucket, fifty boys, twenty girls, on average, sometimes more, split in 2 cells. At the end of the courtyard, families, sick ones, oldies, indigents from the street, all stand on wooden planks stacked as beds. Then, in the very end, surrounded by very high walls topped with tired barbed wires, opens the space for activities. Volunteers, under a thin tin roof arrange tables, chairs, adjust any mats to conduct workshops. It could not be hidden any better, in the depths of a microcosm condensing all those lives. Everywhere, all around, disrepair and insalubrity grab nose and throat.

Despite this and foremost, you have to try to have fun with the kids. There is no teaching mission, no program to follow. As much as possible, we try to maintain a stable framework with a few basic rules such as mutual respect, politeness, behaving held during activities ... But in fact, some children can be very demanding in the way they seek attention, but howto blame Jericho, Sherwin, or Al-Al for not coping with rules, whereas in order to survive, they just must not be docile but on the alert at all times. Yet what a satisfaction to be able to "reframe" one of those agitated child and see him with others focused on a drawing, revealing their talents. This is where the day took all its flavor, in making yourself available to reach that success. And even if tomorrow he or she will again be a troublemaker, the door will remain open thereafter. Every day we must try again.

The RAC imposes strong contrasts, extremes, moments that overlap and collide without transition. Our being, our consciousness are shaken, our humanity is on a tightrope, exposed and challenged in my cases, like never before. Because even though we are there for the children, there are also (What a small world is) adults, disabled children, lonely, psychotic people suffering, shipwrecked on the streets, live there willy-nilly. The smiles and laughter that we see on some faces may be followed by an effusion of violence. The explosion related to the precariousness of such a place and survival imperatives arising only require a thin spark tensions.

In my view, the activities themselves do not matter, but instead what they allow for demonstrations of attention, affection and love too. For example, cutting the children's hair with small safety scissors and an old comb, it is an activity. Having every Friday a "hygiene, health and beauty" morning where volunteers become manicures, pedicures, hand masseuses for teenage girls, it's an activity. A rusty old wheelchair with just the metal wheels for support, and 3 hilarious passengers for a wild ride, it's an activity. A marker and you have a fine team of Musketeers with proud mustaches, crazy laughter guaranteed! We even had “lazy afternoons” where volunteers and children simply stretched on mats. Those who wanted to read, read, who wanted to sleep, slept, who wanted to hug a stuffed animal and daydream just could. Everything happened in silence, with sometimes a little bonus like a little breeze cooling the air  and dispersing the putrid stench of latrines. Their little skins, marked by redness, pimples, no longer repels us. Nearly  happiness. An Offer of relaxation, a time to forget their  troubles, ease the daily life. And I was happy to play with them, proud to be Gwen kuya to them and, as much as possible, make everything go well. Yes, proud and granted with an additional force to their contact.

To paraphrase Coline ( whom you know now from her testimony) you don t get out of there unhurt... How to deal with a mother of 2 children, crying, holding in her arms her youngest, suffering from tuberculosis, begging for help because the RAC administration puts them back on the streets? You come back from your lunch break, rather satisfied with the morning and its progress and this reality jumps at your throat as soon as you pass the gates. Talks and advocacies to people in charge won’t change a thing: out! In diving, the method taught to help a drowning person is simple: First, keep your distance. You approach; you communicate, but maintain a safety zone. And if the person tries to advance, kick your fins and maintain this safety gap. Otherwise, the desperate person clings to you and drowns you. It is comparable in social world, it is out of the question to sink at the first distress and it out of the question that volunteers drawn themselves with  the first distress. You gotta hang in there, it’s true, you gotta toughen up . I learned it. So you have to look at some of them drawn themselves, and you have to keep on going with other ones.

You’re exposed to new feelings, in my case for example a particular bond with  a little boy of 3 and a half, Carlito, who lived at the  RAC with 4 brothers and a very neglectful mother. Butt naked every day, playing with any soiled treasure dug up in the trash.I thought he was an exception, accommodating rather well to this framework. I even compared him to a lotus, blooming in the muddy waters of the RAC. After several weeks, he had become covered with scabies, an abscess deforming the back of his skull. It was only a matter of time for me to witness that, to discover the irreparably corrupting and severely deleterious effect of this place. After seven months, he was temporarily placed at Virlanie with the rest of his siblings.

Over time, you acquire some confidence in the relationship with all these people. I did the "job" and I liked what I was doing. Being in the moment, responsive, ready to interact and stimulate children's interest, gaining esteem from some of them. And too bad for the times when they drove me nuts, too bad for the big fatigue stroke, and too bad for the mutual arguments.

Staying at the RAC is also the occasion  to have some disillusions and receive a few great slaps: see some perish, do nothing for them, because it's too much, because you don’t want to, because you want to keep a life for yourself  and not being dedicated heart  and soul. Randomly Meet kids outside and  take in the face the sharp contrast between the innocence usually associated with a kid and the reality of his life, which will never be ours. Dogs wander on the sidewalks, birds pierce the sky, street kids themselves are in  between those two worlds, flitting from one to another, picking what their day reserves to them, raising their chance, avoiding its and dancing on their dark destiny. Between blooming enthusiasm and cold consciousness of those who have already seen too much. A child should not live like that. But we do leave them to their lives, to their worlds, we take the smiles. And we have to carry on, not disillusioned but just aware that not everything works all the time. The task is humongous. I have no regrets, especially not for extending my stay, especially not for taking those smiles.

The little Angelo who spent this whole year with me, has been at the RAC for 3 years now. On my last day, no word, no sadness but just a sharp juvenile consciousness: I was another one to say good bye to him and leave him behind. Yes I left, but another one took over, and others will come in order to put some smiles on faces of children and beneficiaries of the RAC.

Many thanks to all the children and beneficiaries from the RAC, to all what I could learn, thanks to them. Many thanks to all the volunteers whose roads I’ve crossed. We had some tough ones but those days made us improve as people. I wouldn’t have had that experience without the inspiration of Angela. Thank you. Thanks to the volunteers who left their offices to come see us and spend some time with us, that help was well appreciated every time. Tremendous thank you to kuya Jeff for his bottomless kindless, his patience and his professionalism towards anybody. Thank you to all theVirlanie staff and Dominique Lemay for their trust; I did my best like the others.

For an explicit description of sanitary situation: http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20140131-1-enfer-rac-prison-mineurs-manille/

Photographic testimony :http://www.collectifkairos.com/le-rac/