Thursday night Streetkid Outreach

It's the same drill every Thursday. We spend 3 hours during the day cooking the rice and "porridge" (chicken, carrots, onions, flavoring) then filling small cellophane bags with this warm meal. We pack up 50 bags of food and 50 bags filled with drinking water. These styro coolers get loaded into the back of the van and we take off around 6:30.

Our first stop is The Plaza; 2nd stop is the Market; 3rd stop is the (bus)Terminal and 4th is close to the Bridge. These places were chosen because it's where the streetkids typically hang out at nighttime.

Once we're in the van and in town, every Thursday evening is different. Last night we got to the Plaza and no one was hanging out - except for a few teenagers we see every week. We knew that might be the case since they are currently rennovating the Plaza grounds and police were all over the place. Street kids learn fast to stay away from police... These teens told us that the kids were probably hiding out at Guysano (their version of a dept store) sniffing rugby.

The Market and Bus Terminal was empty of streetkids. It was also fairly quiet, but we spotted a group of "tribal people" and stopped to give them food and water. As it turned out, one of the little girls squatting there with her family had a birthday that day so we sang happy birthday. I reminded myself to fill my pockets with something to hand out (other than money) for this type of occasion. We did sing happy birthday to her as a group and prayed over her before we left.

We decided to go on foot, walking down the streets where the rest of my team knew that streetkids usually hung out. For no apparent reason, we could not find them anywhere. We expect this on nights that it rains because they won't come out in rain. I've heard stories that police occasionally do "round-ups" where they decide to clean up their city and haul kids in or simply get rid of them. I put that thought out of my head.

I see children everywhere - unattended, playing in the street, dressed in rags and in some cases filthy -  but am told "they're not streetkids". I ride home in silence trying to process this Thursday night outreach...