The Girl

I have seen and done a lot in my life. My travels have taken me, on separate trips, to: San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orlando, Atlanta, Dallas, Milwaukee, WI; San Antonio, St Louis, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, and Winnipeg. Compared to many people, I get around.

For mission trips alone I have traveled to Rapid City, SD; Green Bay, WI; Duluth, MN; Wind River Indian Reservation; Vancouver, BC; Quad Cities; Kansas City, KS; Philadelphia, PA; and Montego Bay, Jamaica.

In my travels I have seen thousands of people. 40,000 in one turn of the head in a concert venue. Thousands as I work my way in and out of airports. I suppose that I have seen something over a million people in my life…probably more.

But, there is one girl, on one trip, that is etched into the back of my brain in a way that I cannot forget and probably never will. She was a resident of an orphanage in Jamaica. A young lady of (17? 18? 19?) years. I had seen her before. On previous mission trips. On previous days of this trip. She has some disabilities, lots of them. I don’t know what her diagnosis is, and given where she lives it probably isn’t even an accurate one. In many ways she was in better condition than other orphans, she could stand upright and didn’t spend her life in a poorly adjusted wheel chair. If there was enough staff to keep an eye on her she could move about as she wished.

She can’t talk, but she can shriek in madness. Like someone out of an early 1900’s insane asylum. Some of her behaviors are difficult to recall and difficult to write about. For some reason she would grab and tug and pull on her breasts until they looked like than had been rung through an old fashioned washing machine. When I had seen her previously she had a shirt on, but would reach in through the neckline and pull. It was painful to watch. I cannot imagine what drove her to such madness. Being a middle aged, middle class, white guy on a mission trip I guess I just kind of stood there. There wasn’t really anything for me to do. There was no way that I could help.

This young lady also has a mean streak in her. When she has a chance she will push over the wheel chairs of the other orphan children. She doesn’t seem to have free will in the matter, it seems to be something that she is driven to do. Where a couple of steps transition from the green grass of the quad into the cottage, she will push wheelchair bound children right off the edge.

All of that seems extreme enough, but that is not the image that is blazed in my mind.

Sunday morning we well-meaning Christian missionaries show up at the orphanage to help some of the orphans make their way to church. It’s perhaps a half mile up a gentle hill. Some of the higher functioning children can walk with us, or be pushed up the hill in wheel chairs. Some of the more challenged kids ride up the hill in our buses.

I was sent into a cottage to get a wheelchair bound girl who I would push up the hill for worship that Sunday morning. As I entered the cottage to get my wheelchair girl, there stood the one who would shriek in madness. Stark naked. Tied by a dishtowel around her waist to the kitchen door. Pulling on her breasts as hard as she could. Shrieking in madness. The house mother completely ignored her and told me to hang on for a minute until my orphan was ready to go. So, there I stood, in the middle of the cottage, next to the wheel chair girl, and across the room from the single most hideous sight that I have seen in my life.

There was nothing I could do for her. Nothing. Not a single thing.

In every other situation that I have ever been in there was something for me to do. Call the cops, call an ambulance, stand forward as a big man to block danger, stand back as a coward, e-mail a counselor, or call a youth director. In every other single uncomfortable moment of my life there has been something for me to do to make things better. This scene froze for a short eternity, perhaps 5 minutes. Me waiting for the house mother to prepare my orphan, her screaming and tugging and twisting.

That scene messed me up. Bad. I cried every time I was along for days. Slowly I came to realize that being tied to the kitchen door was the best care available to her on the island. She couldn’t be let free. She couldn’t take care of herself. There wasn’t enough staff to keep the other children safe from her. So the very best care that was available to her was the care that she was getting.

It bothered me then, and it bothers me now. But what really bothers me is that while I am in my comfortable house writing this blog, almost 2 years after that day...I realize that she is there tonight, shrieking and pulling. She is in hell and there is nothing that I can do to save her.

When I got back to my comfortable office my co-workers asked what I did for my vacation. Most I told that I chaperoned a youth trip to Jamaica. To a couple of my closest co-workers I tried to tell of the girl. Buy my words fell on deaf ears. Their eyes glazed over. It was as though I was speaking in tongues and they thought I was drunk on new wine.