Bolivia: When Invisible Children Sing

When Invisible Children Sing

by Chi Cheng Huang

When I lived in the City of Falls Church in Virginia, the small town holiday parades always featured Bolivian dancers and musicians that filled the air with the festive sound of stomping feet, clapping hands, bells, whistles, and blaring folk music.  You couldn’t help but wish you could join the celebration.   It was a fine example of our immigrant neighbors bringing one element of their rich culture to their new home in the United States, offering it up to share with anyone who was interested and the least bit curious.  It also fueled my continued interest in Bolivia, which began back in 2003 when I first joined the Foreign Service and listed Bolivia’s capital, LaPaz, and my top choice of places I hoped to be assigned as a first-tour officer.  We ended up going to the Dominican Republic, which we loved, but I’ve remained interested in South America’s mountainous, land-locked Bolivia.  I hope I can visit someday.

Until then, I will settle for armchair travel, as I’ll have to do with many countries.  Once again, I struggled to find a book set in Bolivia.  I was just about to settle on A Matter of Desire, by Edmundo Paz Soldan, when a friend of a friend recommended When Invisible Children Sing, by Chi Cheng Huang.  Although I usually prefer fiction, I decided to read Huang’s memoir because I found the subject matter so compelling.  Huang was in the middle of his residency after medical school at Harvard University when he decided to take a one-year sabbatical to dedicate his time to serving others.  After considering a few options, he chose to travel to Bolivia, where he would work with street children.  Huang is pretty naïve when he sets out on this journey of goodwill.  He doesn’t know anything about Bolivia … or about street children … but he feels called to make a meaningful contribution, so he puts his faith in God and the people who helped him to arrange this situation, boards a plane, and finds himself immersed in a new culture and way of life. 

At first, he spends most of his time at an orphanage, working among Bolivians who have dedicated their lives to taking care of children in need, but he soon finds himself frustrated by the rules and limitations imposed on his efforts.  He begins to spend more and more time in the streets, often at night and usually at great risk to his own safety, looking for the children and seeking to understand the unique culture of homelessness and destitution that exists in this microcosm of Bolivian society.  All around him, he witnesses exploitation, abuse, and desperation.  But he also finds love, community, kindness, and hope. 

Huang walks us through his experience by telling us a series of stories about the children.  They do not all have happy endings, and he does not make it nice and pretty for his readers.  It is bold and honest and real.  There is an undercurrent of Huang’s Christian faith running through the narrative, but it is very subtle:  present, but not overpowering; central, but not primary.  He acknowledges that he feels called to be there and is motivated by his faith to sacrifice his comfortable life in order to serve the children, but he is acutely aware that it is through his hands, feet, and heart that the work will need to be done.  Day by day, child by child, Huang not only tends to the children’s injuries and illnesses, but also to their hearts and minds.  He earns their trust by not swooping in to insist they change, no matter how much he wishes for their lives to improve, and he allows himself to become part of their lives and community instead of immediately pulling them into his.  In short, he accepts them as they are, for who they are, and without judgment, and it is because of this that he is eventually able to inspire some of the children to come live in the safety of the orphanage, where they are fed, clothed, educated, and able to plan for some kind of future that does not include the streets. 

Throughout the story of the streets, Huang weaves his personal journey through his own childhood.  The son of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States, he grows up in safety and comfort but is aware that not everyone enjoys these things.  He is also aware that these things do not protect you from tragedy or pain, and he folds his readers gently into his story of loss through his young sister’s death and its impact on his life. 

The first time I encountered street children was in 1999, when my husband and I traveled to Vietnam to adopt our daughter.  Their presence on every corner was shocking to my inexperienced sensibilities, and I did not understand why no one did anything to help them.  I later read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, a novel set in India that takes readers behind the scenes of the reasons children may be living on the streets and the adults who exploit them and manipulate the feelings of others in order to earn money through sympathy.  There were also plenty of children on the corners in the Dominican Republic.  Here in the United States, we may not find them on the streets, but children do live in deplorable conditions, far outside the standards of what we would consider to be appropriate care of our most vulnerable citizens. 

 

 

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what can be done to make a difference in the lives of children not fortunate enough to have loving parents and stable homes, and in my own way, I’ve tried to have an impact through personal decisions about how I live my life, where I donate my money, how I spend my volunteer hours.  It’s not enough … it will never be enough until every single child is safe and loved.  Huang realizes this, too, as the memoir draws to a close and a child to whom he has become attached decides to stay on the street with her mother instead of living in safety and comfort away from all she has known.  He doesn’t give up though on trying to change what he can.  Although he returns to the United States and to his career as a physician, he continues to visit Bolivia’s children and eventually finances the construction of several homes where the children can find safety and comfort with their loved ones, without having to give up all that they know.  What an incredible lesson for all of us.