THE PAIN OF SEEING!

On the third stage of the Mission LITTLE ONES IN NIGERIA we decided to leave the pulpit. We abandoned the lecturing and went to the front, towards the trench line. We wanted to be face to face, eye in the eye with reality.

This is a tough, violent reality.  After two days in open battle, my soul woke up with a scream that wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t set free. I was in pain for what I was seeing.

 If I only could hide you in my eyes! After seeing what we saw we could pretend that we did not see.

I am not talking about extreme poverty. The poor will always be among us. I am talking about the weirdest way of child stigmatization. I am sure that a bomb of insanity has swept mankind that once may have existed around here.

It is everywhere. You can not erase it. It is stamped, marked, spotted. It is a panel of horrors and a very common cliché can be applied here: It is the scenario of a civil war. There is blood, mosquito, rape, mutilation, littering, extortion, cursing, bewitching, exploitation, chain, fear, Christian terror, deception, and death.

We have become an evangelizing machine aimed at catching this disgusting thing that we feel is in the air. We are like Ghostbusters among many, many ghosts. There are more ghosts than one can imagine. It seems that we will never leave this place. We won`t stop preaching in order to tell Chaos that we are the opposite wind. Suddenly a force comes and says: don’t give up. We then launch ourselves to the absurd.

We don’t even think anymore. Thinking is the kind of thing that we have stopped doing. By the way, all seem to “make time”.

It is difficult to explain. The more we think that it is cultural,  pagan the more it gets clear that it is religious, Christian-folkloric.  We think it is religious but then we realize that the backstage is purely cultural. The conclusion is that this is a MAFIA. It is business. It is money. It is the devil… Mammon!   

However, the saddest picture in this scenario of infanticide is to realize that the monster goes on without even noticing that you exist to fight against him. For each flag we raise, ten other raise against us.

What exists in Central Africa exists all over the world. Especially where there is human misery and drug dealing. What we see here, however, is soul traffic. Despite the fact that there are many souls and that more souls are being born, they seem to be ending. The hunting season has tome. It is time to hunt children, the little souls.

 I have seen some soulless kids wandering around. They walk slowly, like curved old people, without expression or gestures. A vague look, confused. Mute ghosts, semi-dressed, in silence they walk.

Evil here is of a different kind. It is not from hunger, pest or earthquakes. Here, the killing of the so-called bewitched innocents is business. It is a real widespread, chronicle, and coward, convenient, collective, impregnated business. It happens here. Yes, here. The geography of death is here.

 “HERE” means every place one can look from this observation deck of understanding. Honestly, this is the greatest assassination of utopias. This is the corner of hopeless, this is the end of the world, it is worse than the death of the body, it is daily threat, it is the shadow looking at the innocents, eating people, trapping people.

 On the contrary, who may answer to these daily questions:

a) Where can we place the kids we have managed to save? There is no more room in the Orphanages.

 b) What to do when coming home is more dangerous than a night without moon?

 c) What to do when you don’t find the kids you left in a certain place? You go back there and they have vanished.

 d) What can we do after deciding to keep a child? What to do with the child we cannot keep. Where is he/she going to stay?

This is like a production plant. It is like a factory of bewitched children. Toddlers must look after each other. Adults are a threat. Yes, adults are scared animals.  Kids are stressed. At any time a grown up one can break their arms, tear their flesh, and drop blood in their eyes. They can force their bodies in order to make kids look like them.

Enough is enough.

I will let you sleep.

I will not tell at home what I have seen here.

Marcelo Quintela (Way to the Nation)