Merveille, Flor and other thoughts

Somehow I'm sorry to be intermittent in writing and updating the blog, but continuity in things is not one of my strong points. I know I need to get inspiration to write, and inspiration is a tank: when you empty it of all the words and emotions, it requires some time before returning to fill up again. Some other times, instead, I feel I lose myself in the flow of things to the point of being unable to stop me, put aside and collect my thoughts. This is the risk of everyday life, or of routine. Lost time that won’t come back.

What I want to write about is again the story of Maman Flor, which has evolved in unpredictable ways.
A few days after our first intervention, two events have disrupted everything and we begin to realize that help is by no means simple as it seems at first sight.
Her landlord, Meda, after having seen us at her house, has given her a letter of immediate eviction if she would not paid the three months' rent arrears. With this letter she came to us and Alice, perhaps without considering well the consequences, has lent her some money.
A few days later, Flor has found Merveille, her first child who since a few months has been living on the street, and brought him back home. She wished that we knew him, hoping that we could help his recovery.
When they came to us, Merveille kept his eyes down all the time and answered in monosyllables. He was frightened, he was in front of me but it too far away at the same time. To establish a minimal contact for me was impossible. When I asked him why he left his family, he answered without hesitation: "because my father is gone." Suddenly, for a moment, he has been there, clear as pure water, but in front of his wound I was unable to say anything. Before they left, we managed to wring a promise that he would resume the school until June, and then we would find a way to pay his training as a carpenter, his stated desire, who knows how much to him and how much to his mother.
The next day, left alone at home by the owner to watch TV (and here the story does not sound clear at all), Merveille steals a video camera carried to Meda to be sold, and the money that his mother had saved to buy a new bag of foufou. From that moment, Merveille disappeared once again.
The owner of the camera claims his money, and the head of the neighbourhood has determined. like king Solomon did, that Flor and Meda must share the responsibility and the payment of damages. Now Flor doesn’t know what to do: she lost everything again and hope for our new help. What should we do?

In the last days, I have reached the idea that the root of these events is our presence, of mundelé that have the colour of money. We are the foreign element of a small universe of variables that is generating unexpected dynamics.
Meda, despite he works and has no economic problems, wants to beat the nail and claims his right to share the luckiness happened to maman Flor, who has the help of whites. I fear that lend more money to Flor is good for nothing, that new problems will arise and that the requests end up only increasing. We all have the idea that she is victim of what happened, but I do not feel to exclude at all that there is not even a minimal participation from her in the whole affair. We took a few days to decide what to do, but there is not much time for; in the meanwhile Flor can not work.
About Merveille, he has lost an opportunity that he was unable or unwilling to grasp. He will continue to seek his way on the road or, since his father has abandoned him, he prefers the street because the word “home” has lost meaning for him.
I know it's wrong and illogical in many ways but somewhere, inside me, I hope that with the money made with the theft Merveille has gone to Pointe Noire to find his father. Maybe he won’t find it, but it could help him to find himself.

About us, we are slowly learning how to move in this new world. And we don’t have to be disappointed if things follow unimaginable and misleading trajectories. I tell myself that the learning process can sometimes be a bit painful, like when we discover that things are not like the pictures we had of it and the alarm clock of reality breaks into a thousand pieces the world we were dreaming about. As every time when we realize that the world continues his tour, regardless of our small actions. Or worse, when we discover that our small actions can create more problems than the ones they would like to solve. These circumstances given, perhaps it was unavoidable that all this happened. It’s sad, but it helps us to show us where we are, what we are doing, in what ways we can help. And in what others ways we only risk to do harm.