Along

It was the way he was shaken awake that I keep on thinking about.
It is daft really because you prepare yourself to see things in life. This is a story gathering trip after all.
I'm trying to get stories that provoke a reaction. Either by showing people how bad things are, so to get help, or by stories that inspire them to come and volunteer themselves.
VSO volunteer Simon said to me earlier in the week "I tell people I sell children, I get the highest price for them that I possibly can. I think they are worth it". He's right. I too am temporarily in the business but all my journalistic experience and skill went out the window when I saw her shake and shout Along awake.

Without giving too much sensitive detail away in a blog, Along  is five, or there abouts, he doesn't know his birthday as was found abandoned in the street.

He was picked up by a taxi man and taken in by now adoptive mum, a migrant worker living in a slum. Because of her migrant status she is illegal, and thus at the mercy of whoever wants to pay her the lowest. Either that or go back to Burma.

When Along came through the doors of super-VSO project worker Meg, he didn't speak. Just a few months into the project he laughs and dances and is a joy.

Once washed and changed, fed and given vitamins, he bounced around for the entire day. He was allowed to be a child.

At the end of the day, as we dropped the children off from the back of a truck, (that would have health and safety bods on their knees), he was so tired and fell asleep standing up.

I knew that he was poor, and I knew that he was really poorly, and I had braced myself for what I was going to see. I've worked in journalism for seven years and worked in poor conditions in Russia and have grown accustomed to my thicker skin.

What I didn't expect was the way he was shaken awake from his slumber, brought around at a rate of knots into a hell hole. I forgot what I was meant to me doing, I forgot I was meant to be interviewing and had to be prompted my Meg. I forgot I had flown half way around the world to report on situations exactly like this.

VSO and the likes of World Educations and dozens of NGOs are working so well in this part of the world. Thank God, because there is no alternative help. They are transforming lives and creating futures where there was little or very little hope. Along will be at the centre again with Meg in the coming days and if anyone can transform his life, then she can. On a more immediate level it doesn't stop him from living where he does and for me, rather selfishly, doesn't stop me from thinking about the the rather trivial matter of the way he was woken up.