A Sponsors Story
Twelve short months earlier, I saw this teenage boy digging around trash heaps, piled higher than his own head, looking for enough food to eat. He knew his dad had died. His mother could have been alive, but she was out of his life completely.
Now, as I steadied the camera I felt that glob creep into my throat and I had to occasionally turn and wipe my eyes on my sleeve. That same boy that was scrounging trash heaps was standing in front of the camera telling his sponsor how grateful he was. It wasn’t just the fact that he had survived that made me cry. It wasn’t because he had clothes on and food to eat that hadn’t come from the same garbage that the stray dogs ate from. It was something so simple that I do it everyday without thinking. Before I turned the camera on, the boy had reached up and buttoned the top button of his shirt. It was as if his life had changed so dramatically that he was no longer just concerned about his own survival, but somehow he was concerned about his own dignity. This boy had gone from eating the food of stray dogs to buttoning his shirt like a gentleman, and even just the thought of that still makes me cry.
