Travels in China 2007
Healing & Recovery
I want to share with you some stories of healing and recovery that I am carrying with me in my head and in my heart. These are the stories of the Golden Courage children that Dr. Pang and Dr. Lu tell with such pride and hopefulness; these are the stories our staff relate with smiles and tears in their eyes; these are the stories that capture the soul essence of Golden Courage International.
Everyone wants to share with me the story of Singing Strings. This is a girl who could not even complete her first Golden Courage interview and dissolved in uncontrollable tears when asked any questions. Soon after the interview, Lui Wei received a long letter from the girl chronicling her sad life story on the streets just to survive from day to day. Her father was in a car accident and died. Her mom left home and got her daughter into a desperate life on the streets. When anyone tried to communicate with her, she would become self-abusive and hit her head against the wall. She could not look anyone in the eyes, but turned away in humiliation.
But after Dr. Pang worked with her over a year's time and Liu Wei developed a pen pal relationship with her, she began to change dramatically. She calls Dr. Pang "grandma" and says: "Now I know how to live." She played the guitar at the Honoring Ceremony, courageously stepping out onto the stage as the very first performer. What a remarkable transformation from someone who could not even speak without dissolving into tears just one year ago.
Dr. Pang relates that many of the children had lice when she first met them and didn't know how to smile. Now all the children are lice free and their physical health has significantly improved. She consistently records the height and weight of the children and from memory shares with me the growth record of two children with whom she has a particularly fond relationship, Silent Brother and Joyful Sister. Silent Brother grew 7 cm. and gained 10 pounds, and Joyful Sister grew 5 cm. and gained 11 pounds in one year from participation in the school lunch program and from food from the garden their father tends from seeds given to him from Golden Courage. Giving families an opportunity to have a garden helps "to give life back to the families." Pictures of Silent Brother and Joyful Sister and their story. I met them last year, visited their home, and wrote about them in my last travelogue of 2006.
Winter Plum, a beautiful young girl with a lovely voice, had a very difficult early childhood. She witnessed her father stab her mother, who had taken the young girl to her own parents' home for protection. Then she saw her father commit suicide in despair later that night when he confessed the murder to his own family. Between 2003 and 2006, Winter Plum witnessed the deaths of her grandfather to cancer, her grandmother a year later, and her mother and her father. As an orphan, she found herself on the streets and ill. She had only one remaining living relative, an aunt, who took her in against the wishes of her husband and his family. To just survive with her abusive uncle, she arose at 4:30 am to help in the fields, endured his ill treatment, and became invisible.
Winter Plum is a bright, straight-A student, and her teachers recommended her for the Golden Courage Great Expectations Program. Strategically, through the One-on One Help Program, Golden Courage helped the uncle with a small loan to develop his business so he could see Winter Plum's "value." Winter Plum received medical care so she could return to a normal life with children her age and has changed dramatically. She loves sports, sings at school, and has a best friend. Lui Wei interviewed Winter Plum after a year's participation in Golden Courage programs, and shares this description of her changes: "You can feel that this little girl is loved. This lost child is found." Yun continues: "If children have someone who loves them, they will be alright." In Winter Plum's own words: "No one can bully me. I belong to Golden Courage now." She has many dreams for her future. You can see her picture in one of my recent travelogues, standing with Lui Wei and on the Golden Courage web site.
Zhang Fan is a second grader who has many challenges. His older brother, who is 10 years older than he, has Down's syndrome and continually gets into trouble. His mother, a Beijing city woman, left her first husband and found a very poor, uneducated farmer to marry her and help raise her child. The parents are constantly fighting over the problems of this older child. In Zhang Fan's first interview, he was very depressed and quiet, showing very little self-esteem. With fear in his eyes, he scanned his mother's face, deciding what he could or could not reveal. But Dr. Lu, who participated in this interview, discovers that the boy has a great singing voice and the two of them proceed to sing several songs. Tears run down the mother's face, so amazed is she at this change in her child who never even raised his voice to speak.
After that interview, Zhang Fan and Dr. Lu become good friends and sing together. Golden Courage now provides funding for him to play a musical instrument and study music. He tells the Golden Courage family how well he is doing in school and how much he loves music. Now his family is not constantly fighting. Somehow, changing Zhang Fan's situation enables the family to shift to "catch up with him." "Now we can't fight and must find other ways to communicate." When he grows up, he wants to help other children just as he is being helped. You see Zhang Fan in this picture in his classroom with his mother, Dr. Pang and Dr. Lu.
And friends, these are just a few of the many many stories I have heard and some of the courageous children I have seen and visited in their homes. This is what Golden Courage International is all about, an organization that helps to change the lives of these children through education, nutrition, counseling, health and dental care, and family and community support. Golden Courage provides a loving and caring framework for each and every child. When Cold Rain, a 12-year-old girl born prematurely to a severely burned mother, is asked what she wants to do when she is older, she says: "I want to be like Dr. Lu. I want to do exactly what he is doing." This is the hallmark of Golden Courage children - their fierce determination to give back to others the opportunity they are being given. And Yun says: "Maybe she will be the next CEO of Golden Courage." Maybe she will.