This is Colin, and he’s 11 years old. Colin is a sweet, quiet boy who works hard here at Love A Child. One of his jobs is gathering sticks, weeds, and brush, and helping to keep the yard clean. If the schools ever start back up again in Haiti, he will be in the 5th grade.

Colin has been with us since he was about five. We received a phone call one day that a little boy had been badly burned in Miracle Village. I went to see him. The story is that his real mother had died, and she met up with another man. Between the two of them, they had nine children. However, as it is in Haiti so many times when a man has children and marries or lives with a woman who has had children, sometimes one of the parents doesn’t treat “the other one’s children” like their own. Colin’s new mother was never a “loving mother,” and his father was never a good father.

This particular day, his “stepmother” had fixed a big pot of rice, and as all Haitian kids love to do, when the big metal bowl was finished, he reached his hand in to get the rice that stuck to the bottom! All of a sudden, his father grabbed his hand and accused him of being a thief, “stealing food!” He pulled Colin over to where the hot coals were still on the fire, and he said, “I’ll teach you how to be a thief!” And he stuck Colin’s hand down into the hot coals!

He was burned very badly when we got him. I called the Department of Social Services and reported him. I asked them to let us keep Colin and take care of him and they did. Colin is a sweet kid with very bad teeth. He has been going to a dental university here in Haiti when the roads have been “safe” to travel. He has a lot more dental work to be done, but he will be a good-looking kid when they are finished with him. He is such a sweetie. He wants to be a “mason,” block layer, here in Haiti. Well, he’ll always have a job at Love A Child! Sherry