AN EXPERIENCE OF URBANIZATION AND HUMAN VALUES WITH THE STREET DWELLERS IN RECIFE

MARGE ZACHARIAS, O.S.F.

These are stories, written some time ago, first of street life in general, and then of individual street dwellers. They are reflections on the experience of a missionary, a religious educator, and a Franciscan woman, from which perspectives they describe one aspect of the theme: Urbanization and Human Values.

The one statement I would like to make regarding urbanization and human values is: That the human psyche has the capacity, even within the most violent structures in an urban setting, to transcend them and to remain human. I would go further to say that the very survival of a person depends largely upon his or her capacity to choose human values over destructive ones within a given violent situation. At the same time, I do not want to say that all aspects of urban life are violent or necessarily destructive.

In the ministry to the street dwellers in Recife Brazil, Fr. Larry Rosebaugh, O.M.I. and I, focused on three processes: valorization, conscientization, and evangelization.

- the valorization is stressing the innate value of a person. It says: In the eyes of God, we are equal and one. This has nothing to do with any possible gifts we may have: all of God's people have equal value, deserve reverence and respect, and possess freedom of choice over their lives.

- Conscientization is the heightening of awareness toward the situation in which one lives. Heightened awareness generally leads to assuming some sort of responsibility over the situations of one's life.

- Evangelization is the proclamation of Christ's activity in the person and in the world. It evokes the dignity of the person, made in the image of God.

Once a person takes on the life of the street dweller, it does not take much time to distinguish the different types of groups which exist there, each with its own set of problems. In a brief period of time we saw some six different types of communities.

There were the fishermen who came from the interior, fished for crayfish, and every seven or eight days took the train back to sell them and bring the few coins they made to their families before returning to the streets. These men slept in clusters by the canals.

Another group were the women beggars who would come to the city twice a week, sit on the steps of the church and beg for coins. These were usually old and sickly women, raising grandchildren.

A third grouping were the carriers and sellers. These men would buy about three dollars worth of vegetables, place them on burlap on the street, price them a couple of pennies more, and try to earn some wage.

A fourth group were youths, ranging in age anywhere from three or four years to sixteen or seventeen. Sometimes they left home out of a sense of responsibility. Sometimes they were left behind by the parents who could not provide for them. Most of them either sold coffee, shined shoes, or collected and sold plastic.

A fifth group were the market dwellers, the adult men. They rummaged through garbage in the night to collect plastic and cardboard which they sold to earn a few coins to buy rice.

Still another group of people were the cardboard apartment people. These were families who, with hopes of improving their life, moved to the city and lived in cardboard boxes along the warehouses. The men tried to earn a few coins by carrying one-hundred-pound weights of rice or vegetables, or by washing cars.

Even though there are different ways of describing the various street people, each having unique problems, there are certain general forms of oppression which they share. Most street dwellers suffer humiliation and violence at any effort even to begin to improve their way of life. Most street people are treated like animals or psychopaths, not only by the police but by the agencies that are expected to be helpful to the poor. The street people live with a stigma of being dirty, lazy derelicts. Very often the social agencies, health clinics, and sometimes the churches, respond to their needs with a qualifying degrading benevolence, if not outright rejection of assistance.

Perhaps a glimpse at a typical day can give some insight into the life of the street dweller and the extent to which their poverty actually is institutionalized.

The day begins with general movement in the market at the break of day, around 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. The people acknowledge one another silently and then move to their jobs for the day. Larry and I begin each day with prayer. Larry decides to take Jose to the hospital to see if anyone will assist him: he has a badly diseased open sore on his leg the length and width of a hand. Larry knows that he will have to try three or four clinics. He knows that Jose may be rejected and will be humiliated and called names. He checks about the buses. We agree to meet at 7:00 p.m.

I will spend my day with Luis. Luis had almost died and this scared him into wanting to make an effort to get off the streets. The first step was to register for a birth certificate. Without this proof of identity, Luis could not obtain employment. To register, the applicant must submit his home address and the signatures of his parents, and must be able to read and write. Luis has neither parents nor home in Recife, nor can he read or write. A priest in Recife had given me an address in one of the favelas that Luis could use. Luis memorizes the name and address, and we go to the station. We stand in line from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. At 7:00 a.m. the police arrive and proceed to give a token to the first fifteen arrivals. These fifteen will be helped that day; the others must come back on Thursday, since the police meet only three times a week. Today we are among the first fifteen. The station opens at 8:00. We are helped at 9:30. The police take Luis' home address and give him a piece of paper that says he must pay a fifty-cruzeiro tax (about $5.00) and come back next week.

It is close to noon by the time we walk back to the market. Luis is trying to figure out how to find enough cardboard to raise $5.00 in the next week. His goal is to return to the interior again to see his aging father and to find a job. To do this, we will repeat our trips to the police station about ten times because of the extensive paper work. Luis will pay several taxes and receive several humiliations and lose a lot of working time waiting in a line, filled with anxiety and insecurity. He will need the identification papers, a work document, and a health document. It will take Luis seven months just to be identified and eligible for work. He will continue to live on the streets until he can find a job that will give him enough money to buy a shack.

I have a few hours left of the afternoon, and so I go to visit some cardboard apartment people. I talk to a man who has saved a thousand cruzeiros (about $70.00). He wants to find a shack in which to move his family but no one will rent him one. This family comes from the interior where they had lived on a piece of land for several generations. One day a man came with the police and told them that they would have to leave, because a rich stranger had bought the land and wanted to raise sugar cane. The family must leave or be killed. The poor man does not understand why, but he supposes the rich white man must be right because he is white.

The rage in me rises. I see this poor man who is only twenty seven years old and looks fifty; he has already known the exploitation and manipulation of my own countrymen. I see his children, aged three and four, already cardboard infants. The Lord loved and identified with these people long before they were born, but never justified an institution or individual that maintains such exploitation and oppression.

There is still time to read the paper. The headline states that a tenth person has been found dead, all had been brutalized, killed and left in the weeds. Everyone knows the unwritten law of the police: if a policeman is killed, twenty people die. This will be the last death because the policeman had only been wounded.

It is six o'clock. The sun has set; the people are beginning to disappear from the market. Some of the sellers are covering their vegetables and wares. Two or three street dwellers begin passing through the market toward the plaza, picking up vegetables that have fallen from the carts. They will peel and wash these for supper. Others in the plaza have already gathered two or three stones and some fruit crates and have begun a fire. It is an important part of the day. The street people call this plaza "home." It is where they will eat, where they will pray, where they will sing and sleep.

A good number of people are sitting on their cardboard; some are busy with the preparations, others are beginning to tell jokes, others start to sing. Some are just quietly telling their story. News is exchanged: "The civil police took all of Joa's vegetables." "Luis got his registration document." "Jose is in the hospital." Prayers are said for the kids who sniff glue, for Jaime's drinking, in thanksgiving for warm weather, for health, for food, for one another. Then it is time for fun. Luis takes Larry's hat, and Larry takes Luis's cane, and they carry on a "beggar's theater," an exchange of character, doing a dialogue in imitation of the other. The poor are great mimics, and once they start, they pick up on everyone.

A surprising thing about the poor is that they do not resent the rich. They seemingly do not understand things are so. It is hard for them to grasp concepts like possession, acquisition, ownership--much less, attitudes of greed and excess. One of the clearest examples I can recall of the street people occurs at meal time. The people gather for their small bowl of soup, which will be all they will eat that day. When invited to a second bowl, they generally remark that they do not need it because they had soup yesterday, too. The evening comes to a close about 11:00 p.m. with the dying fire encouraging people to leave the plaza, pick up their cardboard, and seek out their dark corner or Church steps for sleep. There is exhaustion and fear as the street people huddle in two's and three's or four's, each seeking the security of another's physical presence. Each knows that tonight the police could come and pick them up, and they could be beaten and jailed for being on the streets, for simply being a marginalized person without an identity. They go to sleep, incapable of thinking of the future, but being grateful they have lived through that day.

Every Friday afternoon the church doors of Nossa Senhora do Penha open at 3:00 p.m., giving blessings every fifteen minutes. It is a good time for beggars--those who may have a room in some barrio, or those living on the street--to sit on the steps and hope for coins from people entering the Church. They may earn as little as seven cru or up to twenty-five or thirty cru during four hours there.

The interesting thing about the Friday p.m. group is the type of community they form. The group is made up generally, but not exclusively, of women--old ones raising grandchildren, or younger ones probably deserted by husbands. This group forms a type of community with similar needs: daily bread, a few cru for rent, medicine for their children, security with one another from the violent fear that affects their lives:

- fear of being put out on the streets and exposed to thieves and other cruel people;

- fear of starvation, depending on the kindness of others;

- fear of sickness, which requires medicine they cannot afford;

- fear of their own malformation: many people have enlarged and swollen feet, useless legs, blindness, malformed limbs, which prohibit work.

But those that can work do try:

- Many women take in wash, working three or four days a week for families of five to seven persons, earning 100 cru a month ($5.00);

- Dalva and Maria live together and work together as cleaning ladies at a bus station seven nights a week from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., earning 1000 cru a month ($50.00);

- Jose and Luis collect cardboard through the night. They sell what they gather at 1 cru (20 cents) for 1 kilo (2.2 lbs.), earning up to 15 cru a night (about 75 cents);

- Preto works from 2:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. carrying ice on his head (about 100 lbs.), earning 120 cru a night (about $6.00);

- Baptista works, washing cups, selling hot dogs and drinks for a few hours each night. Earns 15 cru an evening (about $1.25).

The inability to work, the low wages, the long hours, the heavy labor lead to a low morale in the face of an oppressive reality. The urgent need of women with children for a room leads to sometimes five or six women and up to ten children living in the same one-room house. There is no way in which they could pay the 400 or 500 cru a month for rent if fewer than five women shared the expenses.

It is generally the men and the children who keep to the streets. Men hardened and roughened by shame and indignities seek out the dark and hopefully-safe hideaways for a few hours of sleep. Children appearing in two's, three's, four's, abandoned by frustrated parents, or keeping away from angry, harsh parents or crowded huts, seek solidarity in groups, escape from fear by doing violence, and escape from hunger by robbing.

The low-level street people and beggars do work, carrying heavy loads of cargo, doing large amounts of wash, sifting through garbage for plastic or cardboard, washing lavatories and/or sitting in them all day to keep them clean and collect their few cruzeiros. But their limited money allows for the sheerest level of survival: bread, medicine, rice, beans, rent for the women, alcohol for the men, glue for the youths. These are the escapes they seek to help them live the day-to-day struggle for survival.

A DOCUMENTED MONTH

DATE FACT

Dec. 1 The prefectura arrived. Without explaining why, or acknowledging the people's right to payment they took 670 cruzeiros worth of vegetables from three sellers (Francisco Amendu Santana, 70; Zedecheus, 200; Jose Gonzales, 400).

Dec. 2 The prefectura took 610 cruzeiros worth of vegetables from four sellers (Milton Jose da Silva, 100; Jose Luis Oliviero, 60; Paulo Jovo da Silva, 200; Severino Joaquin da Silva, 250).

Dec. 5 A man (Dameao Raimundo da Silva) aged 33, after being in Roabas e Furtes four days, returned to the streets with definite marks of beatings. Charge: he is not sure, but was found sleeping on the ground and taken.

Dec. 6 A girl (Yvenette da Silva) aged 11 was attacked by a woman with a knife who mutilated her ear badly. The police, upon request to drive her to Pronto Suse, drove away.

Dec. 9 The prefectura took 750 cruzeiros worth of vegetables from three sellers (Ana Lucinda Silva, 250; Maria de Conceicae, 200; Joao Pedro da Silva, 200).

Dec. 13 Midnight. Boy, aged 12, was shot at, hit and kicked by a plain- cothes policeman as the boy lay on the ground. The policeman refused to show his credentials, but his identity was confirmed on the arrival of the M.P. The boy has not returned to the streets. The charge: he stole 50 cruzeiros.

Dec. 15 The prefectura took 750 cruzeiros worth of vegetables from three sellers (Paulo Jovo Patrice da Silva, 450; Severino Joahim da Silva, 200; Aloisio Gomez da Silva, 100).

Dec. 24 5:00 p.m. Two girls (Nera--, Maria Garcia da Silva), aged 10 and 17, were taken by police while washing clothes in the tank under the viaduct. No charge given.

Dec. 28 7:00 p.m. Joao Baptista, aged 26, after being in Roabas e Furtes for nine days, returned to the streets with a drastic loss of weight and marks of beatings. Charge: intoxication.

Jan. 2 Reme Jarima De Arajo returned after 44 days in Roabas e Furtes. Severe marks of beatings. Charge: No documents.

Jan 4. A man (Carlos Fernandos de Oliviero), after 43 days in the same jail, returned to the streets with severe marks of beatings. Charge: stealing (which he denies), Still unable to regain documents which were taken by the police. Note: Carlos remembers the nicknames of his torturers: Russo, Edinko (confirmed by J. Baptista).

Jan 5, 9 Two men (Expedito and Lawrence Rosebough) were hit several times by the police. Charge: none known.

In November 1978, Damiao, aged 32, together with eleven other men, was arrested for being drunk. They were not stealing or committing any violence, but were simply drunk.

During his imprisonment, Damiao was given farinha and water to drink for four days, and was brutally beaten several times. A whip made of tire rubber with small nails attached was slashed across his back, face, and chest, leaving still-open and raw welts of flesh. His fingers and toes were struck with wooden sticks; his body bloated with water.

Damiao committed no crime. Of the twelve men arrested, he was the only street dweller. Damiao owns a little cart for transport of cargo, and generally makes enough to feed himself and occasionally to sleep on a bed, but normally does not make enough to live in a house. As a result he is a street dweller.

Damiao does not steal; he does not have a reputation for violence; he works hard through the night and sleeps during the day.

It was a lazy Friday afternoon. I was sitting on the Church steps, next to a man who generally remains silent; but I have already come to be familiar with him, and this day, the following dialogue took place.

M. Josef, you have been on the streets long?

J. Two years.

M. Where were you before?

J. In prison for twenty-five years.

M. For what?

J. A crime I didn't commit. I was accused of killing a man on the faizenda when I was 22.

M. Same prison?

J. No. Eighteen years in the Casa de Detencao and seven years at Itamonica.

M. Are you angry, Josef?

J. No.

M. Do you have a family?

J. After I was released twenty-three years ago, I returned to my home. But everyone was ashamed of me, so I left and came to Recife.

M. I never saw you drink. Do you drink?

J. Only once in a while.

M. Josef, you are about fifty and in good health. You can read and I see you selling cardboard. You are always clean. Do you ever think of leaving the streets; do you think about the future?

J. The future? For twenty-five years I kept sane by never allowing myself to think of yesterday, by never thinking of tomorrow. No, I cannot think about the future. We do not have the future; we have only today, and that is enough. What more do we have?

Josef is one of the most industrious, calmest men on the street, with eyes that show he has seen hell, and a smile that protects others from their hell.

I arrived one Saturday night on the streets about 8:00 p.m. The beggars from the steps were just about all gone. I was sitting with some of the night people, and Larry was wandering about the praca. When Lourdes called attention to a young boy lying on the street, Larry and I tried to awaken him. Larry questioned the other kids on the street about what had happened, as I searched for a pulse. I told Larry that I was having a hard time finding a pulse, although I was sure he was still breathing. The kids told us that the boy had an attack and had taken an overdose of medicine. We called a taxi and took the boy to the emergency room.

"Name?" "We don't know, but the kids call him negrito." "Home?" "The streets."

"Family?" "None."

"Age?" "Uncertain."

"Birth document?" "None."

"Problem?" "Uncertain. Possibility of an overdose of medicine." A ten-year-old boy with no identity, no family, lying in a coma.

We were sick. Larry accompanied the boy as he was carried to another room, and I waited, feeling crushed with the reality of the boy's life. After about an hour, Larry returned, disgusted with the lack of care and the dirt in the room. He told me to go to see the boy.

Saliva and foam were oozing from his mouth, and his head lay in it. Urine was released from his body and was dripping around him and falling on the floor. The boy was dirty, and no one had as yet touched him. They assumed that he would be violent, and had bound his hands and feet to the table. Larry returned, and we wondered what could be done. Larry found gauze and tried to wipe the boy's mouth, and with some paper tried to clean the floor. We were told that the boy would be held for observation through the night, and that we could leave. It was about 11:00 p.m.

We returned the next morning about 7:00 a.m. The doctor was in, Negrito looked the same, only now he was on sorro. The doctor said that he would hold the boy until 4:00 p.m. On our return that afternoon, the nurse told us that he would be held until morning. He was resting. They thought that the boy might have epilepsy, and they wanted to check.

Two o'clock, a.m., Monday morning. Larry was resting on the streets when Mauricio woke him. He had left the hospital. Larry asked how. Mauricio responded: "I got up, got some clothes, walked to the exit, asked the policeman sitting there how to get out. He pointed to the other door, and I walked out."

L. How did you get back here? (The Mercado is about four miles from the hospital.)

M. I walked.

L. But it's 2:00 a.m., and you haven't eaten in three days!

M. I know. I'm hungry.

L. Here's ten cru (about 50 cents). Get a sandwich.

M. O.K. Thanks.

* * * * *

One cannot help wondering at the inner capacity of survival which the street kids have. The capacity to calmly, logically work out their own essential needs. Their fearlessness, clarity of purpose, and endurance. The poor, possessing nothing: somehow they inherit the earth, a capacity to survive in situations that would destroy any one less poor.

Jose da Silva was born twenty-eight years ago, more or less. He does not know the day or year exactly. There were three children in his family--one other brother, one sister, and Jose, the youngest of the three. He was raised in the interior, near the city of Nazore do Mato, where his parents were field workers. Jose remembers well participating in the field work, dig- ging, hoeing, and planting seeds. When he was about eight or ten, his parents died. He then went to live with his married sister.

For a few years he continued to live the normal life of the poor boy by carrying water to earn a few coins. One thing that made his life a little more difficult was the temper of his sister's husband. He did not like Jose and frequently beat him. It was during this time that Jose contacted epilepsy. This made life in the house even more difficult, for the husband frequently beat Jose during the attacks and because of them.

Because of this, Jose left the house to make a life alone, living on the streets and searching for work. He worked at various jobs: in cheap hotels, cleaning in shoe stores. He worked for a while carrying heavy loads of rice or grain for the warehouses.

Jose's life continued to worsen. He was not able to earn enough to live in a house, making barely enough to keep alive, so he remained on the street, sleeping wherever he found a place, and eating whatever he could find. It was during these years also that he had an accident. A car hit him, leaving him with one badly shattered leg. This ended whatever work Jose was able to do.

With a broken leg, with epilepsy, without a family that cared, and without the capacity for work, Jose remained on the streets for ten years.

- He had to become accustomed to search for food amidst the garbage.

- He had to get used to waiting until stores closed to find a place to sleep.

- He had to get used to using cardboard for a bed and plastic for a cover.

- He had to get used to remaining dirty, lacking money for a bath, lacking a change of clothes.

- He had to get used to people calling him names and throwing garbage at him.

- He had to get used to the sufferings of being refused water or being sold a cigarette.

- He had to get used to losing the little money he had earned (by beg- ging, by going through garbage at night to salvage what he could sell) by being robbed at night or by having his pockets cut while he was sleeping.

- He had to get used to the whims of the police, who, when they decided to clean the streets, picked up whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and carted them off to jail.

- He had to get used to survival in a world violent because society's laws prevented the poor from rising out of their miserable condition.

Jose is a victim of violence, but is not violent. Whoever takes the time to talk to Jose, to pray with him, or to listen to him, finds in him a spirit both profound and beautiful. Whoever gives him a plate of soup or changes his band-aids finds that he receives with humility and gratitude. Jose is a king of the streets, because he is a man who can live in dignity. Jose does not drink; he does not steal. Everyone on the streets has respect for him, perhaps the women and young girls more than others. In Jose they find a person they can trust,talk with, receive in honest and real friendship.

Jose earns money by going through the garbage at night and then selling whatever he can salvage, and by begging. With this money, he frequently gives women what they need for bread and medicine. Everyone in the market likes him as a man with a large and generous heart and a sensitive and humorous spirit. Jose is a special man and an example for those living on the streets, because of his capacity to survive within violence; receiving violence, yet never giving violence, never being violent.

Like Christ, Jose is a sign of contradiction, remaining human and just in a society that is dehumanizing and unjust. He remains among the beggars as a light of hope; without words he invites them to transcend their misery.

May our hearts find room.

Among the outcasts, in the shadows of darkness, one can find Saints. Such a discovery happened on Wednesday of this past week. After a full day of walking, we visited the "house hospital" of Sister Alexandrina.

The house hospital is a wooden shack, with a long table for eating at the entrance, and an altar in the corner of this same entrance room. Further to the side is a room of bunks for the men. Toward the back of the house are several bunks for women, and the kitchen--all made of mud. The stove is of mud and Sister uses wood to keep the fire going. The roofing of the shack was quite inadequate with many places where the rain had come in.

The house is very much like the houses of the Interior, providing the barest essentials. But it is a place where a group can gather, and in the security of this group feel safe. Sister's work of living in a primitively constructed building among the sick and serving them, has made her a bit of an outcast in her community, and has made her loved by the people with whom she identifies.

Since 1964, Sister Alexandrina has used this house to allow and welcome poor people from the Interior who are sick and waiting for a place in the hospital for treatment. With no concern for herself, she receives anyone too poor to procure other waiting arrangements. A woman of stamina and courage, yet even more, of gentleness and humor, she mothers the houseful of invalids, even calling them to pray at 7:30 each evening.

It seems that the more radical the gospel message one hears, the more one must become an outcast, in order better to unite with the outcasts of the world and the children of heaven.

About 9:00 p.m., Larry and I were listening to Renaldo and Lourdes relate the incident of Renaldo's attack, in which he had fallen on his face, leaving him with cuts over his face and a bloody nose. I began washing Renaldo's face, while Larry was cleaning cuts off Jaime, when a sobbing young girl ran to the steps.

I went to see what had happened and saw her ear all butchered. I said to Larry, "This one must go to the emergency room!" Frightened, she said, "No!" I held her a few minutes, trying to calm her, and said, "Don't worry. We won't leave you alone. You will be all right, but you do need a doctor right now."

Just then, a police car drove up and ordered her in. I asked the policemen where they would take her. They gave no answer and insisted that she get in the car. Again I said, "But where will you take her?" (I asked this because I knew that police cars took people only to prisons or houses of detention, where they would only be beaten for crimes they did not commit.) The police became angry and drove off.

I said to Larry, "The girl must go to the emergency room." Larry went to find a taxi. I continued to hold the girl and to reassure her that she would not be left alone.

The help at the hospital was slow, crude, but better than anywhere else. While waiting, I learned the story. A boy had thrown a rock at a drunk woman. The woman turned and seeing, not the boy, but Yvenette who was passing, attacked her with a knife, butchering her ear pretty badly.

The intern who sewed and repaired Yvenette's ear was friendly but very inefficient. His application of the anesthesia was harsh, his sewing inaccurate and too soon. He had to cut the stitches and redo them.

Through all this, Yvenette buried her head in my shoulder and dug her nails into my back and my arms. Because they worked on her before the anesthesia took effect, she felt every bit of the pain. She sobbed pitifully, but rather calmly.

Yvenette is eleven years old. She has no parents or family, except one living sister of eighteen. The two walk the streets and find their friends among the street people.

At one point, the pain and the odors of blood and medicine made me dizzy, and I felt that I would black out. I called Larry to hold Yvenette and left for a few minutes. I returned with great admiration for this young girl, surrounded by almost total strangers, who was suffering such pain without hysteria or melodrama.

We returned to the praca by bus, and when we arrived at the streets, Larry went to buy some medicine for the girl, while she and I returned to the praca. I asked Yvenette whether there was a house she could go to. There was, but she did not want to go to her sister who was very nervous and would beat her for what happened. So I told her to spend the night with me, and that I would get cardboard for both of us.

Just as we arrived, about ten of the young boys showed up. Some were concerned about Yvenette, and others, knowing that I had some peanut butter and bread, were looking for their "daily bread." We settled down, and all were in awe of Yvenette. One boy quietly pressed a cru into her hand and said, "For your suffering." Another, equally quietly, brought her coffee; still another handed her a cigarette. Paulo just looked at her, and said, ever so gently, "Yvenette, tu e tao bonita."

Upon Larry's return, the group continued in the same spirit that already permeated it. It was a wonderful aftermath, one that both Larry and I enjoyed. The sensitive, caring level that emerged in these tough, crusted youths, their honest appreciation of the bread and peanut butter sandwiches they received showed itself in their attitude.

One, noticing my exhaustion, said to the others, "Look, Margarida is tired. Let's leave Yvenette with Margarida and Lorenza to sleep. Clean the cardboard before you leave." And they did.

Cruelty received, courage revealed, tenderness restored. "0 Lord, your ways are incomprehensible, your paths unknown."