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One
day during school hours we saw two young African boys playing in the
local square, 9 and 12 years old. They could be seen playing happily, free
and agile. The ball they had was small, it was like a tennis
ball, and how well they were playing… but it was school time and,
what about these children? Didn't they go to school?
One day we met them on the staircase of our
building. 'Where do you live?' 'Here on the 5th floor.' 'We live here on
the 3rd, we're neighbours, come along in. Would you like a caramel?' Yes,
obviously! And so began our friendship.
We learned that they weren’t
going to school because they had arrived from Majorca and the schools here
had no places for them. The children were Gideon, 12, and Roberto, 9, very
friendly, cheerful and open. Almost every day they rang our doorbell,
there would be an exchange of greetings and caramels, and they explained
their games with the children. We went to the school and found there was a
place for Roberto in the primary section, but Gideon was supposed to go to
the secondary school and begin the first year there. As he had missed
almost an entire year, he would have to repeat the last year of primary
school. We wanted to talk with the parents. The mother, Mary, didn't
understand a word of Spanish and the father was always out working, shift
work that we didn't understand. Finally, on the Sunday we were able to
talk with their father. He wanted the children to go to school. In Majorca
they had been to school for a year with the Daughters of Charity.
What with all the papers they were asking us for at the college
— and it wasn't just a few! — it was in only November that the children
finally began to go to school.
We
had become friends of the children, of the parents and of
their friends who were living in the flat with them. One evening,
they all came down, nine men, to our flat to thank
us that the children were now going to school and
to offer us their friendship. They told us that we
were friends and that we greeted them in the street and on the
stairs.
Stefan, the children's father, had been in Spain (Majorca) for five
years. Last year he succeeded in having the family regrouped in Majorca
and in September 2005 they came to Tarragona because they thought that the
cost of living was lower here. They are happy in Tarragona. The father
works hard (he erects metal scaffolding). Now thy are buying a flat in a
different neighbourhood, but our friendship continues, the children are
attending the same school and the mother calls us 'mama'.
A little while before they left for their new flat we invited them for
a meal. What a surprise!
We had agreed that they would come for the
meal at 1.30 p.m. and they arrived 3 p.m. And how they arrived! All were
beautifully dressed, the father in white, a festive suit, and with a hat.
We felt truly honoured, they gave a sense of celebration to our
invitation. How courteous, how simple they were and so much gratitude!
'Who is in debt to whom?' is the slogan of the campaign on the Third
World foreign debt to the First World and the question can be read two
ways.
So, we feel as regards this immigrant
family that we are the ones who are honoured by their grateful
recognition, their dignity, their joy and trust.
They have the
politeness not to throw in our face the fact that they had to come here,
where we have a surplus of everything that they lack — schools, work,
organised health service etc.
It is the North that has contracted a
debt with the South through its illicit appropriation of its natural
resources and through our economic model that is endangering the future of
the whole planet.
Ghana devotes a greater percentage of its budget to
paying off its Foreign Debt than it does to the Health Service: 11% of GNP
for the Foreign Debt and 9% for Health.
May God give us a Loving and
Just heart and may we feel and truly believe that in the balance 'Who is
in debt to whom?' our debt to the immigrants who arrive in our cities
outweighs the activity, the time, the sleepless nights, the worries, and
the waiting that we experienced in our efforts to have the children
accepted in school.
'Who is in debt to whom?' An
interesting question and our reflection on it helps us to live as sisters
and  brothers, in equality and in solidarity
with all those person who are obliged to leave their families and country
in search of more decent living conditions, for a life more as God dreamed
it at the creation of the world.
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