The unknown kid

Through the media all of us have easy access to information about the major catastrophes and atrocities that happen around the world. With so much exposure to these events we can become relatively insensitive to the pain and chaos that the TVs beam out all the time, hurriedly, spectacularly and not requiring thinking.
But last week I saw a photo report depicting what could be deemed a silent tragedy (as there are no crashes or explosions here) that left a deep impression on me. It is about a baby hatch in Guangzhou where parents and family members can leave their children anonymously. They do so mainly because they don’t have the financial resources to take care of them, or because the kids are sick or disabled.
A photographer planted himself at the entrance of the baby hatch and captured the moments when the kids are abandoned there by their sobbing family (many times by their mothers). In the most shocking sequence we see a mother on her knees, stretching herself to hug her son for the last time, whilst he starts moving away to the entrance of the shelter, perhaps instructed by the policemen who seem to have driven the mother and son there in a police vehicle similar to a golf cart that we see in the background.



he kid is at a crossroads in his life. What affects viewers more is that he is not a baby, like many of those who end up in these shelters. Perhaps aged four, he is grown up, he has a story, he was loved and nurtured (we hope).
In the next photo the kid is alone in front of a closed door. Hand lifted, he is preparing to knock. After all, he must start to learn to do things by himself. He looks back and that’s when the photographer flashes him capturing his perplexity, perhaps sadness. He surely can’t read the characters written on the wall he is half looking at. It reads: “To care for the abandoned babies. Life comes first.”
The kid senses that something is wrong. Even with their naivety and ‘magical realism’, children can see so much, perhaps more than adults. This is maybe the last time he will see his mother and vice-versa. It is difficult to imagine something more heartbreaking.
At this moment there’s some part of the mother that dies, and there is a part of him, so young, that is broken as well.
Well-dressed, with disarranged clothing because of the desperate hugs, the kid is facing the door. It is the moment when he is completely alone, helpless. It’s difficult to imagine a greater feeling of solitude. It is such a pitiful and atrocious scene. In this moment there is not one person there to stand by him, no parents, no family, no friends… Absolutely nobody. He is defenseless.
We don’t know, the photos don’t tell us, how this kid came to be abandoned in nearby Guangzhou and got into such a perilous situation, or what will happen to him. Will he be improbably lucky and find new parents to adopt him and give him the love that all kids deserve?
Or will he spend years incarcerated in inhumane institutions, lacking care and proper education, ending up becoming a broken man?
The text that goes with the photos published by the SCMP explains that the kid is far from an isolated case. It’s mentioned that there are so many abandoned kids that the hatch, run by a public welfare institution, had to close for lack of capacity to deal with so many cases. The Guangzhou hatch stopped accepting children, but there are similar places in 10 other Chinese provinces. 
The unknown kid knocks at the door expectantly. It is his future that will open along with the door, but he doesn’t know about that. I imagine that he enters looking for soup or a toy and a friend to play with.
(By PB, published in MDT)