Behind those eyes

He couldn't have been older than four, maybe five. He sat on the ground outside the Hischild bus, motionless except for the occasional brief turn of the head.

I was the first to spot him so I went out to invite him to join with the other street kids who were playing games and singing songs on the bus. What struck me the most was not the fact that he chose to ignore me (this happens on occasions, often because kids don't realise I'm actually speaking Khmer to them).

No, what struck me most were his eyes. They seemed lost, vacant, even empty. There was no playfulness, no joy - not even a hint of child-like curiosity. It was as if there was no life left behind these eyes.

The sad truth is that those eyes, in their short life, will have almost certainly seen more pain and more horror than they can cope with. Whether verbal assaults, physical abuse or neglect by those who should love and care for him, something had turned off the 'wonder' in this little boy's life.

Having spent most Friday nights over the last year and a bit with around 40 - 60 street kids from the Psar Dam Kor area of Phnom Penh, we have seen much of their lives reflected in their eyes - eyes that tell the stories these kids can't tell, stories that we know from statistics to be all too common amongst street kids in Cambodia.

We have seen the sick, glazed eyes of kids whose bodies have been weakened by diseases like malaria or dengue fever, as well as those who are beginning to show the effects of HIV/AIDS. We can not always be certain which kids have what disease, but the eyes tell you when something is going wrong.

We have seen fear in the eyes of kids who know that life on the streets - a life of begging, scrounging and fighting for survival - means the next danger is just around the corner. Like the 10-year old boy whom we had to drive to a safe place one night when a gang showed up outside the bus and threatened to knife him.

Now that our time with Hischild has come to an end, our memories are, more than anything else, of seeing God through the eyes of these kids.

In their playfulness, their singing, their eagerness to learn, their joy at something as simple as a hug, we have seen the image of God reflected in their eyes.

We miss them already and realise that, in many ways, they have given us much more than we could ever give them over the past year. But we remain confident that despite the hardships they endure and the troubles they face every day, God's face is shining down on them as he catches glimpses of Himself in their eyes.