There is a place in the bowels of Bocas Town that is wracked with stunning poverty. It has been dubbed, La Solution, which means The Solution. Although I cannot see how it is a solution to anything.
Ubaldino lived there.
Ubaldino was an orphan with a terrible skin condition. We first saw him walking the streets of Bocas Town, head hung down and arms wrapped around his frail body. He was twenty and had been an orphan for eight years. He and his brother, Aniwal, ten years the younger.
My story is not about Ubaldino. That story is too sad to tell.
My story is about his home in La Solution.
Thankfully, Ubaldino and his younger brother had been taken in by a kindly Ngobe Indian man. I really wanted to visit their home, but the first time I walked the paths of La Solution, I was not prepared for what I saw.
I followed the boys’ caregiver down the streets of the poor part of town until he turned off the street and began walking down a path that ran into the marsh. Trash was strewn everywhere. Small clapboard homes with incomplete walls and curtains for doors stood on stilts to avoid inundation by the waters at high tide. The further we penetrated the marsh, the higher the stilts, and eventually we were walking above ground on wooden planks that wove together in a maze of partially rotting paths connecting the homes to each other.
I walked carefully, watching my step and really not wanting to fall into the refuse below. There were things in the bog that I didn’t want to think about. There is no plumbing in La Solution...let's just leave it at that. Use your imagination!
When we got to what looked like the end of the road, or walkway, we entered the home of a gentle old woman. Ubaldino's home was accessible only by going through her house. Many of the floor boards in her home were rotten, and I took my time navigating across the living area to where the path continued on the other side of her home.
And then it got really hairy.
The wooden planks were nailed two-boards wide with the wall of another home pressed tight on one side and nothing at all on the other. The only way I could cross was arms wide open, basically trying to hug the wall because the path was so narrow. Several of the planks were not nailed down on one side or the other and they bowed as I walked across them. I was not entirely sure they would support me, but I was resolved to see our young friend's house.
Ubaldino’s adopted papa reached out his hand to help guide me and finally I reached the door of his humble home.
The wood nailed together to form walls did not meet in many places and I could see out into the surrounding marsh. The wood also did not reach to roof in many places and cardboard filled in the gaps up high. Half of the living room did not even have a roof. That meant the rain came full inside. Downpours, rainforest typhoons in the living room.
There was no furniture but a few old milk crates turned upside down to sit on. There was a bed in Ubaldino's bedroom and it had a mattress on it that the two boys shared. However, there were no coverings for the mattress. No pillow, no blankets, no sheets. At night they wore as many clothes as they could to try and keep warm.
Yes, we did what we could to help. We bought zinc for the roof and bed clothes and food. Still, the experience overwhelmed me.
My life is changed. I cannot put into words the depth of what it has done to me. My view of the world has forever been transformed.
The most heartbreaking part of the whole thing was how a gentle, Indian man with absolutely nothing took in two orphan boys and offered them love, the most important thing!