Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Danillo


He must have looked up each and every word as he converted his letter from Portuguese to English, surely slipping the phrases in and out of Spanish when doubting specific translations. In the end, it wasn’t his translation but his heart that bled across the page: A letter to his girl’s family. “I would crawl into the envelope with this letter if I could,” he writes. It’s mailed the next day and will fly to the northern hemisphere lovingly tucked in a shoebox along with the cookies he baked them.

His oozing sweetness and heaving sadness at the loss of his love is completely unexpected from the red-tinted dreadlocks hanging messily in his now red-tinted eyes. But tears don’t lie and he’s not confused about his desire for a family.

He’s been alone since age 15, when his Brazilian mother kicked him out of the house. At birth she had given him to an elderly couple that then died when he was 9. He went back to his mother for the next 6 years. She tried to kill him three times. He doesn’t share the details. He says that strangely the only time their relationship is peaceful is when he asks her love advice, though it’s not likely to be of help with this long-gone girl to whom he writes now.

Of his nearly 20 Brazilian cousins, half have died before age 18 – mostly from violence. His family has had a series of encounters with easy come, easy go money – mostly embezzlements. He confesses a recent banking scandal he was invited to participate in – a tempting offer for someone in his shoes. Instead he pays his tuition and rent humbly, by selling chocolate cakes out of his backpack at the University. The other students, especially the other Brazilians, make fun of his cakes and his dreadlocks. But his grades are good and the cakes help pay the bills.

It’s unclear how he became a believer. But there was a stint with the Mormons that may have been his hook and though he left them eventually, he spent two years studying theology in Brazil before coming to Bolivia. Since then, he’s been in a series of unlikely positions that seem to scream God’s plan for his life whether he knows it or not.

His humility is dumbfounding. Born to help people and with a life crafted for compassion, he will be an amazing physician.

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