After leading 4 years of dealing with youth and ex-combatant world
I have met face to face with the black and white, the grey and the blue
Of youth minds….
This young people I called my kids
Have awarded me with the greatest reward of all,
They call me “mama”
Mama Elena or Mama Ellen…
Or just Ma…..

I am only 24 of age at that time
Have a boyfriend but haven’t thought about getting married let alone to have children
And these kids…
The ex-combatant, ex-drugers, street kids….
With their wacky coloured hair, sometimes smelly shirt and flawless hands
Reach out to me, sometimes hugging me
Sometimes pinch me in the cheek and shoulder
Sometimes dangling on my hands and feet
And called me … “Ma…”
That is the greatest feeling of all
The best award anything in this world could give me.

Once or twice, I found them red eyes and hollowed look
Needed their “shots” or drugs
Other times, I visited them in jail… for juvenile violation, fighting etc
Many times they come just to find food at Young Ambassadors for Peace secretariat
For a bath, for a sleep or a hide out from whatever they’re hiding from…
They just stood there and said shyly or somewhat ashamed
…”Ma…”

I miss each one of them now
Those who are police officers now
Those who are doing research for their thesis
Those who are teachers, govt officers, NGO workers etc
Those who are serving their sentence in Nusa Kambangan Penitentiary
Those who are lost and unreachable in the maze of tablets and shots

I’m 26 now, still not yet married, but I have many kids I call my children
I will always miss their look when they called me … “Ma…”
I am the blessed woman in this world.

The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living.

Bertrand Russell adapted