As the man steps across the small rivers of urine that stream down the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, his eyes never stop moving as he both searches for helpless children and watches for scavenger thugs.
It is dark, maybe 2 a.m. Before night ends, there’s a good chance one or more of the street children won’t have survived.
The man, a graduate of
“When I went to medical school as a pediatrician, I never thought I would go to more funerals than births. That’s the struggles we have,” said Dr. Chi Huang, a 34-year-old doctor at
Huang’s work is not for the weak-kneed. He should know, because his own knees wobbled in 1998 when he first began ministering to the street people in
“About 30 percent of our girls have been sexually abused. Sixty percent are with child or pregnant. About 98 percent of the boys use inhalant drugs – paint thinner – and 90 percent of them have been abused in some way,” Huang said. “When I grew up I heard about and knew about evil, but I didn’t see it until I went down to
Huang nearly burned out that first year, coming close to giving up because the situation was so desperate and the environment so physically taxing. But he knew that if he left, no one would step forward to care for the “disposable kids” who comprise about 4 percent of the
“These are the marginalized of the marginalized,” he said of the street people, who include newborns all the way up to 30-somethings.
Some of them have been abandoned.
“There is a high mortality rate among fathers and mothers, so the children go off to live with uncles who can’t take care of them,” said Huang, who has written a book about his experiences titled When Invisible Children Sing, in 
which he chronicles stories told to him by the children.
Some are runaways who left home to escape physical or sexual abuse.
Some, sadly, actually choose to live in the sewers because it's where they have grown up. The street way of life is passing from generation to generation as children have children of their own.
