(ANS - Piura) - "I have often asked myself: what does it mean to love?" says Sylwia Grzęda, a Polish volunteer, who worked for a year in Piura, Peru. "The world is abusing the word love, without thinking. When I went to Piura, someone gave me a card with a sentence from the book of Hosea: 'I will take you into the desert and speak to your heart'. In fact I went then into the desert of Piura, where the Salesians have built a great work for the poor. It is here that I learned the meaning of the word love."

"My mission was to stay in the slums, in the desert. I found mountains of garbage and dust clouds. Hundreds of houses attached to each other, with improvised furniture. I listened to the laughter of children. Every night I could hear the brawling of drunken parents and gun shots, perhaps the lament of some young people who have made drugs their daily food.

I tasted failure when, after months teaching the basic rules of grammar, Mariana, aged 15, still did not know the difference between nouns and verbs. I felt fear when Joel told me about the group of robbers who had put a gun to his head to steal his mobile phone. I saw the shock Nayeli suffered from the beating his father gave him.

I asked myself again, “Where does one learn to love?” The answer was near at hand. The place was called Bosconia. Through prayer and the Eucharist, I learned to love like Jesus. I felt joyful and happy when my shoulders ached from the hundreds of hugs from children seeking some affection. I had to dry my tears when Gladys told me, “You are like a mother to me.”

In those slums I learned to love. I had to go to the end of the world to discover that the desert is not sand, but that the desert for humans is in the heart that does not love. And I realized that the greatest human disaster is the lack of God."

Published 11/03/2016