Today is Gabriel's "birthday"

perhaps. It could be any other day of the year. It might be this year he is forty or he might be thirty-nine. He could be forty-one although that seems less likely. He doesn't know. I don't know.

I have "known" Gabriel since he arrived in the camp once run by a late friend of mine. She was a nun and Gabriel will tell you that she gave him his life.

I do not normally put names here, just initials but this time Gabriel has told me, "If you tell the story then tell them how I am called Gabriel."

I am not going to tell the entire story. It would take too long to write and too long to read. Let me just say that Gabriel has no hands. He was mutilated by "soldiers" who killed his family. A young girl in the same village escaped with him. L.. carried him on a bike belonging to a man who had been killed during the massacre. She eventually "sold" the bike to pay for a passage across a river into another country. Through all that time she cared for Gabriel who was very, very ill. Somehow they both survived but Gabriel only survived because his hands had to be amputated after infections set in. 

Both children ended their journey at the camp for unaccompanied children run by my friend. For weeks Gabriel did nothing more than lie in one of the hammocks they used as beds for some of the sickest children. He was too traumatised to speak. The language, although similar, was not the same.

It was at that point that I was asked to see if I could build a communication board for him. Would he perhaps use it to indicate something if he did not want to make eye contact with anyone? Doing it from a great distance and knowing so little made it a real challenge. There was no internet to help with communication when we began, even getting a fax through to the nearest large town was difficult. 

There was something about Gabriel which made Sister C... persist. She told me, "I watched him and he was watching us. He was watching us very closely." He went from lying in the hammock to sitting wherever L.. or Sister C... were working, to exploring and to occasionally kicking the precious soccer ball belonging to the boys in the camp.

It took months before he made the first tentative moves to communicate. For a while we thought he might never "say" much at all, let alone actually speak. Then one morning he was sitting on the ground listening to the basic airthmetic lesson being given to the other children. Asked for an answer the child next to him got it wrong and Gabriel, without being asked, answered correctly.

From then on he made progress, rapid progress. At that time all the boys in the camp would go on to manual work if positions could be found for them. It was all they could afford to find for them. Gabriel of course had no chance of manual work. What was to be done with him?

He loved numbers. Sister C... went as far as she could with him. Our friend Z...sent textbooks for them. Recognising very high intelligence we all sought a solution and eventually a priest who had been educated at a university abroad offered to help. It would mean Gabriel needed to leave the camp. Could he manage? L... offered to go too. She would help. She could get a position as a domestic servant somewhere. It was not what Gabriel wanted at all. 

"I wanted to study but L... had already given up so much time for me and I very frightened at the idea of leaving the place where I felt safe."

He was told he must go and that this was how he could pay the debt he felt he owed. Rather than be a domestic there was a chance that L.. could train to work with young children.

They went and the rest is history I suppose. Gabrield has a degree in mathematics. He teaches. Sister C... is no longer with us. The camp is no longer there. Gabriel has not been back for many years.

But on 26th September each year he celebrates his "birthday" because that is the day Sister C... chose with him. She gave him the name "Gabriel" because, she told him, he was "almost an angel".

"I was a demon once I started talking again," Gabriel says, "I was always asking questions. Poor Sister C... and Sister A.... They had no idea what to do with me. The others just did not ask questions like that."

And of his "birthday"? He reminded me it was coming up. It has nothing at all to do with wanting it to be acknowledged. He has never wanted a present. He just tells me, "I was given the best present of all - a special day on which to celebrate being a real person."

Happy Birthday Gabriel!