Detours in Darkhan

I love Mongolia, I truly do, but there are times when it absolutely breaks my heart.

Today, driving my daughter home from school, we saw a little boy—maybe 6 or 7 years old—running down the middle of the street stark naked. He was holding a little wheel and just on a solo adventure. It was 50F/10C outside.

I stopped the car immediately to see if he was okay. The two cars behind me stopped, and then one pulled into the other lane to try to get by, but the boy squatted down in the lane as I walked up to him. I used my terrible Mongolian to ask him to walk with me to the side of the road, eventually just taking his hand to walk there together.

He was feeling very shy and probably a little unsure about getting into a strange, foreign woman’s car, but he eventually got into the backseat so I could drive him to the police station. It was clear that he wouldn’t be able to tell me how to get him back home.

After finding parking near the police station (the parking situation is atrocious and ends up blocking a two-lane road that curves and has limited visibility), I took off my jacket and put it on the little guy. He liked the drawstrings for the hood and played with them as we walked slowly—I was watching out for broken glass he might step on with his bare feet—and fumbled down a dirt slope and some trees to get to the sidewalk. I was being silly as we slipped down the hill, which finally broke the ice and got him talking to me a little. He wasn’t able to say much, but he seemed to understand that we were safe people, and he kept a tight hold on my hand as we walked into the first building we saw.

The receptionist in that building said he had been there before and directed us to the other building. The receptionist in the other building tried to send us back to the first. She seemed confused but eventually figured out that she needed to ask someone what to do and told us to sit on a bench in the lobby. Without letting us know what would happen next, she sat back down at her desk. A more senior police officer walked by and asked us what was going on. Terra very bravely jumped into action as a translator for her immigrant mom, who doesn’t know the language well, and explained that we found him in the middle of the street and brought him there to help get him back home.

The police officer got on the phone with someone who knew how to get ahold of his guardian/s and told us to wait with him, which we were going to do no matter what.

When we first got there, I asked the receptionist if they had any clothes or a T-shirt he could wear. She said they didn’t. He was fine in my jacket and entertained himself with the drawstrings, the hood, and the long front and back. He also had fun flashing me as we sat waiting. He was an incredibly sweet, joyful boy, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t feeling anxious or scared.

Apparently, the only anxious and worried people present were Terra and I. I kept checking in with Terra about how she was feeling. She looked to be on the verge of tears at some point, and I tried to make quick mental notes about how I would talk to her about the situation we were in with this little guy. She hadn’t recognized that he had Down’s syndrome, but she did realize he had a disability that made him nearly non-verbal.

I asked the receptionist if there was water we could give to him since I wasn’t sure how long he’d been outside on his own. She said no. His feet, legs, and hands had fresh abrasions—no bleeding, but I had no way of knowing how long he’d been outside, naked in the cold. My jacket was basically a windbreaker, but he was warming up a little, and he would sometimes lean into my side and let me put an arm around him to warm him up as we sat in the lobby.

I walked him over to the bathroom to see if he needed to go, but he wouldn’t walk in, so we checked out the long hallway. He poked his head into open doors. Not a single police officer said a kind word to us while we were there. They seemed annoyed and indifferent. No social worker was called to be present when his guardian arrived. I guess the assumption was that I would care for him until someone else showed up to take over. Of course, that was what I was prepared to do, but my expectations of the level of compassion and concern the police would have for an unattended, naked, and wounded child with special needs were apparently too high.

Walking back to the entryway lobby, we found a more comfortable seating area with couches and coffee tables. There was also a water dispenser there, but there were no paper cups to make use of. I let the little guy run and jump across the couches and chairs while we waited. He was having a great time, and that made my heart happy.

After about ten minutes of furniture jumping, a woman approached; it was his grandmother. She got on the phone with his older sister to let her know he was at the police station and had left their apartment with no clothes on. She asked if the jacket was mine. I told her he could keep it since she hadn’t brought any clothes with her. She didn’t think to take her own jacket off to give to him, but I think the whole situation had her a little rattled.

The senior officer who called to get guardian contact info was a bit brusque with her, but also only spent about 30 seconds with us before he walked off again. He told her she needed to step into another room to talk to a different officer but didn’t seem invested enough to walk her in himself. At no point had anyone asked for my name and contact info, so I figured it was okay for us to leave, but it felt awkward to walk out and head home like nothing had happened. But walk out we did.

The little boy and his grandmother lingered in the courtyard for a bit. She may have been on the phone to see if she could get a ride to take him home. As Terra and I struggled to climb back up the dirt hill to get to where my car was parked, she called out and asked us where we were headed. I told her to come with us, and we’d give her a ride, giving her a hand to help pull them up the loose rock part of the hill climb.

On the ride to his home, which was very close to where we found him, she thanked us for helping him. She told us her grandson’s name. She explained that he’s figured out how to unlock the door to the apartment and that he’s been outside on his own before. She said he was nearly hit by a car once and that she was glad he found nice people. She asked if I was a missionary, where I was from originally, how long I had lived in Darkhan, and where we lived. She was nervous, but she was kind and gentle with her grandson. Before we dropped them off at their apartment building, she took my jacket off of him. I told her to keep it since it was getting colder outside, and they still had to walk a bit to get him inside, but she insisted on returning it. She said it was a nice jacket and I shouldn’t lose it.

As the little guy stepped out of the car, I noticed small, round, smooth scars on his lower back and the back of his legs. I had to bite my tongue to keep from thinking out loud about what I was imagining about those scars. I was prepared to talk to Terra about how some families in Mongolia aren’t equipped to give children with special needs the resources to keep them safe. I was prepared to talk to her about Down’s syndrome and the spectrum of behaviors and abilities it entails. I was prepared to talk to her about the circumstances a family might be dealing with to have allowed this to happen. What I was not prepared to talk to her about was why an adult might put a lit cigarette out on a child’s body.

As we drove on to run the errands I had planned and eventually get back home, we talked about the things I was prepared to talk about. Terra opened up about what she was feeling—it was a lot for her. She told me I was kind, and I thanked her for helping me be kind. She worried that she wasn’t kind enough to do all the things I did for that little guy. I assured her that she was and that it was just a matter of knowing how to handle a situation, which comes with experience and a little fortitude.

I know my 11-year-old learned something today about treating people with compassion and dignity. I’m not so sure the police officers we encountered today picked up on anything I was modeling for them, and that leaves me heartbroken. I’m a guest in this country, with limited means of protest or complaint. I’m sharing this story about what I consider a shameful response from the officers we encountered, but even as I write about everything, I find myself thinking about the privilege of my audacity to pass judgment.

I’ll be thinking about this experience for a while, and probably every time we pass by his apartment building on our way to and from school. I hope this experience stays with Terra, too—and the lessons learned about being generous in treating people with dignity and compassion.