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.