GODSTUFF

VASCO’S COMING! PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW

Less than a month from today, a little boy from Malawi with a hole in his heart will step off a plane at O’Hare to have life-altering surgery.

It’s the journey of his lifetime. A journey you, the kind readers of the Chicago Sun-Times and The Dude Abides, made possible.

Vasco Sylvester, the 10-year-old AIDS orphan I met in Blantyre, Malawi, in 2007, is set to arrive in Chicago on April 25 to undergo surgery to repair a heart defect he has had since birth.

Without the surgery, commonplace in the United States but a procedure he simply didn’t have access to in his homeland, Vasco faced a short life. With the free medical care offered by three Chicago hospitals — University of Illinois at Chicago, Mt. Sinai and Advocate Hope Children’s — Vasco, a sprightly boy with the shy smile and sweet spirit, is expected to live a normal, healthy life.

With the financial, logistical and spiritual support of many Sun-Times readers, we have been working for 18 months to get Vasco the help he needs. The last piece of the puzzle was covering the cost of the pricey airfare for Vasco and his caretaker, Mac, to travel from Malawi to Chicago and back.

On Thursday, the tender-hearted people at United Airlines, in conjunction with their partners at South Africa Airways, told us they would take care of it — covering all the costs (about $10,000) for their air travel.

If all goes according to plan — Vasco and Mac have their visa interviews at the U.S. Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi, this morning — Vasco will begin his journey of healing in Chicago next month.

Through donations large and small, from dozens of readers in the Chicago area and across the nation, the Sun-Times Charitable Trust established for Vasco now has more than $6,000, funds that will continue to be used to help Vasco while he’s in Chicago and when he returns to Malawi in June after recuperating from surgery.

Such an outpouring of generosity in these frighteningly rocky economic times is overwhelming. The generosity of spirit of the American people never ceases to amaze and enliven me.

Late Thursday afternoon, I was able to speak to Sonya Jackson, president of the United Airlines Foundation, who was instrumental in arranging the charitable travel for Vasco and Mac.

Helping children like Vasco is part of the United foundation’s mission.

“One of our key priorities is assisting ‘youth with potential,’ ” Jackson said. “We used to call it ‘youth at risk’ but that had a negative connotation to it. The idea is to position ourselves as a company to be able to help young people for whom the playing field may not be level. Because of a medical issue or a financial issue or a social issue, whatever the case may be, we wanted to be able to offer our support to young people.”

Airlines are struggling, too, in our faltering economy. They don’t need to be giving away international flights for free, never mind going out of their way to arrange charity travel from a continent they don’t even service. (United doesn’t fly from Africa. But its partner, South Africa Airways, does. Jackson and her staff reached out to their African counterparts and together arranged for Vasco’s travel from Malawi to South Africa, from South Africa to London and from London to Chicago.)

But they did. “All of us are very honored to be able to step into this space and provide assistance,” Jackson said.

When Jackson spoke of “youth with potential,” I thought of something Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, told me a while back. We were talking about why he thought he survived the Nazi death camps. Was he spared for a reason?

“Why not others?” Wiesel asked me in return. “A million and a half Jewish children were murdered. How many great sages would have come out of there? How many Nobel Prize winners? How many poets, how many scientists, how many doctors?”

Some people have asked me why Vasco and not another child? Or a group of children?

I met so many “youth with potential” while in Africa, and I’ve met hundreds upon hundreds of them here in Chicago and elsewhere.

I don’t know why. I just know I had to tell his story and hope that it would have a happy ending.

Who knows what Vasco will become when he returns to Malawi with a heart that works as God intended?

Maybe he will grow to be a great man, a sage, a statesman, an inventor, a prophet. Or maybe he’ll live, kindhearted and simply, without any fanfare or acclaim.

At least now he will have the chance to become a man.

For that I thank you.

Despite your own very real troubles, you reached beyond yourselves to help Vasco — a single child from the other side of the world. An orphan. One of the “least of these” that Jesus talked about.

Thank you for having faith in the future, even when the present feels bleak.

Thank for investing in kindness and giving the gift of hope.

Thank you for being grace for this child.

And thank you for paying it forward.

Zikomo kwambiri!

GG will continue to follow Vasco’s story in the coming weeks and months in the pages of the Sun-Times and in the blog Vasco’s Heart.