GODSTUFF

VASCO IN CHICAGO:
‘HIS LAUGHTER IS MUSIC. HIS JOY IS INFECTIOUS.’

Even bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway at rush hour can be a blessing — when you see it through the eyes of a child who has never seen it before.

Thursday afternoon, on our way back to Oak Park from Navy Pier, where he had his first piece of pizza and saw a Ferris wheel for the first time, Vasco squealed with delight every time a Blue Line L train roared past our car, down the middle of the expressway.

When he spotted an African-American man waiting on the L platform, he rolled down the window, waved and shouted in his native Chichewa, “Hey brother!”

His giggling is music. His joy is infectious.

Vasco Sylvester, a 10-year-old AIDS orphan from Blantyre, Malawi, arrived in Chicago a few minutes after 10 a.m. Wednesday after more than two days of travel on three international flights — his first trip on a plane.

For 20 months, we have been working to bring this sweet boy from the poorest country in the world to Chicago so he can undergo life-saving heart surgery.

My husband and I met Vasco in the fall of 2007 while traveling in Africa. He is an extraordinary child with a spirit as kind as it is fierce. We fell in love with him and so did many of you when you read his story in the pages of the Sun-Times.

So many of you have graciously donated money to help bring him to the United States for treatment. Many more of you have supported our efforts to help Vasco with your prayers, notes of concern and gifts of kindness.

There have been too many ups and downs along the roller coaster journey to bring him to Chicago to recount. But, frankly, when he walked out of immigration and into the arrivals area of the International Terminal at O’Hare on Wednesday, all of them faded from memory.

“Moni bambo!” we cried, welcoming him in his native Chichewa. Our “wee man,” as we have come to call Vasco, walked into view tugging a small rolling suitcase behind him and flanked by his 32-year-old traveling companion and caretaker, Macdonald “Mac” Nkhutabasa, and staffers from United — the airline that graciously flew Vasco and Mac from Africa to Chicago.

“Hello auntie, how are you?” Vasco said, grinning and putting his hand in mine.

“Zikomo,” he added quietly, meaning “Thank you.”

Words fail me when it comes to explaining how that felt.

When we first met Vasco, he was terribly sick, his heart thunk-thunking like a jack rabbit even when he was resting. He was short of breath, would sweat in the shade, and his beautiful, dark eyes were rheumy and sunken.

Because of the donations readers have made to the Sun-Times charitable trust established in his name, we’ve been able to send funds to help house, feed and provide him with better medical care in Malawi.

He’s no longer as fragile as he once was, but because of the hole in his heart, every day he’s alive is a gift. When a team of doctors — led by Dr. Andrew Griffin of the Heart Institute for Children, who offered to treat Vasco if we could just get him here –completes its miraculous work, we expect Vasco to live a long, healthy life.

Vasco knows this. And he is grateful. He’s not afraid of what lies ahead in the coming weeks: tests and needles, surgery and a hospital stay in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. He’s a terribly bright, sentient child, and he is brave.

And he is loved. By us. By Mac. By friends and family and strangers he has never met and never will.

He knows this, too.

Every moment we’ve spent with Vasco in our home so far has been pure joy. Everything is new to him. Everything is exciting.

The smallest things seem to bring him such epic pleasure. Among a small collection of toy cars and stuffed animals, the item he has become most attached to is a plastic red-white-and-blue pen with the words “Yes we can” on one side and “Obama” on the other. When you press the top of the pen, an audio recording of President Obama giving his election night acceptance speech at Grant Park plays impressively loudly for such a small speaker.

Vasco carries it in the pocket of his too-big jeans and presses the button repeatedly.

We know he doesn’t understand what Obama is saying and simply enjoys the toy that talks. But as we drove with him into Chicago to show him “downtown” (one of the few words of English he knows well), we got to hear Obama’s speech over and over and over again.

I didn’t cry when Vasco arrived at O’Hare. And I didn’t cry after I tucked him into bed the first night, or when he took my hand crossing the street, or when he walked into the living room carrying our long-suffering cat, Mousie.

But as Vasco erupted into joyous giggles as the Blue Line train passed our gridlocked car on the Ike for the umpteenth time, I heard Obama say, “While we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.”

And the tears came.