GODSTUFF

GOING TO GRACELAND:

‘MY TRAVELING COMPANION IS 10 YEARS OLD…’

The morning we drove to O’Hare to meet Vasco after his 30-plus-hour journey from Malawi to Chicago, my husband and I turned on the car stereo and hit play on the CD in the six-disc changer. What came up was Paul Simon’s album, “Graceland.”

These are the days of miracle and wonder,

This is the long-distance call,

The way the camera follows us in slow-mo

The way we look to us all

Those are the words from “The Boy in the Bubble,” the first track on Simon’s 1986 album, long a favorite of mine. It seemed appropriate — prophetic, even — traveling music for the short trip to the airport that ended a 20-month effort to bring Vasco Sylvester, the 10-year-old AIDS orphan we had met in Blantyre, Malawi, to Chicago for life-saving heart surgery.

On our way home from O’Hare, while Vasco rode in the back seat, watching wide-eyed as this strange, new land passed by, the words of the album’s eponymous song, “Graceland,” took on a new meaning for me.

Poor boys and Pilgrims with families

And we are going to Graceland . . .

In those first days with Vasco in our home, we had very little common language, but we did have music. When Vasco arrived, he knew two “American” stars and asked about them: Barack Obama and Bob Marley. (He sometimes confused the two, pointing to the late dreadlocked Jamaican musician and asking, “Obama?”)

One night at dinner a few weeks ago, apropos of nothing and clear out of the blue, Vasco pounded a little fist to his narrow chest and said, “Jah Rastafari!” saluting the air. “Where did that come from, little man?” I asked.

Mac, Vasco’s caregiver from Malawi, explained that many of the street children in Malawi idolized Marley and Rastafarian culture in general. Vasco, who lived on the streets when he was 6 or 7, after his mother and father died from AIDS, picked it up there.

He knows Marley’s music, that’s for sure. Whenever Vasco hears the strains of “One Love,” “Buffalo Soldier,” or “Natural Mystic,” he nods and bops around, and, when he’s got it slung over his shoulder, strums his three-quarter-size acoustic guitar and sings along. Music is pure joy for this magical little boy. It’s the language we both know by heart, even if we can’t find the right words to say so in English or Chichewa.

When he cried inconsolably, coming out of a haze of general anesthesia after a cardiac catheterization last week, I quietly sang a few lines of Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” into his ear, and when he went back into the hospital three days later, feverish and listless, I played a recording of Marley’s “No More Trouble” from my laptop next to his hospital bed. The music is comfort. A salve. For Vasco and for us.

Vasco’s cardiac catheterization nearly two weeks ago showed, blessedly, that his damaged heart still has structures well enough to rearrange into working order. His doctors had worried that his heart, battered by years of compensating for the large ventricular septal defect with which he was born, might not be strong enough to handle the open-heart surgery they hoped to do. But what they found showed that his heart is as strong and fierce physically as it is spiritually.

A few days later, though, when he spiked a fever and became violently sick, we rushed Vasco back to Hope Children’s Hospital, where his team of incredible physicians (who are treating him for free), discovered that the wee man has a bad case of malaria. He also has two different parasites in his digestive system and bladder, and has been exposed to tuberculosis, though thankfully his lungs are clear and he’s not contagious.

Vasco’s on a number of medications to treat the various infections and is feeling much better, dancing and singing and strumming on his guitar. These infections, however, have pushed back his open-heart surgery a few weeks. If all goes well, he should undergo the surgery to repair his broken heart, once and for all, in about a week.

Meanwhile we’re passing the time playing soccer and T-ball in the back yard, watching movies, going fishing and listening to music.

Just last week we discovered a marvelous new CD and DVD set of music called, “Playing for Change: Songs Around the World.” Released at the end of April, the set contains video and audio recordings of songs performed — simultaneously — by musicians from around the world. The songs include the popular standard “Stand By Me,” Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” and Marley’s “One Love.”

From buskers in Santa Monica, Calif., sitar players in India and a mass teen choir from Omagh, Northern Ireland, to a traditional singing group in South Africa, street musicians in France, Congo, Nepal and Cuba, Bono in his studio in Dublin, and a Native American drum circle, they all perform the same song, which producer Mark Johnson then mixes into a seamless global collaboration.

Some of the proceeds from “Playing for Change” are helping to build music schools in Africa for children much like Vasco. He has watched the DVD of the performances dozens of times (you can find them on YouTube or at www.playingforchange.com), and we listen to the music daily.

On bad days, it makes us all feel better.

On good days, it reminds us of how much we share, even when our language, culture, religion and skin color are different.

One love, One heart

Let’s get together and feel all right!