We Found Little Frankie!

Vasco and Frankie on Wednesday at Smile Malawi

Back on October 12, 2007, a few hours before we met the boy who would one day become our son, we met another little dude named Frankie who absolutely stole our hearts.

Frankie (not his real name – he doesn’t remember what it is, where he comes from or anything from his early years before becoming a street kid in Blantyre at around age 4 or 5) and Vasco were the only two boys who lived for a time at what was a drop-in centre in Blantyre run by a charity that worked with street children. They became very good friends. Frankie called Vasco “Vah-seee-koh,” which is where V’s nickname comes from.

Since Vasco arrived in the States last year (today, June 10, is the one-year anniversary of his heart surgery at Hope Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill.), he has spoken of Frankie nearly every day. He prays for Frankie almost every time our family says grace before a meal, and as soon as he knew we would be coming to Malawi a few months back, Vasco started asking, daily (sometimes multiple times a day), “Mom, when we’re in Malawi, can we find Frankie?”

We don’t like to promise things we cannot be sure we can deliver to Vasco, but we told him numerous times we’d do everything we could to find Little Frankie (as he’s commonly known) while we were in Malawi. We started circulating his picture among friends here who work with street kids, orphanages, etc., And then yesterday, we stopped by the drop-in center where Vasco and Frankie used to live (the charity is in a bit of shambles and the staff and management had turned over since our visit almost three years ago), but were pleasantly surprised to see, first of all, a huge photograph of Little Frankie pinned to a bulletin board in a meeting room and then to learn, from one of the older staffers who was still around, that the boy had been moved to an orphanage a year or two ago. A few minutes later, someone came up with the name, Smile Malawi, and we were on the hunt.

I wasn’t sure at all what we would find when and if and where we found Little Frankie, but I did know that if we found him in squalor or having been mistreated, I was going to toss him in the SUV and drive away as fast as we could go.

Happily …

Shortly before 3 p.m. yesterday, after a long ride down one of the roughest, bumpiest, most are-you-sure-this-REALLY-is-a-road? roads we’ve ever traveled, we found a clutch of tidy brick buildings down the lane from a church, surrounded by big gardens filled with growing vegetables, and a sign, “Smile Malawi.”

We walked to the front door and were met by a half dozen smiling, happy, healthy-looking, clean and well groomed children folllowing behind Miriam, the house mother, a woman who looks like the poster child for what Mamas around the world should look like. Robust, beaming, exuding love and affection.

I introduced myself as Maury and Vasco walked in the door behind me and as I began to tell her who we were and what we were doing there and who we were looking for, as I began to say, “A boy named Fr …” there he was.

Little Frankie. Smiling with his huge eyes and the deepest, cutest dimples in the world.

Frankie’s not so little any more. In fact, despite being a few years younger than Vasco (by anybody’s guess – we don’t really know) he’s a tiny bit taller than V. It took him a moment to recognize me – I showed him our pictures on my iPhone – and then he saw Vasco. And you could see it click. He knew his friend.

Vasco was pretty much speechless. And then he began prattling on a mile a minute (in English) as he does, taking Frankie by the hand to show him the presents he’d brought for him – a thick coloring book, crayons, some cookies, a big orange, a bag of his favorite potato chips.

I had a really hard time choking back the tears. I just couldn’t believe we found him. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. So so many children. Too many homeless, orphaned kids. More than a million AIDS orphans. More than 60,000 on the streets. Dozens and dozens of orphanages. But … here he was. Quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

My heart was so full – of joy and thanks and yearning. So so grateful this special little guy and Vasco’s special friend was alive and well and flourishing.

Frankie has been living at Smile Malawi for about a year now. It’s a private orphanage funded by a lovely woman in Wales and other benefactors. In all, 23 children live in what looks and feels more like a group home than an “orphanage.” Each child has his or her own bunk with their own afghan and their own books and trinkets. The rooms are bright and clean. The food was hot and smelled lovely – Miriam made Vasco sit down and try some of her nsima (cornmeal mush that’s a staple in the Malawi diet) to make sure he still knew the proper way to eat it (he did.)

Very little is known about Frankie’s past. He still recalls almost nothing before he arrived at Chisomo. No surname, no birth place, nothing about his parents. He chose “Frank” as a name for himself several years ago at Chisomo, and, as I think I said in Sin Boldly (the chapter “Chisomo” is about Vasco and, in part, Frankie) it was a clumsy fit not unlike the black wingtip shoes he was wearing at the time. A little too big, but it would do all the same.

Miriam told us our Little Frankie is now known as Frankie Mattias, a good biblical name. St. Matthew – Jesus’ friend and follower, the former tax-collector-turned-Gospel-writer and evangelist. A good name.

Frankie is well and thriving despite being the only child at Smile Malawi who is HIV-positive. His blood counts are still good so he is not yet on Anti-Retro-viral medications (ARVs) but should he need them, they will be available to him. He has chronic ear infections and they have affected his hearing and his speech. A simple operation to insert tubes into his ear canals (the kind that is done routinely daily in the US) would fix the problem.

We’re in the process of trying to find an ENT in Blantyre or Lilongwe who might do it for free. We are hopeful as there is a doctor in Blantyre who does just that.

It was hard to leave Frankie behind the first time we left Malawi and it will be hard to do so this time as well, but we feel strongly that he is happy, healthy, loved, cared for and safe where he is. He is enrolled in the local school with his other housemates and the children treat each other just like family. There are several sets of biological siblings that live there among the 23 (ranging in age from 4 – Thomas, a little devil with the kind of smile that makes you want to take a bite out of him to see if he tastes like chocolate – to 17.)

Now we know where Frankie is. We’ll be able to keep up with him and even speak to him on the phone. Vasco was so happy that he was safe and well. He used to pray all the time that Frankie was ok, getting enough food, not sick and not being harmed by anyone. Our sweet son’s prayers have been, once again, answered with amazing, audacious and overflowing grace.

Little Frankie and Me on Oct. 12, 2007 in Blantyre

Me and the boys. They’ve aged well. I hadn’t had a shower in two days. But Frankie and I can still curl our tongues.

A heated game of UNO.

Vasco gave Frankie his favorite Marley shirt. “Positive Vibration” indeed.