I was in a wooden shack with T., eight dusty-faced children in rags aged from about twelve to barely two years old, both boys and girls. The children's parents were also there, looking like extras from Breaking Bad - emaciated, stoned and in serious financial trouble. I thought T. and I were doing the parents' a favour by letting them and their kids spend some time in a sheltered environment, because they appeared to be homeless and on the road to working out where to go and what to do next. But without saying anything to us or their children, the parents walked out of the house and off down the road hand in hand, never to return. I had overheard them say that they would flee the country, and told T. When the children realised that their parents were no longer around and in fact, not ever coming back, they filtered outside onto the lawn, looking silently into the distance. I felt blind anger for the parents who could so easily leave their kids, without any care as to what would become of them. I also felt that I did not feel any kind of attachment to these children and I also felt their lack of attachment to me and the things I considered precious. I feared that they would break things and considering their wildness, maybe defecate on the furniture we'd spent long hard hours of work, trying to earn. So I closed all the doors, not locking them, but ran out of the house on the other side to where the children still stood. 'We're just as bad as their parents,' I remarked. 'We've abandoned them as well.' I saw through the glass windows the children piling up at the glass front door, looking as if they were going to turn the handle and walk back inside our shack. But they didn't, even though the door wasn't locked. They just stood there, eight pairs of eyes staring.
