By: Sylvia Davila MM
Bogotá
ALAN JOYCE
VERSION EN ESPANOL
A Londoner living his twenties at the peak of the Hippie Era meets a Colombian girl and
recognizes love at first sight. They get married and make their home in
Colombia. Alan Joyce begins then a life path that, at some point, would make a
drastic turn. For many years, he and Monica lived the traditional couple-scheme
while raising two children. Engineer by profession, he offered his professional
skills to several companies and she opened a fashion studio. It happened there,
in the studio, that Monica’s assistant asked him to help a niece she had at the
National Cancer Institue. He went to see her. Sick people leaning on both sides of the institution’s
corridors’ was the first image he had of what was about to become his reason
for living. When he entered Paediatrics he took a step that would have no
return.
Many children receiving treatment by very busy doctors
and nurses filled the room. Alan approached a girl connected to two bags: a red
bag giving her chemo, and a transparent bag that gave her saline. With his
hands on both the bags, he asked her: What
is this? One is Premium and the other regular? The children, the nurses and
the doctor bust into laughing, a soothing wave encompassed the room, and Alan
Joyce discovered that he could help people just by being himself.
He kept visiting the institute,
especially to see a very sick girl who seemed to feel relieved in his company. She
died on a Friday. Alan spent the weekend torn between a profession that had
given him a life, and his visits to the cancer institution that were already
turning into passion. But the decision delayed. On Monday, he left for office
as any other day. When he arrived, a change in the security staff faced him
with a man that did not know him. The guard’s telephone enquiries kept him
waiting. Standing there in front of his office building, suddenly, through the
railings, he saw it, in all its meaning: the door of his office closed… He did
not doubt it any more, asked the guard not to announce him, and went back home
to plan a foundation for children with cancer. Since the time of, “peace and
love” of his hippie past he had found refuge in Buddhism. Dharma he called his foundation, which means “teachings”.
Children with cancer bear an
unthinkable burden: sickness, pain, uncertainty, fear and a close encounter
with death. His organized engineer mind where natural public relations lives,
served Alan to build them a place that attends all their needs, as well as to
find financial support from many people. His own experience with an illness
that kept him in the hospital for nearly a year during his childhood, helped
him to understand the isolation of a child that has a very visible sickness,
living in an adult world that pretends not to see them.
Alan set for them a house full
of light, order, activities, nutrition, entertainment, studies and rest.
Because he believes it, children living in Dharma
learn to live the moment, to live the present, to enjoy life. Cancer treatments, school, boyfriends
or girlfriends, outings, films, TV, computers, food, they have it all, and they
share it in a serene extraordinary way. Solidarity in Alan’s foundation gives
surprising lessons. A teen-ager whose condition did not permit her lay down to
sleep had a boyfriend, also sick, who would stand holding her on his chest so
she could get some sleep.
Some survive, many die. But in this challenging world Dharma children have the best possible
life given their condition. Alan believes that by removing the mystery that
surrounds death, takes away a high percentage of the fear. It may be why they
laugh all the time, he and them. This graduated Hippie, renegade engineer, and
confessed Buddhist, flutters around the place using both soft wisdom and his
crushing British humour. When the photographer was ready to register him
standing next to a smiling girl who had recently had her leg amputated, Alan
passed his arm around her, put his leg between the aluminium crutch and hers,
and told her: This way nobody knows who lacks
what”./ May 5/2011 - SYLVIA DAVILA MORALES(c)
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