Lost Stranger

What would you feel if one day there’s a stranger who were just walking by at your house, then decided  to live at your place with your family? Would you say yes? Would you welcome him with open hands and say “of course, you can stay here as long as you want to” (haha over) even if you just meet him outside your house and he doesn’t even look like he belong in this country and he don’t even know a single word of your language? What? (HAHA WHATEVER) but that was just what happened to Ate Mona. I’m not making this story, okay? This is so true. 

Ate Mona is a resident block away from my so called “office”. She lives with her 4 kids and her husband. One day, her kids were playing outside their house and there’s this “foreigner guy” who are walking by them and one of Ate Mona’s kids approached him like, “hey, joe” and then the foreigner guy stopped and then decided to talk to the kids. He was so fond of them and the kids were so fond of him too, that at the end of the day he asked Ate Mona if he could live with them since he is homeless and he doesn’t have any idea where  he is, only the country, and he doesn’t know where he is going. Ate Mona was hospitable enough to accept him and let him stay at their house.

I get to know this story because during the first day stay  of that foreigner guy at their place, Ate Mona went to my office and asked my help to search about this foreigner guy named “Joseph Sherman” which is his name, according to him, and later we now that it was “Yosef Amadues”.  Then we saw pictures of this guy, which according to Ate Mona was him, like, really. Then, we sent message to his listed friends but unfortunately, we get no response.

Joseph has a very sensitive trust issues. Since he decided to live at Ate Mona’a place, Ate Mona told me that he don’t wanna talk to anybody except Ate Mona’s family, and he don’t even wanna go out at their house. But one day, I was surprised that he went to my office with Ate Mona and asked my help. Waaa.

Based on the 3-hour talk that we had, I can say that he really is mentally disturbed? Like, for me hah. When he got in my office, his first approach to me was, “you’re not gonna do anything bad to me, right? Because you want me to treat you like how you wanna be treated, right?” and I was like, “of course”. Then, he told me that, “you should think twice of doing things to me, because if you’re just gonna interrogate me and do crazy stuff to me, I’d rather get a knife and cut myself than to trust you.” And at the back of my  mind, I was like, WHAT THE F! But the only words that I told him was, “trust me” and he said, “really?” and I looked at him eye to eye and said “really.” (truth yan, walang etchos). Then, we got along well, and then we saw photos of him, and told me stories behind it and we were laughing and he told me that he never paid a girl for sex, believe it or not raw. And that he was born here raw, in the Philippines, believe it or not again. And that his eyes used to be black daw before na naging brown na nagyon.What I find really disturbing is that he says lots of things, like so much, that I don’t really get and has really nothing to do with the thing that we’re doing.

He’s been living at Ate Mona’s house for than a month now. As to Ate Mona, his nice naman. He haven’t done or said things that would scare or threaten them. Ate Mona is doing everything she could to find or contact Joseph’s family but the hard thing is, Joseph just won’t tell more details about himself. He don’t trust people. We are hoping that one day Joseph will be willing enough to help himself, because Ate Mona just don’t know how long she still could keep him.

Joseph looks so different now from all those photos. He lost like half of the weight that he used to have and his hair aren’t as kapal as it used to, he's got curly hair, actually. Ate Mona is waiting now for the responses to all the government offices that she asked for help. Any help or suggestions?