Changing colors, changing lives

Marife (not her real name) staggered into the warm arms of Frenchwoman Laurence Ligier over 10 years ago, seeking more than a shoulder to cry on. She was 12 1/2 years old, and she was pregnant. By her father.

Laurence, who has lived in the Philippines, particularly on Panay Island, for over two decades, took Marife under her wing. The poor girl felt like her future was as murky as a fetid canal, her soul as black as night.

Today, Marife is a professional based in London. Her life has traversed the seasons of grief and bears the pink blush of a hopeful spring.

Thanks to Chameleon, which Laurence founded 15 years ago. And Marife is one of over 600 sexually abused girls who have changed their colors — from bleak to sunshiny — after being transformed by Chameleon.

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Laurence grew up in the wine-producing region of France — Burgundy. Her father is a physician and so the family was privileged. At 18, Laurence felt the urge to travel and see the world not just from the lenses of a tourist’s camera. “I wanted to immerse myself in a new country, not just visit it,” she recalls. So she approached a French NGO espousing education in Third World countries. She hoped to be assigned to Africa and was initially disappointed that she was being sent instead to “Aklan,” a province on the island of Panay in southern Philippines.

“I lived in a nipa hut with no toilet,” she recalls. One of her first lessons in adapting, like a chameleon, to her new environment, was to urinate between two bamboo slats on the floor of the hut. Of course she missed the bidet!

Seventeen kilos and 21 years after she first set foot in Aklan, she’s still on the island, in a city called Passi in Iloilo. Laurence first worked with the Religious of the Assumption, which had a school for underprivileged children in Barrio Obrero, Iloilo. Today, Laurence speaks Ilonggo as fluently as she speaks French.

As she became a familiar face in Aklan and Iloilo, abused children would be referred to her until she decided to put up a home that would be their haven. On visits to France, she would raise funds from friends until eventually, she was able to build three homes for Chameleon, with facilities for 25 girls per home. By knocking on doors of NGOs and philanthropists in France, she was able to come up with the P32 million needed each year to feed, clothe, educate and rehabilitate the girls.

Why has Laurence left her family in France to live amongst the most downtrodden of God’s creatures — human beings as young as five who are not only poor but sexually abused by male relatives, people whom they trust?

“The children have made me stay,” Laurence, who is now raising funds from kindhearted Filipinos to sustain Chameleon, “even after I’m gone,” says without a second thought. “If I have done something good for those who are in life’s worst situation, if I have done something good for children who think they are already dead or crazy, I have the energy to go on and on.”

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Most of the girls that Chameleon has taken into its bosom were referred by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).  “Sixty-five percent of abused girls are victims of incest,” Laurence, who is called “Tita Lulu” by her wards, reveals. The  searing truth is that in one family, the father could be abusing the older daughters, and the brother, seeing the example of the father — abuses the younger girls in the brood. An even more blood-curdling revelation from Laurence is that when questioned, the abusive father or brother “has no remorse at all. They feel they have a right to take advantage of their daughters or sisters.”

Laurence has received the French National Order of Merit and the French National Award for civic spirit and dedication to the community.

Laurence has been assisted for the last four years by Serbian Ivana Tosic, a representative of the government of Luxembourg, which is Chameleon’s main benefactor.  (The Luxembourg government, however, requires there to be a counterpart funding from the Philippines as well.)

Ivana says that with the proper care and counseling (the center also offers legal help and livelihood training), the change in the girls is already visible, in vivid color,  after four months.

Like a chameleon, they change, too, smiles Ivana.

“Their posture changes, their eyes are no longer downcast, they can make eye contact,” says Ivana. “They are able to stand up for themselves.”

One of the therapeutic measures Chameleon advocates is to make abused  girls train for the circus — yes, the circus!

Viscountess Corinne de Longuemar, a benefactor of Chameleon and a believer in “circus therapy” says every girl has a “psychological skeleton.” Training for the circus — whether as a unicyclist, a juggler or a clown — helps mend a child’s broken “psychological skeleton.”

Laurence says the introverts like to be jugglers while those who have deeper emotional scars like to be clowns, “because they can hide beneath the makeup.”

Being onstage also helps boost their self-confidence because they are using their bodies with their full consent, their full control. And they are making people happy in a wholesome, not a depraved, way.

I asked Ivana, whose country has had its share of inner strife, why she has also chosen to stay on in the Philippines for the last four years.

“I have stayed because of the resilience of the Filipino child. If you are not resilient, you die. But Filipinos always move on,” says Ivana, “Tita Ivana” to her “children.”

“We cannot erase the past of these girls,” says  Jean Pierre Jolivot, president of Chameleon France, “but we can always change the colors of their future.”

(Chameleon will be holding an exclusive Charity Gourmet dinner  at 6:30 p.m. on March 1 at the Manila Polo Club in Makati City to raise funds for its operations. Master French chef Jacky Robert will be flying in from Boston to prepare a four-course dinner for guests. For inquiries about the dinner, please call 02-817-3081  or 0920-912-9399. Laurence may be reached in Passi City, Iloilo at (+6333) 311-5575.)

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)