Christmas

It was Christmas 2002, and I was appearing in an opera in London. My career as a singer has always been at the centre of my life, but because my mother had just died, I decided to do what she had asked: I took a year’s sabbatical. I also made another decision. I’d fly to Peru to meet a young man called Nick López.

Ten years earlier, a friend had told me about a charity organization called EveryChild. By giving $20 a month, you could help a young person in a developing country. Nick was five years old, living with his parents and two brothers in a shanty town above Lima. We exchanged letters. I enjoyed reading about his life, although it became clear that his family had to struggle to get by. When he was eight he sent me my favourite photograph, which I still keep in my office. Nick was growing up fast.

So here I was on my way to Lima at last to meet him in person. It was an experience that I’ll never forget. The poverty shocked me. Nick and his family live in a two-roomed house, but Nick was a sweet, shy 15-year-old boy with beautiful manners and real dignity, who kept chickens and sold them to help his family. I had been told that giving him too many presents would single him out from the rest of his community, so I brought T-shirts for him and his brothers, and books about caring for chickens. Meeting Nick has given my life a new perspective.