I have a thousand other things to do. I really do. Stuff is piling up. Deadlines have passed (I have missed a few!) I should be working on the CEU's I need to earn to complete my nursing licence renewal by the end of this month. Instead all I do is write. And write. And write. I can't seem to stop writing about Africa and all the lessons I learned there. All the soul changing, life altering, conclusion bending, paradigm shifting lessons I learned as a result of less than 2 weeks spent living among "the least of these".
Near the end of our stay in Bombo, we hosted a carnival of sorts out in an open field between several elementary schools. By this time, the kids were used to us showing up around 4:30 pm to play games with them every day. Literally hundreds of kids would come after school to play with us. In a place where there is little entertainment and daily life involves a constant struggle just to survive, any diversion is a welcome one. 23 "Mzungus" wandering around your village qualifies! So the children came. With huge smiles. With shy expressions. With their hands extended to take ours. Some, to run away if we got too close to them. But mostly they came with the curiosity of children. Often when we would walk thru the village as we did every day, the children would run to the edge of the road and stand there staring at us. Some were eager, bright, smiling and waving. Others were tentative and uncertain. But what I found was that when I made eye contact with them and smiled and greeted them in Luganda, "Oli otya?" (how are you?), they immediately broke into huge smiles and would yell back "Gendi!" Which means "I'm fine!". All apprehension seemed to vanish with a smile and a greeting. These children were eager to engage with us.
So we had packed many, many bags with things for this carnival. We had bubbles and face paint. Nail polish and soccer balls. Frisbees and jump ropes. Silly bracelets and craft projects. One thing we hadn't banked on was that all the kids would have shaved heads. Even the girls. So all the hair bows and clips and ornaments weren't gonna work. We didn't see that one coming! As we tried to set up areas where we could begin each activity it was clear that we were out of our league here. This was the only time I saw kids really behaving like kids the whole time we were there. They were always so orderly. But imagine what would happened in your neighborhood if a team of folks showed up and stood in the streets giving away Ipads to every kid who walked by. Bingo! Now you understand what the carnival was like! This is a place where toys don't exist. I never saw a child playing with anything but another child or some sticks or rocks the whole time we were there. And the kids are out and about en mass. They are everywhere. Its not like at home where you drive thru a neighborhood and never see a soul. In Bombo the streets were teeming with people all the time. And most of those people were children! So to show up with actual toys and be able to distribute them produced ...well.....chaos!
I decided that I would paint fingernails. What I figured was some of the little girls would want to do this. I had a couple of helpers. Soon I was surrounded by hundreds of little black hands thrust forward into my lap as I patiently painted one at a time. As many boys came forward to have their nails painted as girls, which threw me! And the other thing that they just could not comprehend was that you had to let the polish dry. So I had lots of repeat customers. Some kids had so many "do overs" that their fingernails were multiple colors and in various stages of wiped off or nearly wiped off. Note to self: painting nails is not something that translates easily across cultures!
But more than the actual nail painting or the toys or the games what I realized is that the thing these kids needed and wanted the most was just some contact, some attention, some notice from us. Families are large in Africa. Life is impossibly hard. It is a daily struggle to feed your children and pay their school fees. Parents work from sun up to well past sun down. Every task requires enormous effort. Hauling water. Setting a fire to cook over. Picking the food or finding a way to purchase it at the market. Preparing the food. Washing the dishes. Washing laundry by hand. Hanging it out to dry. Cleaning the house. Working in the garden. Walking everywhere. Nursing the babies. The sheer weight of the tasks that must be done daily to survive doesn't leave a parent much time to devote to just being with their children. They are deeply loved. They just don't receive the kind of attention kids get here because the entire fabric of family life collectively is devoted to survival. I sensed this need to be noticed and recognized from the children. Sometimes a child would just walk into the street and take my hand. They would just walk with us for a time. Some of the older children wanted to practice their English. The younger ones seemed to just want to have some contact with us. Sometimes they would follow us all the way to our encampment hoping for food. The saddest thing of all for some of the teens on our team was the realization that these children go hungry every day while we throw away enough food to feed their entire family. That is a fairly sobering reality for a 15 yr old to face......
So when it is all said and done, one of my fondest memories of Africa will be the beauty of the people there- especially the children. Their curiosity. Their eager smiles. Their bright little faces. The hopeful expressions they wore. These were materially very poor children. But their spirits were vibrant. Alive. They all have hopes and dreams. To look into the face of such a child is to see Christ. There is such truth to what He said "As you do unto the least of these, you do unto me". These beautiful children stole my heart. I hope they now have stolen a piece of yours as well.....Shalom!
No comments:
Post a Comment