I see as much excitement in the kids of Gossi's eyes when I give them a plastic soda bottle as I remember seeing in my little brother when he got a snowboard one Christmas. Granted they lose interest in the bottle about as quickly as Evan did in snowboarding, but children in Mali have more fun with that bottle than you would think possible. It’s a pretty general theme when it comes to the kids I see everyday. Even the dirtiest children, wearing the rattiest clothes have huge grins on their faces, shrieking at me and laughing at my responses or just running through the streets, racing their bike tires or, if they’re really lucky, car tires. A new pen or the very rare new notebook is as exciting here as it is buying the cartload of back to school stuff at staples (or was that just me? I really loved getting new notebooks and pencils even in college….).
Chores don’t ever need to be yelled about, they’re just done. Milking the cow, washing the baby’s clothes or watering the garden gets done every day without any complaining or griping. Once, out on a visit with my little sister, I was reminded that we needed to get home because she had dishes to do. To be fair, I’ve seen my fair share of tantrums and the hitting, biting and kicking still goes on and I get asked for money or gifts every time I leave the house. But kids here do make more with less, because they have to. In my experience, not all the kids are ready to burst into tears because they have no food, like the children in those Christian children’s fund tv commericials, but with the little they have, they are so happy.
We’re very lucky to have schools in my town and the surrounding villages, but all of the classes are overcrowded, 60 plus per class, and although the fee to attend is minimal, less than $4 dollars a year and its obligatory, many parents don’t send their kids to school. Many of the kids who are lucky enough to attend school struggle with their studies and paying attention, just as some do back home. My heart broke when the English teacher told me he had trouble getting a lot of the kids to pay attention because they hadn’t eaten breakfast and probably wouldn’t get much for lunch either. Most don’t have text books or pretty displays on their classroom walls. Yet when we go in to teach English to the seventh and eighth grade, almost everyone tries to participate and my brothers are eager to practice their French and English with me whenever they can or show me their drawings of the human body. These classes more than make up for the harassment we can sometimes put up with from adults and teenagers asking for the shirt off my back or my telephone. I say this to emphasize that no, these kids aren’t perfect but I guess to make my point I’ll share this story.
My little sister Zeinaba was given 50 cfa (about 10 cents) the other day when she returned a lost item to a neighbor and trying to suppress her obvious glee, asked if I would walk with her to buy candy at the boutique down the street. She, of course offered me three (I took one, its insulting not to and they’re really quite good), ate one herself and saved the rest to share with her two little brothers. The thought of saving them for herself never even crossed her mind. I feel like I have more than a thing or two to learn from a six-year old
Saturday, January 19, 2008
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