Thoughts about children

 When you say to a child ‘What did you do today?’ What do you expect them to say?

When you say to a child ‘Do you like school, what do you like best about school?’ What do you expect them to say?

When you buy a gift for a child, what do you buy?

I realised yesterday that now I’ve been here a few times, I’ve started to see children just as ‘children’.  I don’t see the torn, dirty, clothes and bare feet; I laugh at them playing in the dust; I smile at mothers coping with several children and breast feeding a baby while running a market stall;  I’m not surprised when they want to pinch or stroke my white skin;  I see children.   I see happy children, sad children, sick children, poor children, hungry children – children. 

At Angoram yesterday, the children giggled and sniggered behind their hands. Some were shy and afraid in front of the Mzungu Auntie.  Expected behaviour from children faced with a stranger.  I realised they don’t want my pity or my sadness; they want to be accepted and loved the same as all children.  They don’t want us to focus on their misfortunes any more than the people with disability want us to focus on their disability.  It would be arrogant of me to think that I understand how life is for them, I can’t empathise or help them emotionally – they need Ugandans like the staff here, who can listen to them and their guardians and who understand the reality of their lives.  What I can do is visit them and bring a bit of excitement into their lives.  I can play with them, talk to them and show them that I care.  I can pray for them, I can give what I can to charities like Global Care that I respect and trust and I know will use my money wisely.  When I start processing what’s going on around me here I realise that I’m unbelievably fortunate to be able to visit and see things first hand.  

Today we had the privilege of spending several hours with some of the Global Care sponsored children at the Childcare Centre.  We played with them… Tom invented a game involving a Frisbee and a goalpost - he didn’t keep score but I’m sure we girls won.  We drew with them and sang with them, we talked to them, and they received gifts bought with UK money.  

The gifts included: school uniforms for nursery children, mango and citrus trees, hoes, mosquito nets, sleeping mats, school packs, plastic water drums, mattresses, lanterns, a wheelbarrow… and a piglet.  It never ceases to amaze me what gets carried on the back of a push bike or motorcycle.  

We weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry as an assortment of parents, children, teachers and guardians left on foot, cycle or motorbike carrying a variety of kit.  A six year old with a mattress, hoe and plant, a young teenager with a piglet under her arm and a mat on the other side!

So who were these children? They were children who all told me they love school, that the best thing about school is studying and learning, listening to teachers.  They have aspirations too – to be doctors and nurses. 

I asked them about their day. (Names changed). Mary told me that she lives with her mother, an older sister and 4 other brothers & sisters. Her mother and these 4 children are all not well. Each day she gets up and sweeps the compound before she goes to school.  School here usually lasts from 8am to 5pm although the first 2 classes (P1 and P2) finish at lunchtime.  When Mary gets home again, she washes the plates and looks after the goats then it’s time for bed.

John’s morning chore before school is weeding the cassava garden.  Then he walks to school. School can be up to 4km away – most of the children walk, often for part of the way either through the bush or alongside busy roads with heavy traffic and filthy red dust.  When John gets home the first thing he has to do is walk a mile to fetch water. “You’re never given food to eat before you’ve fetched water.  So then I’m given food.” He has cassava and sometimes bread and greens. After eating, he sweeps the compound or brings in the goats and that is how his day ends.  There are 8 people in John’s family, 3 adults, his grandmother, grandfather and great uncle, and 5 children.

Emmanuel is regarded as a total orphan as he has no living adult relatives. His father had two wives and both the father and John’s mother died.  His step-mother looks after 6 children.  In the morning before school, he cultivates (heaps) potatoes and then goes home to help his ‘mother’ take the goats to graze in the bush. When he gets home again he goes to fetch water then helps with cooking for the family.

These children don’t see themselves as special – this is how life is.  Some looked bewildered by the gifts, others delighted, yet these are things that we would take for granted – a bed, light, water.  I have friends who I suspect would buy their children plants, a wheelbarrow and hoes – but their lives don’t depend on their children being able to support the cultivation of crops for food. 

We met 3 sponsored children who are particularly special to us today.  A lovely bright bubbly girl who is sponsored by church friends, a rather timid, dazed looking little girl whom we sponsor and our Pete’s little ‘brother’.  We get letters from them and the older ones ‘know’ us and our families.   But our little girl didn’t want to talk today so we left her alone.  She doesn’t want to be smothered - her family needs the hoe and plant, and she needs the mattress.  So many of the young men and women we’ve met and who work here or support the work here were sponsored themselves. They all talk of how it changed their lives and the lives of their families.  

Today we weren’t the special guests sitting in chairs at the front while others sit on benches or the dirty ground. Today was about the children, children who need our love and support…. and I’ll try and keep the tears and frustration and heartbreak moments for when I get home and reflect on this experience, because I don’t think for one minute this soft English woman going back to her easy comfortable life really has a clue about the suffering and pain I see behind people’s eyes. 

And on a very different note – not surprisingly everyone round here wants pork for supper tonight. Some of us may even be lucky enough to get it….