The Children

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This is a post that should have probably written weeks ago. It is a post I have dreaded. How do I describe these experiences? What do I say? Do I have the right to tell this story? Do have the skill to tell it in it’s entirely? Where is the truth, would I recognized it? I have avoided this posting because it demands context, but not justification, simply context. I have postponed this posting for weeks in attempt to gain some of this context. But I am beginning to wonder if I have the ability to separate between the reality that my eyes see and perception that my prejudices distort.

I am reminded of a quote from a book I have recently read on this trip:

“…We have no choice but to see the world through the constraints of our own perceptions- through our individual experience, awareness, knowledge, and personal limitations our senses, of which the exact combination of, no one else who has ever lived throughout the span of our history could possibly share. We are alone in the world that we experience, prisoners to the way we see it…. This is why there things inside of us that we never share: because a part of us recognize that even if they were spoken we would be the only ones who could understand them. The quiet memories of our childhood, the kindnesses that we never had the courage to care out, the wild dreams and aspirations, the sordid sexual fantasies, the doubt, the hate, the jealousy, the nightmares. We hold these things inside in place no one else can see, and not necessarily because they are secrets, but because they are facets of our being that, outside the air of our perceptual prisons, are unfathomable, indecipherable, meaningless to anyone else. The silences we choose are the echoes of our solitude. As social creatures we have spent thousands of years together trying to hide truths of this inescapable solitude and depending on the people we flock to and understanding them are worlds apart; and also happen to be completely unrelated.” ~ Mark Levarato Veracity.

Lengthy and prescriptive but it frames my current perceptions and its ability to collect truth. So what story do I tell? What context have I gained in a month to objectivity tell this story? I feel as if I need to spoon-feed you this reality; partially to save them from your judgment, but more so to disguise my own.

Do I tell you that my heart is warmed by 32 pairs bright, gentle, eyes that eagerly await my arrival every day. Do I exclude the fact that I as they crane their necks back to reach up to me, a complete stranger for reassurance, I actually avoid looking them directly in the eyes when I hold them. Not because of spite but because I recognize the golden hue of their sclera, Jaundice from liver failure due too many cycles through fed-starvation states, acidosis, and other organ failures. Should I tell you of the dirty streets wrought of roving dogs that barely cling to life. How I took my lunch breaks to buy food local teinda to feed them all until I realized that the onlookers viewed at my actions as wasting precious food, while their own families were starving. Do I tell you of how attentive my students are despite being surrounded by deafening, uproarious, noise from the city; a distraction so difficult to ignore that it required the sum of my all my mental constitution in order to teach them. Do I omit the 4 year old girl with the fresh laceration across her cheek who says her mother struck her with a stick this morning? How not I have noticed all the children with very evident scares on their faces and about their scalps. Do I begin with the obvious dermatitis, probably a communicable fungal infection or something worse, that seems to speckle and interrupt the otherwise beautiful wheat brown skin of my children. Do say I proudly say I hug and carry them all regardless but exclude the fact that I know whatever it is, I can probably get it treated back in America if it happen to show up on my own skin.

I think of the anecdote from the movie La Haine. They tell of a man who falls from a skyscraper. In order to reassure himself during his fall he repeats, “ So far, So good. “ He continues to say, “So far, so good.” Every flight he falls he says, “So far, so Good” because it is not about how you fall, it is about how you land. I feel as if they children are falling and I am the voice that says “ So far, so good,” gently reassuring them, giving them praise with stickers and hugs, “So far, so Good.” Unfortunately I am here only for 1st grade class for a single month. When I leave someone else will step in and chant “So far, so Good” but we won’t see how these children land. We get to pull the cords on our parachute and float away to our respective countries well before they come close to the ground. I don’t know maybe someone will place a safety net below and catch these children. Or perhaps the children will be brilliant and learn to fly, thereby saving themselves. I like that idea the most. But this is a really long fall; even I can’t see the bottom. But it is my time to get off this ride and pass the chant on to another volunteer. “ So far, so Good.”

Today, I was told that a 13 year old girl would not be returning to school next week because she was told by her father to go to the city to find a husband. A man obviously not 13 who can take care of her. Here is that necessary context; the layers of understanding behind that decision, I have yet to gain and why I have been afraid to tell this story. I don’t want to justify the actions at the same time I don’t want to cheapen the wisdom of it either. In a way this is her safety net. How will this 13 girl land; in lap of an older man or on the streets. I don’t know that is next week, now “So far, So Good”.

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