WoHeLo Luncheon 2010 – EVERY CHILD IS OUR FUTURE
“Some people!” I mean, really, “What’s the matter with people?!” And my personal favorite, “Some people’s kids!”?
You know how it is - you walk into a restaurant and slide into a booth. As you are scooting to the inside seat, your hand glides across a sticky lump under the lip of the table edge. Ach, you think as you pull your hand away – “Some people’s kids!”
Or, you stand in line for half an hour and when you get to the front of the line, the person who is supposed to serve you is chatting with the person serving the next window. She doesn’t look up at your arrival for what seems like 5 minutes. When she does, she acts as if you are an annoyance. You shake your head as you are leaving, thinking, “What is the world coming to?” or “Some people’s kids!”
It is the idea behind these phrases that I find compelling. The statements, “what’s the matter with people?”, “some people” and “some people’s kids”, have inherent in them the assumption that “my people” and “my kids” would never behave that way. It’s always “other” people and “other” people’s kids.
So, how do we create a society and a world where every child reaches her potential and does those things that are best for all of us, including working hard, taking his job seriously, and respecting others – and NOT, of course, including sticking bubble gum on the undersides of tables. Personally, I think we have only one option. All kids must become “my kids” – then no one will be “other people’s kids”.
I’ve spent a significant portion of the last two years in Ghana in West Africa. A business partner and I are starting a business renting clean, safe, re-chargeable batteries to people in rural areas who have no electricity. We live and work in the capital city of the Eastern Region – called Koforidua. Behind the building that serves as both our pilot branch offices and our residence is a compound house – a narrow band of buildings around the outside of a 50 ft. square common courtyard. In the rooms around the compound are about 10 or 15 one or two room residences and over 40 children under the age of 13.
In the villages where we do most of our work, there are also many children - and most interesting to me - many varieties of family units. We recently did a market survey in several villages, in which one of the pieces of data we gathered was the number of people per household. The range was anywhere from 5 to 20 household members - with an average just over 8. The interesting thing is that, on average, 5 of these 8 are over the age of 15 – adult or nearly adult. Virtually every child in Ghana has 4 or more adults or older responsible children in the house with them, often including aunts, uncles, grandparents, or cousins.
In Twi, the most common language in Ghana, in addition to the official language, English – there is no word for cousin - and the words for aunt and uncle are rarely used except as a polite form of address for non-family adults of one’s parents’ age. When I first arrived I was thoroughly and completely baffled during introductions. It was a little like the old Bob Newhart Show – the one with “my brother, Daryl and my other brother, Daryl”. A man would introduce his children to us – and only later would I learn that only two were really his sons and daughters, in the way that we think of it. The others would be the children of his or his wife’s brothers and sisters or even the children of a cousin. Nephews and Nieces are all called Sons and Daughters when living in the same household as the adult. Similarly, Aunts and Uncles are called Mothers and Fathers. There is simply no concept of difference between a father and an uncle, or a mother and an aunt, for instance, as far as their roles in a child’s life.
Every morning when I’m in Ghana, I sit on the top step of the outdoor stairway to our second floor office and drink my coffee. The kids from the compound think it’s a lot of fun to hang out with the oburoni, the foreigner, of which we are about the only ones in town – well, except on Thursdays when oburonis seem to appear out of nowhere for the weekly bead market. Anyway, as the children and I sat on the step, they would periodically call down to greet an adult, usually with the one syllable “Ma” or “Da”, then wave wildly when the adult looked up to see them with the oburoni. Before long, I realized that the same child might yell down “Ma” at two or three different women at different times. It was then that I began to learn, from the children, the meaning of family in Ghana.
Two of my kids are sisters, Precious, who is 6 and Pamela, who is 13. Their father and their older brother are in London. Pamela and Precious live in the compound behind us with their Mother and Grandmother, their Mother’s Brother and his wife and two children under 5, and their Father’s younger Brother, who is also called their “Small Father”. They also call their Mother’s brother, Father, and his wife, Mother. So, in the house they have two Mothers and two Fathers only one of whom is their biological parent. Strange as it may seem to you and me, in a culture where the average income is less than $2.00 per day, where people may have to travel to find work, and where there is no daycare, this is the way families work. For the kids, there is a lot of behavioral “guidance”. I mean, that’s a lot of eyes in the backs of a lot of heads!
However, despite all the adults around, there is very little adult interaction on day-to-day development - little help with homework, no extracurricular activities to speak of, no organized sports or music, and few youth organizations or clubs. In some cases, the parents are so busy working constantly to earn a little money, carry water, and cook or wash clothes that the primary interaction with young children is bath time, which happens every morning and again in the evening. For older children, the interaction also includes teaching them to do many of the household chores and to start working to contribute to the family income.
I won’t try to speak for all children in Ghana and certainly not all of Africa, but as a result of economic conditions and the nature of daily life, my neighborhood children are hungry not only for food, but for attention, education, and anything to call their own.
It started with books - ABCs, Colors, Shapes and a few fairy tales I found in a book store, then grew with school supplies sent by friends, and later included two suitcases of shoes, books, pencils, and clothes that were given to me by many people who have read my blog an
d have been following through pictures and stories. My kids in Ghana are now wearing shoes to school that were worn by a child in Ephrata and writing with pencils from Wenatchee or Los Angeles on tablets from Holland. – And, yes, that is Pamela kissing her new pencil sharpener!And, did you notice, I use the term “my kids”? It just happened. These kids became “my kids” in my mind, I guess because I began to care about them like my own. I think all children can become “our kids” by the simple act of involvement. There was no grand event and it’s no big sacrifice. I was just there and it happened. I enjoy reading them stories, teaching them songs I learned at Camp Zanika Lache, and even playing “Go Fish” over and over - and over. It’s worth it for the simple joy of seeing Precious begin to recognize the numbers on her “Go Fish” cards instead of having to count them – every – single – time. Or, after having listened to a violin concerto on my iPod, seeing the way she closes her eyes and sways while miming the violin – every time we get to V is for Violin in the ABC book.
The thing I have learned – or maybe just remembered – is that the success of a child can often be traced to a few influential adults. And that is universal.
At the elementary school I attended in the third grade, third graders were not allowed in the section of the library designated for fourth graders and above. My teacher wanted to challenge me, so she went to the public library and got me the first Laura Ingalls Wilder book, Little House in the Big Woods. When I finished it, she returned it and got me the second book and so on through the entire series and through the entire third grade. I became Mrs. Clayton’s child and we corresponded for several years after I moved away.
When I was in sixth grade, I attended Camp Zanika Lache for the second time. I was in a cabin with about eight other girls and we planned an exciting week. Also upon arrival, I learned that twin girls that I knew from my early childhood in Leavenworth were in the cabin next door. The next day during rest hour after lunch, I went next door to visit and met the rest of their cabin. We laughed and talked and had a fun time, and the following day I visited them again during rest hour. Only this time, about half way through the hour there was a knock at the door.
It was two or three girls from my own cabin. They ceremoniously dumped my suitcase, packed with all my belongings, and my sleeping bag on the porch and said “If you like it over here so much, why don’t you move in?”
So I did. I made a big show of being totally fine with it and moved into the cabin next door. But the sense of humiliation and rejection was, as you can imagine, immense. The counselors generally took rest hour on the beach just a stone’s throw from the two cabins, so they learned of the cabin re-arrangement at the end of the hour. The counselor of the new cabin, who was only 19 at the time, took me outside by the fire pit and we had a heart to heart talk. She made it clear that what happened was not OK, but that I was OK, and that I was welcome to stay in her cabin if that was my choice. I became “her kid” – and I did stay in that cabin, however I also went backpacking with the original cabin as planned. But even beyond all that, I still know that counselor, Gail Bennett. Thirty-five years later she is as wise and loving as she was when I was 11.
In the ninth grade, I was a teacher’s aid for Chuck McHaney at Orchard Junior High. He was the chairman of the Elks scholarship committee that year and as one of my “TA jobs” he had me read every single scholarship application the Elks received. At the time I was silly enough to think he really wanted my opinion. I figured out later that he was making sure I knew what a good scholarship application looked like. I was his kid as I had been his wife, Joann’s kid – re-binding books in the Lewis & Clark Elementary School library.
Now, my mother said in my introduction that I have always been an overachiever and always earned my way to camp. That may be the way she remembers it, in the way that mothers everywhere embellish the accomplishments of their children. The truth is, though, that sales is not my strong suit. So, when my Camp Fire group decided one year that we should sell enough candy so that our entire group could attend camp for free, it was terrifying. But Lue Syria was amazing at encouraging us to set and achieve big goals and helping us to see them through. She monitored and tallied our progress every day of the three week sale and made sure that we all made it. For several of us, though, it was only because Lue reported some of the sales of the super sellers under the names of those of us who were struggling. It was a powerful lesson in teamwork and the idea that we can often accomplish far more together than alone.
These are only a few of the adult interactions that made a difference for me, and that I hope made me an adult who contributes to a sound world and a civil society for the now that is yesterday’s future.
I don’t know what today’s future holds. Ten years ago, in the year 2000, none of us knew what to expect in the coming decade. We didn’t know what our nation would face in September 2001 or what our dependence on foreign oil would cost us at the pump in 2006. We didn’t know what crises our financial system would face in 2008 or what the values of our homes would be in 2010.
It is no different today. I don’t know what challenges the coming decade will hold or any of the decades following. The only thing I do know is that today’s children will be the ones facing those challenges, analyzing their impact, and determining the course of my future. That is not a job I want to leave to “other people’s kids”.
Every child, every potential leader, every future worker whose daily efforts sustain the fabric of America and of the international community of nations is, today, my child – “my kid” – my son or daughter. Selfishly, I cannot afford to allow any child that is a potential Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Chuck McHaney, Gail Bennett, or Lue Syria to fall short of his or her potential.
To these children we are, for our own sake, obligated to give every opportunity, whether personally, or through organizations like Camp Fire. We must ensure that many adults engage in their lives, to instill:
- self-confidence and humility
- knowledge and patience
- creativity and pragmatism
- passion and compassion
These are the characteristics I hope for in my future leaders. And yet, at this moment, I have no idea exactly which children will play which roles in the foundation of tomorrow. So, wherever I am and whatever I do - for that moment, I must consider every child my own, knowing that every child is my future.
Thank you and bless you all for your involvement in your community and in the lives of children.
XO
