Sunday, August 28, 2011

I Want To Tell You A Story About A Boy. . .

. . . whose name is not really William.

More about Phylis and my meeting with the Ember staff and wholistic educators later, but this story has been on my mind since I heard it from them on Wednesday.

On Monday we watched performances from over a hundred kids, some in singing and dancing groups, some performing poetry alone. A number of them really stuck out in my mind, and one was a young boy doing a very dramatic performance of a poem in Kiswahili about the sad devastation of AIDS. Arms flying, voice and face persuasive, even without Phylis's translation streaming softly in my ear I could feel the passion.

At the end of the session we attempted to collect the pencil stubs we'd handed out for a particularly chaotic but effective activity. About half walked out the gate with the children who were hiding them in their clothing. But William came up to me afterwards and requested a pencil. He said that his teachers required a number 2 pencil, and he didn't have one. I thanked him for being honest and not just taking one though he clearly needed one, and searched through the bag of broken pencils to find him a whole one. He beamed, thanked me, and left.

Fast forward to Wednesday, when Phylis and I met with the Ember staff and volunteers who work in the community. Harrison, whom you'll meet in a later blog, said that one boy had particularly touched him, and shared his story. In fact, William isn't an "Ember grandchild", which means that his grandparent didn't register him with the program. He's an orphan in the community who came to Ember's attention when he joined two different speech and drama youth groups run by Ember volunteers. They meet in school holidays, like now. William goes to one that meets in the morning (I think Judith's) , walks quite a distance to one in a different location run by Sarah, and shows up there to learn different poems and act in different plays.

William is a 16 year old who is just finishing 8th grade for the second time. I thought he was about 10 or 12. Harrison says it's because of the abuse and malnourishment he has suffered at the hands of his stepmother. His mother is alive, but seriously mentally ill, and his father works as a watchman far away, is only home occasionally, and takes the side of his new wife and children over William.

William was forced to fetch water and look for firewood, and do most of the chores around the house. His half-sisters were fed first. Once, his (own!) father burned all of his books and school papers in a fit of anger because William did well on his exams and his half-sisters didn't. The family wouldn't buy him supplies like pencils for school, though they did let him go to school. (Cinderella, anyone? I wish this story were more rare here.)

Amazingly, though he had little time to study while it was still light, William did very well on his 8th grade national exams last year, which are critical for getting into a good, or indeed any, high school. There was no money for school fees, however, and so he has chosen to re-take 8th grade in an attempt to keep going with his education.

William was recently forced out of the home completely, and is now living with kind neighbors, who are also very poor. The husband is a boda boda driver, which means he makes his living pedaling passengers around on his bike. Let me assure you this family is poor! The wife farms their small plot, and they have several children. They make sure that they always have enough paraffin for the lantern so that William and their other children can study. But . . . there's still no money for high school.

Harrison told me about the pencil that I had given William. Someone told Harrison that William dropped it on the way home. And started crying. A sixteen year old boy, crying over a lost pencil. Who has done everything he could think of to be successful. He did find the pencil after searching.

I'm not sure that's exactly a happy ending.










- and for my next life. . .

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