A couple of friends conduct an enrichment class for refugee kids at the Santa Rosa library in Tucson. Most of the kids are about 7-10 years old, and belong to refugee families from North and East Africa-- countries like Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. The idea is to "fly" them to a different country each week, serve food from the region and do some activities related to the culture. This week we took them to India.
In one of our sessions, we showed them the rickshaw, and told them how kids in India travel to school in the rickshaw. We told them how school kids club up at the back, how they hang their bags on the outside, and how they sit on each others' laps on their way to school.
One kid in the group was very touched by this. She stood up and asked the most innocent question ever -- a question that none of us had an answer to -- "Why isn't there room for everyone?"
I live in a country where the buses are never full; where everyone drives to work in their own car-- alone. And I can see that there is room for everyone in this world-- maybe we just need to take the initiative to "make" room for everyone. Maybe we need to just take our little share and stop.
Every time I interact with children I realize that they have the ability to question things that we have learned to accept blindly. We may have lost the ability to change the world, but let not the spark in these children die. We need to ensure that they don't grow up to become like us. We need to teach them how to question, not how to accept. So they can work the change in the world that we couldn't.
I don't know how though.
In one of our sessions, we showed them the rickshaw, and told them how kids in India travel to school in the rickshaw. We told them how school kids club up at the back, how they hang their bags on the outside, and how they sit on each others' laps on their way to school.
One kid in the group was very touched by this. She stood up and asked the most innocent question ever -- a question that none of us had an answer to -- "Why isn't there room for everyone?"
I live in a country where the buses are never full; where everyone drives to work in their own car-- alone. And I can see that there is room for everyone in this world-- maybe we just need to take the initiative to "make" room for everyone. Maybe we need to just take our little share and stop.
Every time I interact with children I realize that they have the ability to question things that we have learned to accept blindly. We may have lost the ability to change the world, but let not the spark in these children die. We need to ensure that they don't grow up to become like us. We need to teach them how to question, not how to accept. So they can work the change in the world that we couldn't.
I don't know how though.
7 comments:
Impossible to answer, feels like
I know...
Its important to "accept" the ways in which the world works - else the frustration can be detrimental...But not necessarily agree with it, to keep that question on the surface and never let it drown to the bottom..much like the oft repeated " I hear you, but I dont agree with it"...
In my experience, the way to keep that question burning has been being in touch with the inequality, feeling it and living it..I moved back primarily because, the question inside me was comfortably drowning..Oh well, my take!
-WG
hmm.. Now that's why I say Lisa Simpson for President! Children are unalloyed. Well most of them.
to say it was a beautiful post would be an insult so i am leaving it there...
i think we have been trained to run so fast that things around us are hardly visible to us. i have been doing the same for so long now...
the answer to the question lies in the feeling of belonging. we don't just feel that the world outside our sphere of belonging, belongs to us.
may be this is one things we as a society can train ourselves into. a training program as a part of curricula could help to absorb this feeling.
this could help in solving many problems in this world....
Very intriguing post!
A good question, but we still have no answers. You live in a world where there is space for everyone. At times too much of it. But I live in a world where people are brought together due lack of space. And sometimes that creates a bond that no amount of luxury could. I am not saying that this is the way. But I am just saying that it's not too bad. Of course, good if it improves, more so, if we can do that, but one should never forget the positives of today, coz someday it will become the "good old days".
P.S :Some of the best moments I spent with you were squashed in a bus:)
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