Tubs11
It will be fine, kids are resilient and will bounce back. I say this as someone who's teacher was absolutely useless when I was 9/10 and I turned out fine. It's exhausting but summer will be here before you know it and that first day they go back will feel like a holiday/massage“
Agree. My mum fundraised for many years for a Masai village.
When we’ve felt defeated at various points in the past year, she has talked to me about her experiences in 5 countries on the continent over several decades. Her last visit was 6 years ago. It may have changed in the villages since then of course but I don’t imagine by a great deal.
Millions of children walk upwards (sometimes WAY upwards) of an hour each way to school, many with ill fitting, donated shoes, still many with no shoes at all. When they arrive, they study in temperatures of 40+ degrees in what most of us would consider a glorified garden shed. Many schools without sponsors are using maps/texts at least 30 years out of date and the kids use slateboard and chalk because they can’t access paper, pencils and rarest of all pens. They eat a can of Maize porridge, root vegetable or cows/goats milk/blood midday depending on their locality, relieve themselves in latrines in the dirt before making the return journey home when the sun is still high, most schools in session 7am - noon. The children are without exception keen to attend and grateful for the opportunities their education may afford them.
When they arrive home, they’re thirsty. Thankfully, many villages now have a clean water supply but lots still don’t. If their parents don’t have fuel to boil water they risk their health every time they quench their thirst. They spend the afternoon doing family chores which include in Masai villages herding goats and precious cattle. Every year, in 2021, multiple young children lose their lives to lion attack. Not Rice-Burroughs but reality, now. Come evening, the few that have the tools (rare and it’s it’s books) study by intermittent electricity, mobile phone light (astonishingly to me, Masai have cel phones but can’t generally afford to access the internet) kerosene or paraffin lamps with their attendant health issues, or even fire light (if their locality allows access to natural fuel).
They sleep on a mat on a dirt floor, under a mosquito net if they are very fortunate, before rising at 5am to start the process over again. This is their life, year after year after year.
I have never visited the continent, frankly I don’t think I could handle it, which I’ve told my mum again and again. She tells me that in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia and Mozambique the children are the happiest, upbeat and open to the world children she has ever met.
Now, I think that kids (anyone, really) are still living like that, now, in their millions, is diabolical. I’m certainly not saying that what our kids are going through now is therefore of no consequence, because it’s not what we or they are used to or, rightly, expect.
But my mum’s point is that, horrendous though all of that is by our standards, many children in all of these countries go on, in spite, to become doctors, scientists, teachers, lawyers, writers, artists, musicians, actors .......
African children’s lives, barring miracles, will go on like this for probably decades. Ours won’t because this is an exceptional time in their lifetimes. When this is over, counselling and help will be on hand and it will be widely recognised what the past two (hopefully!) year’s cohorts have been through. Allowances will be made and we are, thankfully, in a society where they will recover.
Sorry for the sermon: it’s worth thinking about though (my mum says 😁)