Education and an Education

I'd like to post a few pictures and a few comments about a school we visited on Pemba, although truthfully I'm still processing my thoughts on the encounter.  Our friend Kombo Bakar was kind enough to set up a school visit for us on Pemba during our trip in March, and Steve thought it would be a good idea to bring coloring books and crayons for the students.  The kids trooped in wearing, no doubt, their finest clothes, on what I later figured out was an off-day for them.  They were completely lovely and sang a song for us, and then the two sides stood there staring at each other in an uncomfortable silence.  I got down on my hands and knees and shook hands with them and asked them questions, and eventually it broke the ice a bit and we delivered our gifts.  And then we left.  Back on the bus I was overcome by a  brief crying jag.  I knew there would be poverty - and it's not as if in my travels around the world I haven't seen a lot worse - but it is still disconcerting to come face to face with it, especially in this case where the teachers were trying so hard with so limited resources.  So, there's always that frustration.  In the end, however, I guess I have to also be honest enough to admit a more personal issue - I just felt like such a tool.  It was almost as if the entire thing was set up to make us as privileged white folks from the US feel better about ourselves.  We breeze in, drop off a few coloring books featuring pictures of happy well-fed American kids, snap a few pictures to chronicle our concern, and then get back on the bus.  It felt decidedly onanistic.  That said, I guess I need to take the longer view of it.  By talking to the kids I know that many of them found our time at the school to be a transformative experience, and who knows what plants will grow from the seeds sewn that day.  For me - and I know for Steve as well - it has led us to think of much more substantive ways that we might help those kids.  We're already planning our next trip back, and part of that will be to find ways to give them something more crayons and coloring books.

The school sign.  I think there were well over a hundred kids in a variety of  pre-school.

Some of the kids getting ready to sing a song for us.  There picture is more than a bit metaphoric.

And off to the bus.  I'm sorry if this post has been so pessimistic, because I do think the students were moved by the experience, and in some ways it was simply too huge for them to process more gracefully.  I don't think I handled it that well, and I hardly have the excuse of inexperience.

Two of the 99 Names of God from Islam, which were written on paper plates and affixed to the walls.  I've blogged about this image before.  Suffice it to say that all of us should be driven by kindness and justice, and in doing so maybe we can make the lives of these kids much better.