Meet Ayanda Boy, I tried to upload a picture but the wifi isn’t strong enough 🙁 Anyways, picture him as you will…
He is 10 years old, (going on 17) and going into grade 5 at El Shaddai primary school. He loves to play cards, and he loves to win. The worst is that he never cheats so I couldn’t even blame him when I would lose – which was about 80% of the time.
He’s a great dancer even though he would never tell you so (check Facebook for a video of it). He’s sweet and honest and loves to be hugged.
Being his buddy was both amazing and challenging for me this month. One thing that was challenging was that he ran away from me a lot. I mean, who could blame him, people come in and out of his life so often that I can’t imagine how hard it would be to become my friend, knowing I would leave in just a few short weeks. I honestly rarely had the patience or desire to chase him – partly because he’s faster than me even when I tried. For the first week or two, whenever Ayanda wasn’t running away from me we were playing cards together which – as one of my favourite hobbies – I was not opposed to.
One afternoon though, Ayanda got really mad at me and refused to talk to me. He ran from me but not in a playful way at all. What had happened was that I was getting my hair done by the teenage girls that morning and it took until almost 1600h when I had told Ayanda that I would meet him at 1500h to play cards. When I finally got to him he was watching Batman with the other boys so I went back to my room to rest for a while. When I finally went back up to meet him he was not happy with me at all.
Immediately in my head I tried to justify my end of the story. I thought, “it’s not my fault that the girls took so long to do my hair” and “if he wasn’t watching a movie with the other boys I would have hung out with him”. When realistically, it wasn’t his fault at all, or the teenage girls’. It was mine. My mind flashed back to all the times as a child that adults would make excuses for things and how much I really didn’t care about their excuses, I was just hurt that they didn’t fulfill their word.
For 45 minutes Ayanda sat in my lap wordless, not interested in talking at all. We sat in this horrible, awkward bitter lack of conversation. I put him on the ground facing me and poured my heart out to him for a few minutes in apology. Let me tell you, it’s a lot harder to apologize to a ten year old than it seems. I felt like such a goon but I also couldn’t stand the idea of my little buddy feeling let down by me.
After a few minutes of getting honest with Ayanda, myself and God, Ayanda shushed me with his finger to my mouth and said “Remote Car and nutty chocolate. For Christmas, that’s what I want” and he hugged me, took me by the hand and led me to the table to play cards. I laughed out loud. It honestly felt so freakin’ weird to be led by a little boy in submission after practically begging for his friendship.
The kid knows where he stands in the behavior that he expects to see in a friend.
Literally overnight Ayanda went from turning his face from me while he ran from me to turning his bright little sparkly eyes toward me as he ran toward me. Apologizing to Ayanda was extremely challenging and awkward and felt really silly but I wouldn’t in a million years trade it for the little bit of my pride that I lost in the process. The fruit that came from my apology and vulnerability with my little friend was so rewarding and fantastic for our friendship and it taught me an extremely valuable lesson for when I have little tots of my own: get real with your kid. You’ve taught him the difference between right and wrong and you darn-well better show him what it looks to own up to your own wrong-doings if you expect him to do the same.
