Before we left on the World Race, we asked for blog suggestions from friends. At the time, we were asked to look for different types of toys around the world. Even though I thought it sounded like a good and somewhat easy task to undertake, I’ve realized, especially this past month, that kids we know personally do not always live the same as the kids we encounter around the world. I expected all the kids we meet to have toys. I mean, why wouldn’t they? Kids play. Kids are innocent and have parents who work to take care of them, so that they can have fairly careless lives.
I have not seen the same principal in the families we have met. For example, the kids we have encountered in Haiti do not play much. At the jobsite, we meet kids coming out of school. They go to school to learn and to study and then go home to help their parents. After school, I have met ki
ds at the water spout filling up water jugs to carry home for their families. Their lives are not carefree. They worry about water and food. Those needs are so basic; I would have never worried about these basic needs as a kid. Also, we have had kids on the jobsite work alongside us to shovel gravel, because at the end of the day they may receive food for themselves and possibly their family for that day.
There are no toys to be seen. They play music with the empty coke bottles; the kids play in the ocean. One of the interns at a local orphanage said that the kids behave the best when they know there are notebooks in the store, not dolls or army men or legos. They know if they are good that week, they might get a notebook with their earned credit. Why did I expect to see toys in countries in which the people are starving for more education? It’s my normal, I guess, and my kid(s) will most likely have toys and food and a comfortable bed to sleep. The normal here is for kids to play with what we would call trash.
As I process this reality, I have thought that there have to be kids in the states that have not given the benefit of their innocence and a carefree life like I was given. Because they don’t have money or possibly the parents, they go searching for food or attention or love. God calls us to take care of those that cannot care for themselves. I have not been seeking them out, but isn’t that my job? With all the comforts of life I have been given and the needs that have been met in my life by loving parents and jobs, what could I do when I return? What an impact I could truly make?
