Children in East Africa
live very different lives than their
American counterparts.
For example:
They usually live in two room homes (a living room and a bedroom; the kitchen area and latrines are located in other huts outside) – either in a row house that doubles as a store front or in a mud hut.
Every day, they are sent to the village well to fetch water.
They are also sent out to gather firewood (with machetes!).
They help prepare meals, like by cutting up fruit (this is a delicious jackfruit!).
They are also often responsible for killing and plucking the
chicken for dinner.
They are expected to take care of their younger siblings,
often carrying them around strapped to their backs.
Or dragging them around.
They play with different
kinds of toys
kinds of toys
(often reclaimed from the trash heaps: plastic bags and bottles, bottle caps, tires, rocks, rubber bands, rocks, and sticks, etc).
Notice that they are often barefoot and wearing old, ragged clothing.
Many of the children come from polygamous homes (meaning that the father has multiple wives), so there can be as many as 50 children in one family. I am not exaggerating – Africans we have met have boasted that their women start reproducing within the first year of marriage (usually they are still teenagers), and they have an average of eight children each.
The children in the above right photo were our neighbors this month in Uganda. They are all half-siblings around the same age (3-5 years old). The keyboard didn’t have batteries, so they really enjoyed listening to my i-pod. We also made music together using our mouths and beating our rhythms with our hands, feet, and sticks. Check out Isaac’s scrap paper hat – darling!
They may not have much, but the children we saw and met were full of joy. They got as excited about doing somersaults in the dirt as they did introducing us to their world as they did groping a car as they did just seeing us white people walk by on the street – they yell, “Mzungu! How are you?!”
God bless the children!
