Let the Children Come to Me
Farnas smiles, scrunches up his nose, and nods his head whenever he can't answer a question. He doesn't find it easy to identify numbers or to give the English names for pictures of objects. (Children learn to read in English here, not in their mother tongue.) Farnas and his brother live with their grandmother. I'm not sure where his parents are. But I think their absence in his life has affected his motivation to learn.
Coraima's straight brown hair is often disheveled and her bangs hang down into her eyes. When you can get a glimpse of those eyes, they are almost always smiling long with the rest of her face. How can Coraima be so joyful? Her mother, has not received her pay from her job in the government health office in over ten months. Her father is in prison (drug related). They have no income. How are they surviving? When the teacher calls her name each morning to collect the daily two pesos (about 4 cents Canadian) which the children contribute for their healthy snack, Coraima grins and replies, "We have no money."
Laisa was not smiling yesterday morning before class. She had venom in her eyes and her arms were raised and ready to strike. Another child had done something to get her ire up. Laisa's mother was shot and killed earlier this year in a drug related incident.
Aisa and Rasmalin are sisters. Their smiles didn't come easily at first. They're only two of the family's eight visibly malnourished children. When I visited this week, a rat scurried across their unwiped table. I learned that they don't even have enough to buy rice (a sure sign of a crisis for Filipinos.) Their electricity is about to be cut off and all the children's school fees are overdue.
Monalyn's toothless grin makes it a challenge for her to make the correct sound for the letter "v". Her half closed eyes and frequent yawns belie her tiredness. She is often seen long after dark playing outside with some other children. Their bedtime comes when they drop from exhaustion. Her mother is just out of her teens and her dad was recently caught (but not arrested) for illegal dynamite fishing. No wonder Monalyn often can't concentrate in school!
These children have captured my heart. Their smiles are so precious because they seem to have so little to smile about. If it's true that "Children learn what they live", we might fear for their future. But we have an opportunity to brighten their days and give them some hope. Our daily attentions, prayers, and acts of love in the preschool can make a difference.
Kathy Yango oversees the Taytayan Learning Center
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