Joy And "Pop"

Hungry, poor, orphaned, yet still hopeful. Joyful even! I’m still trying to process my experience today. Am I feeling sorrow for them? Pity? Only a thoroughly chilled heart could ignore the emotions wrought from the eyes of a hungry child who’s lost one or both of their parents to AIDS. But there is a lot more to their story than the sad headlines that precede them. It only took a makeshift game of duck-duck-goose and a meal shared on the dusty floor of the classroom for me to break through their numbed exterior and see the children still living inside.

Children wear their emotions on their sleeve. Strange, quirky looks greeted us when the kids first arrived to the weekly after school “drop-in center” program my mom has helped engineer. It’s weird enough that a white woman shows up each week to help the local youth and adult volunteers cook, feed and play games with them, but now it seems the white woman has multiplied!

We joined my mom to assist with feeding the kids, and to learn about the program she orchestrates, but it didn’t take long before the event turned into a festive multicultural party. We played games, snapped pictures, danced and sang together. I even taught them the Hookem’ Horns hand gesture (picture about 40 little 5-10 year olds running around flashing their Hookem’ Horns and singing “The Eyes Of Texas” – yes… that’s my legacy in Africa…).

The afternoon concluded with the meal which consisted of cornmeal porridge “pop”, mashed potatoes, a thin tomato stew and two links of sausage, all generously donated from the Afrikaans community in Bethal. While nutritionally mediocre according to Western standards, the meal provided one of the few significant meals for the kids that week. It also presented an opportunity, and challenge for me to eat with my hands… not exactly an easy task when dealing with soupy consistency foods.

The kids have it down, forming their fingers into a scoop, similar to a Japanese soup spoon, then using their thumb to shovel the food into their mouths. I must have looked silly to them with my feeble attempt to emulate their technique, resulting instead with lips, chin, shirt and fingers covered in tomato sauce and cornmeal mush.