Children

Written on 11.13.14 at 7:41 PM.

Having an adorable, ridiculous, loving two year old to come home to really makes my day. Today my m’e’ told me that she saw other Baithaopi (volunteers) walking on the road and Kabello ran up yelling “MPHO!!”, even though I wasn’t with them. White people? Must be Mpho. I get it.

            She’s also a testament that developmentally, two year olds everywhere are largely the same, independent of culture. She stubbornly refuses to sit on a blanket or pillow when sitting at the kitchen table, and so is eye-level with the table, which makes eating kind of difficult. But I think she likes getting papa or yogurt or whatever all over her, because afterward she licks food off her hands with a big smile, clearly basking in the experience. I stayed home from training on Monday to recover from having diarreah all weekend, and my M’e brought her in my room to visit. She hopped up on my bed, sat on my stomach and looked me right in the eye, her grin showing bits of the Russian (hot dog) she held in her left hand, her eyes gleaming. A few weeks ago, we were all eating dinner while Kabello cruised around the kitchen floor on her belly, almost like she was swimming, giggling her so-cute-its-almost-cartoonish laugh. Who knows what kind of swimmer she’d be if there was easy access to any body of water here. The word in Sesotho for funny is Qabola (click at the beginning), and I tell her she’s Qabola every single day.

            But like all children here, she’s way independent. Not just in her skill set-feeding herself, carrying her little chair around, speaking (we’re at about the same level of Sesotho, which is great), but in her freedom. Last Saturday morning we were all eating breakfast on the little wall in front of the kitchen, and Kabello spills or pours out her coffee (yes. She drinks coffee) on my M’e. And of course there are many different parenting styles and family situations in the U.S., but no West Mt. Airy parent that I know would react by saying “Oh Kabello, enough. Just go to Ntabisang (the neighbor girl) Bye bye.” And she and Tlu Ke Sang, the 8 year old, went happily.

            Last Sunday, Thabo and Brittany and Jordan took a little walk through the pine forest next to the school where we do our training. It leads to this amazing donga (super deep ravine), with rocks and grassy, sheep covered hills on either side, and it was so nice just to walk in the pines. At some point we were sitting on some rocks, chatting, when this small figure in the distance starts yelling to us “lumela, lebitso le hau o mang”. It takes us awhile to even hear her (though I assumed before she got closer that it was a boy, since they are most often the ones out herding/chillin with the animals while they graze). We start to answer her questions, still yelling, barely able to see her or hear what she’s saying, because she refuses to get closer. Then she just yells “ARE YOU HAPPY???!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!” It was really the best, sitting on these rocks overlooking grassy hills, having a child screaming to inquire about our happiness. We were laughing about the whole situation for a while after that.

And today, as usual, kids were peering in through the windows at our language class. And while we were standing outside, getting ready to walk to the hub for training, they stand and stare. I’d say thirty or more kids just standing in a big group, staring at us, not saying a word.  I get it-we’re new and different. Five weeks may seem like a long time to us, long enough to get used to seeing the Americans. But I guess not. Sometimes I wonder what they are thinking: “Better watch and see what weird thing they do next! They’ve already sat on the stoop in skirts and spoken Sesotho and drunken coffee and eaten so many cookies! What do they look like when they stand up? What do they have in those backpacks? What are they saying? Why do they speak so fast? Why is their skin so white?” (Not every volunteer is white, but everyone in my village is.) I don’t know enough Sesotho yet to carry on a conversation, so the only thing to do is laugh and change locations. One thing is for sure, I’m going to learn as much from these kids as they’ll learn from me, both in and out of the classroom.

Kabello le bohobe