African JAG

Realities Of The Children I

“AFRICAN WIND has counted its 12th essay. A year from the first.
Touching the vast land of Africa for the very first time in 1994, and since then, I’ve visited 12 African countries for over 30 times, learning a lot of things on each & every visit. The fact that I was able to experience the essentials of “to live” which I probably couldn’t have understood what it really means if I was just sitting on a study desk, will be tremendously meaningful to the rest of my life. Especially after I established African JAG, I met a lot of children in Africa, and was taught countless things from them. On this article, I would like to share a few of what I’ve? learned from the children.

Smiles Of The Children

Every time I visit Africa, I’m amazed by the shining smiles of the children and their power to live, and return home receiving lots of strength from them. No matter how worn-out their clothes are, no matter how skinny they are, I feel an outstanding “power” from how they run around on bare feet, bubbling with energy. There are lots of children who don’t live with their parents. There are lots that can’t go to school too. Even if they haven’t had any meal that day, when eyes meet, they respond with a smile. If I take a walk in the village, lot of little hands try to grab my hands. Even without a mutual language, there are things you could mutually share through smiles. And every time I encounter such moment, I think hard what can be done to avoid losing these children’s smiles.
Lots of African countries are dependent on advanced countries. Lots of politicians that could care less about everything as long as they could eat their steaks. Authorities that try to solve everything by force. Villagers that only tell lies. Hands reach out to you saying “please, please”…. Made me fed up for I don’t know how many times. “It’s your own problem, isn’t it!?”…I couldn’t stop myself from shouting at them. I tell myself, “I’m never gonna come to this land again.” Then you see the children. With faceful of smiles that rescue me out of such state. That’s why I keep coming back to Africa.

Give Me Condoms!!

When you drive down the village with a car, children starts to shout out to you “give me condoms!!” from every where. “What is going on…?” I didn’t know what was happening for a moment. But you could see from children’s faces that they’re extremely serious. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked. They told me they’re going to make a soccer ball out of condoms.African children love football. No matter which country you visit in Africa, children are kicking balls, barefooted. As you could guess, only a limited amount of children are able to touch a real soccer ball. So if they have one, they keep it and treasure it even if the top coat is peeling off & the whole ball is worn-out.
Yeas ago, when I went to a refugee camp, I had a chance to lay my hands on a ball made of binding leaves that doesn’t bounce at all. Definitely not suited for football. That’s why I started to play catch instead. Children laughed at me. But this time round, the ball is made of condoms. They put 2 condoms to make it a strong 2-ply, blow air into it to a certain size, make a balloon, and cover it with 5 plastic bags from the stores. Then they bind it with strings in crisscross, check the shape, and done. This ball really bounces well. All the children in poor villages play football with this ball. How creative. They are a type of children I like!! But…is it right to let such situation be? I just had to think twice this time. Because the reality of the situation is that children are making soccer balls with condoms when too many adults are not using condoms, get infected by AIDS to the point their country’s existence is in serious danger….

I Want To Go To School…

In poor villages of Africa, a lot of children cannot go to school, being told to work, and baby sit to help the family instead.
Boys help farms and fishing. Girls’ job is mainly keeping houses and baby sit. “Helping the family and neighbors,” as if to say kids helping their moms & dads in advanced countries, is actually a softened way of saying it. What they do is “labor.”
They are told to work from dawn til night fall, come back to their houses and sleep like logs. They obviously have no time to go to school. I’ve met so many children like that. Such children tend to be underdeveloped. A 13 year-old child in Africa may look only like a 7 year-old of the advanced countries. And almost all of them would say “I want to go to school.” I don’t think that majority of the children in Africa have ever seen a white, unused notebook. …I remember seeing a child in Uganda holding a notebook made of stapled used papers (such as ad flyers and back page of notebooks) sent by a class of junior high school students in Japan. He showed me the handmade notebook as if it was his lifetime treasure. Written on the notebook were ABCs…. He told me he was to graduate the primary school soon. He wanted to go on to secondary school, but he had just lost his mother, and his father left him. There was no way he could move on to secondary school. “I want to study…” he looked at me with his straightforward eyes.

Because These Goes To The Stores…

Despite the huge amount of fish being caught, these fish rarely feed the children who helped to fish. “Because these goes to the stores to be sold…” A small boy uttered.When I visited a village in a draught, I saw children dry-roasting several dozen of corn grains with an aluminum pan. That was their dinner. You could obviously catch fish in that village too. But the children are always hungry. The children told me, “being fat is a proof of being rich.”
Back in 1994, the realities of Africa were totally unbelievable to me, being born & raised in the materially civilized country of Japan. These people born and live on the same planet, in the same era, and they’re in a totally different world. But these are all the realities they live in. I felt being betrayed by someone I trusted all my life up until then. And since then, I continue to make visits to the continent of Africa.
…But there are thoughts that cross my mind a lot recently. In my country, which is supposed to be the top of the material civilization, news such as “parent killers,” “child killers,” “suicides,” “hikikomori (children & adults that shuts oneself in their rooms & never come out for years),” “ijime (mainly schoolmate abuse),” “corruption affairs of politicians,” and “money-smeared cases” are being broadcasted on the telly every single day. Something’s wrong. People must be mentally ill, is the only reason I could think of. When I return home, my heart gets darken, gloomy. I’ve never felt such way while I’m in Africa. I wonder, which world is happier?
Africa has problems piled up mountains high. You can’t figure out where to start from. Although there are problems that the causes are clear to see. So such problems should be able to make progress into the direction of solutions if they have the proper acknowledgement, ideas, and a little help, although they may need a certain amount of time. But with the problems that my country carries, considering the fact that it looks future-bright from outside, the darkness may be much deep-rooted and grave.
I remember when we invited the children of a drum master and a dance master from Africa to one of the “African Market Cafe” event we were doing every summer, we tried to have them meet with the Japanese children of the same age group. It was entrance-free, and anyone was welcome, so lots of adults were there as well. A lot of the Japanese children were those who stopped going to their schools & so-called “hikikomori” children. They are listeners of the radio show I used to host back then, they came to see us from all over Japan. At first, the Japanese children were so bad in communicating with others, made me extremely worried. But as they started to play drums together, the Japanese children started to smile, and at the end, they were laughing aloud. Of course, none of them speaks any African language. They used body language instead, and even exchanged addresses & took pictures together…. There were even children who came to see the African boys everyday throughout the whole period of African Market Cafe. They became open amongst themselves as well, most of the listener children who didn’t talk to each other at all, became friends as well, and spoke a lot to each other. Looking at them, I remember thinking, this type of thing is what’s lacking & needed. Instead of forcefully trying to open up their closed hearts, music, dance, art and smiles…these things can do the work much more naturally. What save the hearts of the Japanese people that are being eaten up by the “darkness” may be the bubbling, bright smiles of the children in poor villages of Africa.

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