African Wind
Chapter18
Charmed by Africa The Children
Why do I keep going back & make visits to Africa? The more I go, the more reality I see, and I actually get fed up with a lot of things. Nevertheless, I continue to visit Africa. Out of such simple question that came to my mind, I would like to write about the things about Africa that appeals to me. And the first chapter of it will have to be…the smiles of the children.
Charmed by Africa - The Children
What’s most appealing about Africa, is the people that live there. And the appealing elements are all within the everyday lives of the local people that you rarely meet in a package tour.Especially those smiles of the children!! No matter how poor their village is, children shower me with their smiles. They are so amiable, can’t see even a hint of precaution. I can see they must have nothing that makes them feel any danger. Drive around town, and they’ll wave their hands wide in the air & greet “Hello! Hello!!” Walking in a village, they shyly come to you & softly hold your hand. Another child takes my other hand. When more of them try to hold hands with me, a fight arose.
They resolved the situation by having the older ones to hold my pointing & middle fingers, and small ones to hold my ring & pinky fingers.Boys are all so bubbling with energy. They love football & kung-fu, their latest trend is to go to this DVD hut & studying various kung-fu skills. This DVD hut, don’t know who initially have thought of it, but has turned out to be a flourishing business everywhere. In Malawi, you could watch DVD at 5MWK in these huts. Children help their parents & collect plastic bottles to earn their money to go there every day. What they show are mainly kung-fu movies. That’s why people like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan & Jet Li are their stars, and they try their stars’ tricks & skills to each other.
Born with high physical abilities, the moves of African children are so sharp, they don’t look they’re merely imitating what they have just seen in the movies…and strong!! If they start training & building up their bodies, I probably won’t be able to beat them….Girls love jump ropes & dancing. But girls basically have to help their mothers at home, so they can’t go out to play as much as the boys do. This is something that always comes up in mind whenever I visit Africa, but the status that women are placed at is too cruel. Perhaps it’s something that starts since they are small. I truly hope that in a close future, all girls are able to attend higher schools just like the boys are….
African children are tough & strong. They know how to live. How to live through. They know that to survive today, leads them to tomorrow. That’s why no matter what difficult situation they are placed into, they don’t give up. And no matter what hardships they are going through, they have smles on their faces. Their smiles are giving energy even to the adults living in the worst poverty. If smiles totally disappear from the children, what’s left with them is only despair.
Most of the children in advanced countries don’t have to worry about their food. They could go to school.
They have lots of clothes to wear. They don’t have to drink muddy water. If they’re sick, parents will take them to hospitals. And they think that’s natural. But it isn’t, not even imaginable, for the children in Africa.
Although unlike the children in Africa, you can’t witness any face-ful of smile amongst Japanese children. Instead, they constantly check the looks on faces of the adults, and constantly compare themselves with others. If something goes wrong, they blame others… …something is extremely wrong.
African children have the ability to feel happy about everything. It’s about time for all of us to realize that children’s hearty smiles are the strongest energy. In order to spread such awareness, what are needed to be done? How should we share & spend our time with our children? …whatever the answer would be, materialism is definitely not the answer.
African JAG Project / Noriko ASANO
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