Lessons Learned, Again

I had an experience today that I'm still wrestling with. It's my own fault, really, and I learned a valuable lesson from it.

I took the new group of GLA students to Stormont Madabela school to continue our painting project. (Just an aside on the students: They are a much more diverse group than the first. There are about 6 Americans, 2 from London, 1 from Oman, 2 from Ghana, and 1 from Kenya. They've been asking more questions and appear a little more worldly, at least for the first 3 days. I think they'll be a fun group to work with, too.) Although I didn't want to have any local kids help us, we ended up with about a dozen or so grabbing brushes and rollers and pitching in (and many more wandering around touching the paint).

Now, that sounds like a lot of fun, until you consider we were using oil-based paint and not latex. The kids here don't understand the difference, and they don't care about getting paint all over themselves and their clothes. To make matters worse, they insist on washing it off under the faucet, which only serves to spread the paint to larger areas of their bodies. I spent about an hour cleaning hands, arms, backs (some boys took their shirts off), heads, ears, and faces with turpentine to get them halfway clean. I also had to clean off shoes, since most kids didn't change out of their school uniforms before painting.

As you can imagine, it was controlled chaos. I finally resorted to taking kids by the hand to a GLA student and pairing them up for cleaning, especially the younger kids who kept touching the calls and then themselves. I played charades with the older kids, showing them that you have to use a paper towel and wipe the paint off instead of pouring turpentine on your hands and rubbing them on your arms.

When I had gotten done with the first group of older kids, I gave a few of them bottles of water I had brought for the GLA students. This was a big mistake. All of a sudden I had 10 other boys who thought this was their reward for helping to paint, and they all wanted "spring water" too. When I told them no, that I didn't have enough for everyone, they kept on pleading and begging, some of them saying their stomachs were empty and they needed the water to fill them up. I tried to explain again that I only had 2 bottles left and it wouldn't be fair to give it to only 2 kids. That didn't work. They knew I had it and they wanted it. Case closed.

As we packed up my car, they all gathered around the trunk and continued to ask for water. I had to finally just shut the trunk lid and walk away.

They had also seen 2 bags of candy in my bags painting supplies. I had bought these to hand out to the kids today, but changed my mind when I saw how they were behaving. I didn't want to take the chance of having a mob scene at the school with only a limited supply of candy. After the GLA students had gotten into their van and left, I decided to hand out the candy, outside the school's gate, to diffuse some of the simmering hostility. I bought 200 pieces, and each kid got 3 with only a few remaining at the end. Most of the kids appreciated it, and some tried to get seconds. One of the teachers was standing by watching the kids for me and she told the returners to get back. She also told me when to stop so that no problems could develop.

I felt better when I left, thinking that I was able to salvage at least some good from a potentially bad situation. Then, as I was driving away, I got the finger (actually two fingers because he used both hands) from one of the boys who wanted water. The look on his face was a mix of anger and frustration, with a big dash of disappointment mixed in. My face probably looked the same after that, anger at myself for starting something I shouldn't have started (by giving water to a couple kids when I didn't have enough to give everyone a bottle), frustration that I wasn't the nice guy I was last week (the group of local boys we had with us during the school holiday were actually quite friendly and we got on pretty well), and disappointment at not being able to explain myself to these hard-working boys who may truly have been starving and needed something, anything to fill their stomachs.

My lesson learned is not to bring anything with me in the future. If I don't have it, they can't see it, I can't give it, and no expectations can be created. Sadly, that's a much different solution than I want (which would be buying enough for everyone) but it's much more realistic.

I'm also struggling with how to teach children in this situation that sometimes some people get things that others don't and how they should deal with that. I know they see and live that everyday, and they don't really need me to teach them anything about income and lifestyle disparities. However, I was truly struck by how adamant they were that they needed to get water, like they were missing out on something really valuable. I need to continue to think through this and see if there's a different way of managing this in the future.

More to come.