More tales of children

Since I haven't left yet but I'm bored, I'll have to keep telling tales of things not having to do with learning Spanish, or being in Ecuador or Guatemala.

My friends know I'm not a huge fan of little kids. But, I'll give them this: they can be amusing. And they make for great photo subjects. The advent of the digital camera has made them very anxious to be photographed, and there's nothing like the instant gratification of seeing the picture seconds after it has been taken (to be fair to the children and people of villages worldwide, I suspect that when cameras were still using film, promises to send copies of photographs were often broken). It can be a little awkward to take photos of adults (if you've traveled in a third world country, you know what I mean. If you haven't, think about what it would be like for people to take pictures of you almost entirely because you either are dressed weirdly - in their eyes - or are doing something that seems weird to them, but to you is totally normal (like going to work in a suit). But usually kids want to have pictures taken.

On our township tour in Cape Town, we were stopped at a place called Crossroads:

We'd been told by our guides that we could not take pictures while traveling in the van, but that it was ok to take scenery shots. Soon after our van had parked, about 6 boys came running over. They weren't as interested in us as they were in the reflective surface of the van. A few of them shadow boxed while admiring themselves on the side of the van. When they started actually fighting each other, it wasn't as sweet or cute. But I didn't take any pictures of the kids, and except for one or two as we were pulling away, no one else did, either. At our last stop of the day, however, we got back to the van after meeting with a woman who was in charge of a cooperative sort of township. There was a bunch of children sitting in our van along with our driver and guide. The children spontaneously burst into song "If you're happy and you know it..." And we all sang, too. It was a nice moment to share with them (and since we had to get going, it didn't last too long). The kids didn't seem to know another verse besides putting in your hand, but they were happy, and so were we. And I did take some pictures of those kids:




















Later in my trip, in Namibia, I went for a guided walk around a village near the Chobe River (across from Angola). Our guides told us not to get sweets for the children, but that it would be nice to buy notepads and pencils for the school we were going to visit, and cookies because the ladies at the church have tea and like to have biscuits (in places other than the U.S., biscuits are sweet) with their tea. So we didn't have sweets to give to the kids. But apparently, other tourists do give them out, because on the walk back to the campground from the village, as we passed here and there by houses (and by houses I mean huts in little compounds), some little kids caught sight of us. "SWEETS!!!!" they bellowed as loud as they could, running towards us at full speed. "SWEETS!!!!" Our guide called to them "No sweets" but it didn't stop their running. When they reached us, breathless, they weren't too upset that we in fact did not have sweets, and werewalk around a village. We'd been told not to buy happy to have their picture taken. Kids in Africa and Southeast Asia aren't so different.

The church we went to was an open air variety, and the churchgoers sang us a song. We were asked to sing one in response (as we'd been asked at the school). There were about 6 different nationalities in that group alone (not all the people on my trip had elected to go on the village walk that morning) so finding a song we all knew wasn't going to be so easy. Since we were in a church, I the good little Jewish girl, suggested that we sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." No picture of that, but here are some of the little kids at church with their mom, while the church group sang for us.


Some pictures from the school we visited. The little girl on the end of the row in the last picture was particularly amusing. It was a class of first graders, and the principal had them singing in rounds for a song with the same melody as "Frere Jacques." One side of the room was not doing their round properly (they kept singing what the other group was singing), so the principal moved the girl from her side to the weaker side, explaining "they don't have enough girls to do it right." And the girl, as small as she was, was really belting it out. You had to be there, but suffice it to say she was really giving it her all, without any self-consciousness about the 15 strangers in the room with cameras.