December 7, 2008

Hi Friends and Fam,

It's election day here today. The polictics here are still pretty confusing to me, but I've gathered a few tidbits of information here and there. Apparently, the person in power now, Nana Akufo Addo, is corrupt. His party is the New Patriotic Party. The opposing party, the New Democratic Party, was in power just before this one. Both parties have a huge following, so this is an important election. Mostly, the villages are all either one party or the other. Kpando is NDC. I held a political discussion in one of my classes the other day, and had only one NPP supporter out of all of my students. Bless him, though, he stood his ground, and over all of the shouts and protests of the others insisted "Madam, we have to SUBSIDIZE." The parties, it seems, are mainly identified by colors and symbols. In the smaller villages I've visited, that have no electricity, these are the most qualifying factors in determining support. This is certainly the way children have learned to identify which party to show support for. All around Kpando, for the past week, there have been cars with loudspeakers attached to the front preaching about this party or the other. I took the kids on a run yesterday, and a car supporting NPP drove by, saying, as Kingsley translated for me, "tell your parents to vote for NPP." The children all responded with a resounding "NO!" Minutes later an NDC car drove by and they all stopped running to jump up and down and cheer, even Love! The commercials on TV, though, are the most fascinating, more biased than you could ever imagine: John McCain has nothing on NPP. Witnessing all of this has definitely made me appreciate American politics a little more. It has been so interesting watching all of the time leading up to this and will be even more so in the following days, as teh results are announced.

On a more depressing note, we had to say goodbye to one of the kids, Nicholas, yesterday. I mentioned him once before, he only just arrived a few weeks ago. The story is long and sad but I hope that writing it out will help to put it into perspective for me.
For the past week, Nicholas had been leaving the orphanage during the day. This is forbidden, and both Mama and Sarah (the other volunteer) had talks with him about it. I can't say I blame him: we weren't able to enroll him in school for this term, because there was only a month left when he arrived, so he was sitting around the house bored as nails all day long for the past few weeks (though not alone, his brother Emmanuel was there with him). Anyway, after the second time he left, the kids started to tell us little details about it all. He would tell them that he was "going out to town" and that we couldn't stop him, and basically that he could do whatever he wants. Yesterday he went out for a third time, and while he was gone, Emmanuel led Wisdom and Kingsley to a spot in the backyard where Nicholas had been hiding things that he was stealing. It was a plastic bag full of junk: crayons, broken sunglasses, Love's belt, toy cars, birthday candles. Incidentally, alot of the stuff was Wisdom's, and I could tell he felt really betrayed by it. While it was, in fact, crap, the kids don't own much, so anything that they can actually claim ownership for is naturally important to them. Wisdom brought the bag to Mama Esi who dumped it out on the concrete in front of the house to go through it. She went through all of his clothes too, because she swears that someone stole money from her last week. It seemed so obvious to me, as I watched, that all of this behavior was a cry for attention. He didn't steal anything of much value, other than a soccer ball and pump which he hid in town, according to Emmanuel. He just wanted someone to pay attention to him. When I tried to say this, that the things he stole were of no value, and what he really wanted was attention, that it made no sense other than this, I was quickly dismissed. "Yes, but he's a theif," Mama said.
As all of this happened, fourteen little faces, fourteen noses rimmed with peach fuzz, fourteen sets of eyes sat on the steps and watched. The children, my children, stared intently, inquisitive but judging, innocent but accusing, as this plastic bag of broken things and worn clothing was dumped out on the ground; all of Nicholas' earthly possessions strewn about and torn through. When he finally came back from town, his things were packed and ready to go - he had to leave. According to everyone else, this was a choice he made on his own. And so, Nicholas left, with all he owns in a plastic bag. He went back to his grandfather about 45 minutes away from here (I console myself with the fact that he actually has a family member to go back to, this makes it a little better). We all watched him leave. The children stared with unforgiving eyes as he walked out, and I walked inside. Nothing I could have said or done would have allowed forgiveness for his actions, and so, I did nothing. Part of me was heartbroken to see him go, and an admittedly shameful other part of me was relieved to see the whole thing over with. This was a sad situation, a more extreme version of many others like this since I've been here, over which I had no control; I was nothing more than a passive witness. I think I've had to adjust the way my heart works a little bit here. There is so much sadness that I have to ignore for fear of what affect it will have on my spirit. I acknowledge the sadness and move along. I'm much more wary here, about who I fully open up to. I have already given all that I have to fourteen children, in particular. Thus, I only have a certain amount of sympathy to spare, and if I gave it to every situation that deserves it here, I would be left with nothing at all.
Truly, the most upsetting part of the whole thing for me was that his own brother ratted him out. I talked to Kinglsey about this, who has become my 15 year old voice of reason in most topics here. He said "my brother would never do that to me, but I would never steal." It's understandable though, isn't it, that they would find the bad things about a person and focus on these to in order to make their leaving less painful? I can't blame them, I think this is a natural human reaction. I understand why Mama and the kids reacted the way they did. The adjustments that I've had to make with my feelings and sympathies are things that they have been trained to do. In a place where phsyical belongings are so few, I think morals are really all a person has to hold on to. Here, things are either right or wrong, a person is either a thief or not. That is the way judgments are made, in black and white. If this is the way they have learned to reason, I must respect it. After all, I haven't been through half of what any of them has.

That's all I've got. Sorry for putting a damper on things.

[spoken with sincere gratitude]: Thank you so much to everyone who has donated money and/or sent things so far. If you are still interested in helping out, please let me know and we can figure something out.

Love,
Morgan O Hanson