Perception

Yesterday, Doug and I travelled to a small school that MCC supports in the middle of Burundi. The Hope School is an amazing success story of ethnic reconciliation. It exists primarily to bring education to severely marginalized and normally unschooled Twa children, but serves children from other ethnicities as well. As such, the kids all learn and play together without stigmas or exclusion based on ethnicity, and there has even been reconciliation between parents of different ethnicities whose children are friends at school.

Recently the students were asked to fill in a map of their country with drawings that depict their perception of development for their country. Some of their ideas were "No more illegal marriages in order that men cannot so easily chase away their wives"; "Police to maintain order and prevent violence" (I neglected to tell this truly bright little fellow that it's often the police who cause those very problems); "More schools, and materials for the schools"; and "More crops so that people have enough to eat" (a problem that keeps many children from going to school- one can't concentrate with an empty stomach, or with the likelihood that if they don't spend the day looking for food there won't be dinner in the evening either).

What are their favourite subjects? Invariably the languages- French and English. I felt somewhat sheepish that some of these youngsters speak French more correctly than I do (after all, I am more than double their age and come from a bilingual country....)

To observe children pursuing school with such enthusiasm despite all the obstacles they face, and when the stakes are so high, one's perception of education is profoundly affected.