Fine then, I call it another Stink

One morning leaving for work I was irritated about being delayed for not finding the things someone had misplaced. In my annoyance I happened to stumble into a messy kid's room - never a promising combination from the child's point of view, and quite right, the verdict was to have the jumble cleared up by my return. To my great surprise, it was, but it was so perfectly done, I grew suspicious: "Who cleaned this room?"

An innocent voice stated it was didi, "of course", as if it was only to be expected. The newly arising annoyance in me was taken as foreign: "Why not?" Yes, I live in a boring adult world where it's just not ok, just like it's not ok to be sending didi to the shop whenever a fancy for a packet of crisps strikes, nor getting your tea and toast made - regardless of what's on tv. 

The scene above is a mild version in comparison to the hard-core aid crew's offspring born on some god-forgotten elbows of land, from bad to worse to bad. Parents in full demand to dedicate maximum time and energy to the organisations and the people they came to serve, it's almost as if at home they want to compensate the hardship - the stink outside- by striving to make the reality the complete opposite. Children get raised in parallel worlds of big houses and huge gardens protercted by great walls, surrounded by nannys, maids, guards and drivers.

A child who, at the height of a birthday party resembling more of a fancy fair, makes a snappy remark about the cake which is bigger than an average sized dinner table and covered with an amount of candles one would think requires pyro-technician's supervision, has never had a chance to run to a corner-shop to count out what their pocket money pays for. Never have they had a real chance to learn the value of money. Enough does not exist.

A child who, having jumped off a shiny landrover in front of a cinema, in blunt annoyance shouts at a begging street-kid of about the same age, "to disappear", has most certainly never lacked anythign in life. All is provided.

What about a child who does not react to a baby left on a street? Perhaps it is just as a common site as abandoned puppies on the street.

In reference to previous post - children, I suppose, are just as or even more vulnerable to the blindness that deceases us. The question that puzzles me concerns the future of these kids. Their parents, majority of them raised and born in their respective countries, chose to come, out of a burning social conciousness, desire for change, or whatever the reason was, but what will eventually come out of this generation who was born or brought to it, never having had to question it, easily mistaking white as a synonym for rich?

How to teach compassion, if nothing is ever difficult? How to teach self-initiation, if everything was always done and ready?

Before I left for Nepal, I was asked whether I worried about the things my children would be deprived from. I did not worry as I could not really see what those things would be. I considered the question foolish.

I am changing my mind now - about the nature of the question as well as about worrying about it. The minor detail is whether this is the very issue they had in mind, or was it perhaps about lacking an opportunity to play ice-hockey or missing out on the well-balanced school meals and fabulous PISA tests?

These days the amount of questions outnumbers the amount of answers I have.

                                                                   Contemplating