Dramatic six year olds and idealistic 38 year olds (Day 7)

We turned our first morning safari drive into a visit to a local school that the lodge helps support. There is now a hand pump to draw water from a bore hole at the school thanks to the support, and it provides clean water both for the school and also the surrounding villages. (Zambia has enormous water reserves, making wells and bore holes very successful). Dez and I brought a suitcase full of heavy school supplies requested by the school (a mammoth box of 800 crayola crayons, construction paper, pencils, lined paper, pencil sharpener, world maps, wall posters).

It was Dez's first chance to interact closely with kids from rural village life and was definitely a bit overwhelming for him. He insisted on wearing a long sleeve shirt, and the first knock against us was that his skin felt like a slip n slide two minutes after getting out of the vehicle once we parked. Being six, he did not gracefully play this off. Instead, when he walked into the first grade classroom he dramatically tossed his head back, leaned against me and announced, "I'm so HOT, I think I'm going to pass out! Can I go sit in the jeep?" The headmistress and first grade teacher would be absolutely horrible at poker. They looked at him as if he was the oddest child they'd ever met, and looked at me as though I must be a very peculiar mother. Which I probably am, but only when you get to know me. It's not as immediately obvious as their expressions made it seem.

The funny thing to me was that they didn't make any effort to cover this up for the students or engage and distract Dez with questions about where he was from or what he liked about 1st grade - they just stared at him (as did the kids) until I excused him for a minute, gave him a pep talk about how I would put him in a sweater and a wool hat if he didn't cut it out, and returned him to the room.

The interaction got a bit better and looser, but did always seem sort of awkward so after about ten minutes of looking at a map, singing and clapping a bit, and giving high fives and thumbs up we went back to the headmistresses office and just finished giving her the supplies so she could manage their distribution. She smiled patiently and delivered the obligatory thanks, and I was a little inclined to clarify that the supplies were actually a pain in the ass and heavy to fly over there when traveling alone with a child, but that would have seemed (I realized fortunately before the statement left my lips) like a fancy-person-problem.

The interaction definitely retained the sense of foreigners bringing an expected contribution, which was disappointing but unsurprising. I say disappointing in that we could have just given the lodge the supplies to pass on - the point of going in person was to have Dez see and learn about the school a bit and tour it, but I somehow forgot he and Lilah, both blond, would just be a spectacle. I couldn't help but think a little that this dynamic is reflective of development work in general. Even when projects are asked for by local communities (like the school asking for the specific supplies we brought), outside assistance is sometimes not hugely impactful and appreciation is not always evident.

I will freely admit that I did have visions of showing Dez students who are very attentive to their teacher and very appreciative of being at school even with limited resources. Aid organizations have plied us with so many pictures of overcrowded classrooms with attentive, well behaved children that it was surprising in a way not to detect more pride, focus, and enthusiasm for learning from the students, and I felt naive in having expected or hoped for it.

Dez did definitely come away with a context for how rich and well supplied his own learning environment is, but didn't exactly get a lesson in respectful behavior. In terms of chaos it was on par with what you'd expect from 113  six year olds and a teacher, and the kids didn't exactly seem disappointed at break time when they got to flee the classroom into the courtyard.