And sometimes I forget. . . .

• That most come to school without eating anything, some don’t have the resources to buy food to eat at the break (10:30-11), and how hard it must be to concentrate for so many hours on an empty stomach. Or how skinny many of them are.
• That my accent is REALLY REALLY HARD for many to understand, since they don’t have access to American TV/radio like other places do. 
• That their educations have been interrupted in so many ways . . . by the war for independence, by migration to flee the war of independence, and even after the war was over, I’ve found out that the Lord’s Resistance Army (remember the Joseph Kony Hullaballoo?) was making life incredibly unsafe here thereabouts 2005. 
• That I’m teaching many of them in their second, or third languages (tribal language and Arabic), and that the lessons they learn at school can’t be reinforced in quite the same way by their parents the way I had the opportunity to. . . and it’s so hard to learn how to read when you, for example, read “cat” or “hat” for the first time and then hear that same word from a friend, family member, or on the TV.   Try explaining the meaning of simple words like “elf,” which is completely unimbedded in culture
• That tragedy looms around the corner for so many of them.  Almost daily we hear about deaths and near-death experiences from diseases like malaria, tribal violence, unsafe roads. . . suffering is everywhere.

Sometimes I forget because I don’t go home to the same situations that they do. . . in the evenings, I retreat behind the walls of the compound, so close to the village geographically and so far culturally and in terms of the standard of living.

Sometimes I forget because I misread their faces and confuse eagerness to learn and a desire to impress their teachers with actual comprehension.

And sometimes I forget because if I didn’t, the magnitude of everything these kids are up against would be overwhelming, nearly incapacitating.   It’s so hard to imagine how much they have to deal with just to learn, and if I did, am not sure that I would feel up to the challenge of teaching them anything. And so I forget, in order to keep going day after day, and give my best, even if it’s hardly good enough.

But for a little perspective, constantly “remembering” and connecting everything to deprivation can also lead to major misinterpretation.   Sometimes a little boy’s cardboard flip-flops are just his end-of-term arts and crafts project.