"I fought a little boy..."

Don't worry.  I didn't actually fight a little boy.  It's a quote from one of the third graders, Annaliah.  In the third grade, Mrs. Martins, their teacher, has her students write sentences with their spelling words.  The sentences have to be at least nine words long, to show that they understand the meaning of the word.  A few weeks ago, I was sitting with Annaliah as she wrote her sentences.  As she plowed through her words, she came upon the word "fought."  She spoke that sentence out loud, like she had done with the others, to make sure that it was nine words before she wrote it down.  She began, "I fought a little boy..."  I don't remember what the rest of the sentence was, but I was so taken aback by how she had started it.

I'm often guilty of being hopeless, and chalking things in Camden up to the fact that "it's Camden."  For instance, with this sentence, I would have never expected to hear it from kids in my school district growing up, and certainly it took me by surprise to hear Annaliah speak those words: violence here is so much more common than I could have ever imagined.  That doesn't make it right, but right now, that's the situation.

It doesn't have to be like this.

The church had a bowling fundraiser tonight and, although I desperately wanted to bowl, a sprained ankle kept me from the lanes.  Instead, I continued work on a knitting project.  Annaliah, the same third grader, was there with her mother and her brother.  She kept me company for part of the evening when she was not bowling, and she wanted to learn to knit.  She helped me with a couple of the stitches, but I knew that it was going to be difficult to let her work on the project, so I made her a deal:

"Annaliah, I have another pair of knitting needles at home.  When I finish this project, I will give you these knitting needles and I will use my other ones so that I can teach you how to knit."

The proposal was accepted without hesitation.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, I have to find the hope in those little moments.  Annaliah's smiling face and constant enthusiasm motivate me to be more for her, to be more for all of the kids there.  It's really easy to get frustrated and give up; believe me, those kids are no walk in the park, but I know that I am helping them to grow into themselves, and I can only hope that these kids will be better off for what I have done.  At the very least, I remember the Hippocratic Oath, and I try to live by that: "first, do no harm."  My housemate, Chris, describes it as "harm reduction."

One of the reasons I wanted to come to Camden, in the beginning, was because I wanted to be somewhere where I felt that I was effecting change, or could be effecting change.  Well, I am here to tell you that it certainly does not feel like that.  Who knows what the city will look like twenty years from now, when these children are in charge?  It's hard to tell.  All I can hope is that I have helped them to want a brighter tomorrow, and that I have helped them to be more capable of working toward it.  Antoine de Sainte-Exupery said it best: “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

I hope I can lead them to long for the sea, and perhaps even to find their own starfish.

Peace and all good,
Rachel