by Ted Neill
The clown introduces himself as Mr. Small. He is at least 6’2’’ but he points out that compared to God, the creator of the universe, he is very small. Miriam is sitting with two white girls who are older than her but hardly have the burden of experience she does. It’s a little amazing to me that the thirteen-year-old sitting between them has already buried her parents, cared for dying children, almost died, and experienced more heartbreak than the average American will in a lifetime. I wonder, who is really the child among those three? Miriam turns and looks at me, as if she knew Mr. Small would irk me in my secular agnostic sanctimony. I roll my eyes and she shakes a finger at me as if I’m one of my baby-class students misbehaving, then she turns back to the show.
It is a decent magic performance, if you don’t mind the heavy-handed religious themes: Mr. Small puts two handkerchiefs—one labelled SATAN, the other JESUS—into a sack, which he turns inside out to reveal that only the JESUS handkerchief remains, implying that Jesus banishes Satan. Thank goodness, I think to myself. I have an answer if one of my own bags needs to be exorcised.
To be honest, I like magic shows, religious themes or not, but this one would be shitty even in the US. Our kids eat it up though. Their faith is unwavering and it helps them, sometimes, in their suffering. But at the same time, they are a captive, vulnerable audience and it seems as if the urge to be a good Christian is coercive. But it is not as striking as some situations I’ve been in.
Once while in a slum called Kangemi, the outreach staff and I had set up a clinic in a dusty school room. Dr. Alex, a UK doctor, fresh out of med school, was seeing patients, while I took notes, held kids while we took blood, and directed patients to the waiting area. The line was out the door and there was absolutely no privacy as Dr. Alex conducted histories. One woman whose fourteen-year-old son had begun to experience seizures sticks in my mind. Perhaps it was the concern in her face, or the way she shared so many intimate details of their family life, and health history, in hopes that Dr. Alex would be able to do something more than refer them to a hospital for further tests they could not afford.
Our nurse that day was an American missionary, driven by kindness, compassion, and a need to bring Jesus into people’s lives. While the line extended to the next block and Alex skipped lunch—because how could he eat in front of these waiting people—the nurse asked me if she could try to convert some of the patients. I was shocked. According to the demographics of Kenya, and personal experience, I knew most of them already were Christian. But what struck me most was the coercive nature of the conversion. Here was the only medical attention they could receive. I imagined they would tell us they believed in Baal, Zeus, or Thor, if we—the ones holding power over their health—asked them to. I personally knew I would choke a puppy as a sacrifice to Mickey Mouse if the only doctor available to treat my child asked me to.
Needless to say, I said no to the kind nurse.
Back to the show. Mr. Small continues. Things go awry at the end when he begins to create balloon art for the boys of Cottage Red. Mr. Small is partial to making peaceful crosses for the children, but the boys immediately turn them into swords and begin to beat the holy-hell out of one another. He switches to hats after that and the missionaries eagerly place them on the heads of the children. Their leader announces on his megaphone that they have eight minutes before they have to depart, so they should make friends with the children quickly.
Here sheer numbers become a problem as there are still more visitors than kids. I see children literally lifted off their feet while missionaries pull on either arm. I search for Miriam. She looks happy as she shows a group of high school girls Cottage Yellow. Meanwhile I watch as two girls place a pink balloon hat on a bewildered Edison (my frat-boy student with the pot belly who likes to chew rocks), plop him on one of the swings for the older children, and set him swinging. Their cameras flash, whir, and click. I chide myself for my cynicism as Edison smiles and begins to kick his stumpy legs back and forth. He enjoys the attention. Who am I to judge?
I follow the girls on tour in Cottage Yellow. Miriam poses for pictures, her sweeping, photogenic cheekbones on full display, holding her Barbie doll (with blond hair, blue eyes, and white skin if you are wondering). I ask one of the visitors what their trip is about.
“God,” she says, between chomps on her gum. She’s young, wearing sandals, cargo shorts, and a white T-shirt, her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail.
I ask her to elaborate.
“We’re here bringing God to the people of Kenya.”
When I point out to her that the kids are already Christian, she corrects me and says this is irrelevant. “We’re here to bring them love, compassion, and donations from home.”
I can’t object. I ask her what their plans are tonight for New Year’s.
“We’ll go to a concert in this stadium and we’ll pray with other missionaries and Kenyans. It will be, like, awesome.”
She peels away to take more pictures of Miriam who I can tell is doing her best to ignore my sourpuss expression. I swear I get a look from her that says, “Don’t bother me while I’m working.” And that is the uncomfortable part about it. Sure the visitors will give the children attention, expose them to new culture, and even bring donations; their lives may be altered by spending a few minutes with a child living with HIV. But on such a day and others, when white CEOs from multinational companies show up with wipe-away check-boards to display their generosity to the poor of Kenya for the newspapers, I feel we are in a certain kind of business. We’re selling the opportunity for people to look good or feel good. Our kids are our product or at least our sales force.
The missionaries, keeping to their schedule, board their safari vehicles, open the windows, and hold out their cameras for last minute pictures of the children waving good-bye. Amid the clamor I hear a child crying. I follow the sound to the playground where Edison has been abandoned in the big-kid swing. He is turned around, his face red, his shirt askew, his balloon hat crooked, as he dangles over the edge of the swing, trying to let himself down from a height that is too great for him. I help him down and carry him to his cottage where his house mother is waiting.
Chapter 7
Dambisa Moyo Tells It to Me Straight
Career-wise by 2011 I was already frustrated with the fruits of my labors and doubting the choices I had made. I had followed my passion, and what I thought were laudable values, leading me to work with the children at the orphanage, to pursue a service-related degree at Emory, and accept a job at CARE. But where had those choices left me? I had chosen a career that had not paid well, I was saddled with student debt, and I was now unemployed at thirty-four. Around this time I received a bit of a lifeline, however, in the form of a full scholarship to attend Georgia State University to earn my MBA.
I should mention that I had already enrolled in the MBA program while at CARE. It was a result of what I had learned in the field, heard from villagers, and even children themselves: that people needed economic opportunity as much as they needed a safety net. “Clinics and schools are wonderful,” one Zambian told me, “but we need jobs.” Truly, the most successful programs that I worked on at CARE whether health, education, early childhood development, or gender empowerment, had an economic component built into them. African countries needed credit ratings as much as they needed mosquito nets. Income generating skills for parents, value chain management, access to capital and markets, produced the gains that ultimately made schools, clinics, and women’s shelters possible—and sustainable. Furthermore, I had found the writings of Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid, persuasive. Aid, in many cases, had hindered the very development it sought. Dependency on the state and local levels could cripple the necessary institutions and skills needed to truly improve the standard of living in the long term. The good intentions behind aid (and the aid industry) are not enough to protect against unintended consequences and even the perverse incentives that could create a self-sustaining cycle that, in some cases,
perpetuated poverty rather than eliminating it.
There will never be enough charity in the world to solve the problems of poverty, while one has to admit, capitalism has raised the standard of living and life expectancy, and lowered infant and maternal mortality, for—literally—billions. Was economic growth the best public health intervention in history? What I was asking was anathema in some aid circles, but Dr. Moyo’s writings encouraged me to look at aid and the industry of jobs and livelihoods that had arisen around it in a new light. I realized the “good guys” are as vulnerable to mistakes, group-think, bias, and prejudice as much as anyone else; our assumptions had to be questioned, just like anyone else’s. Had capitalism brought environmental devastation? Yes. Exploitation? Certainly. Inequality? Yes, Yes, Yes. But it was hard to deny the good that had come from it as well. I began to realize that the solution for poverty was not an issue of charity or business, but both/and. There would always be a need for social safety net programs. Always. But we should not mistake them for long-term solutions. We need economic growth, even with its unfortunate by-products: pollution, inequality, and exploitation. It’s a contradiction, a paradox that must be managed.
But none of that was what I was thinking on September 25th when the handle of the knife found its way into my hand. I was thinking I was a failure. I had led with my heart and where had it gotten me? In debt, unemployed, and too poor for anyone to consider as a partner, much less a parent. Meanwhile my peers who had not tried to save the world in their twenties were buying houses, starting families, and contributing to their retirement funds. I was back in school, with students ten years younger than me. What better proof was there that I had made all the wrong choices?
Worst of all I had never done what I intended to do—write a story about the children. Much less set the world on fire and see my face emblazoned across the back covers of best-selling works. I had given up on it for all the reasons listed earlier—I was too flawed myself, too clichéd, and the problems were just too great to make a difference with a book. It was easier to be a faceless cog in the international development machine. And how could I reconcile that with the insecure, fame hungry, narcissist with dreams of grandiosity who went to Kenya in the first place? I couldn’t. Both existed within me and I was wary of feeding the beast.
Yet I had nothing else to hold onto. Having lived in five different cities between moving from volunteering in Nairobi, saving money for school in the States, and finally enrolling in Atlanta, I had a thin network of good friends. I guess my own sanctimonious nature resulting from my work did not endear me to people much either. Also, I had lost much faith in, well, faith. Watching so many of the children die had done that. One night, while holding Jacob as he died, I had asked Weena, “Is the world a good or bad place?” She had looked up at the ceiling and answered, in an oh-you-are-so-naïve-you-are-precious tone, “Ted, it’s just a place.”
So nihilism set in. Along with social isolation, financial troubles, and self-criticism. My self-esteem eroded, replaced by a toxic self-hate that grew into self-loathing. It was amazing how effective my own mind was in crafting arguments about my own abject failure and utter worthlessness. The evidence was all around me: in my thirties, in debt for a degree without the earning power to pay for it, living in a basement apartment, unmarried, little savings, and a car I had to ask my parents to help pay for.
My intellect’s favorite pastime became reinforcing these messages, my own focused nature turned on myself. Some observers have said that depressives are actually quite rational individuals, who are free of the rose-tinted self-deception that everyone is able to engage in, due to religious faith, willful ignorance, the proper balance of serotonin and dopamine, or all these things. My reasoning “helpfully” reminded me every day that I didn’t really matter. I never had. If I died at thirty-two as opposed to eighty-five, the world, the universe in its vastness, would not notice in the least. After all, I had seen so many people—children—die and the world had not noticed.
Chapter 8
School
At dinner Miriam had once said she wanted to grow up to be a market woman, or maybe even a fisherman. Jesus and the apostles were fishermen, she knew, but they were also carpenters. Like good wafrika, they had many jobs—kazi ni kazi, work is work, as the saying went.
But her mother had become quiet, her face like a stone, which was what she did when she was angry. Her father became quiet as well. Not angry quiet but scared quiet, for everyone in the family knew to be quiet and scared when mother was angry.
Her words finally came forth: Miriam would not be a foolish market woman, nor would she be a fisherman struggling to make money and smelling like dead fish. She would go to school. She would be a teacher, a nurse, or even a banker.
That was why this day was so important. It was Miriam’s first day back at school. She was nine. The year before, when she was eight, she had come to school as well, but they had sent her away, saying she was not ready yet. Now she was dressed in her uniform once more. Her skirt was blue and her sweater green. Her mother had re-braided her hair just the night before. Her skin was clean and shiny with oil and her father had helped her to polish her shoes.
Her mother was wrapped in one of Miriam’s favorite wraps today. She had decided not to go to the market and instead to come with Miriam to school. Now she stood and spoke to the headmaster. When they finished talking, her mother walked over to her while the headmaster waited in the doorway of the school. “Be good and work hard,” her mother said.
Miriam promised she would, even though just then she wanted to jump up and down and shout with happiness because she realized that this meant she had been allowed back into school, that she was ready. But she knew good girls would not make such a disturbance, so she quickly walked over to the headmaster, greeted him and thanked him politely.
He nodded then led her to her new classroom. She noticed that the other children in her class were much younger than she, but upon reflection, she decided this could work to her advantage: if she was older she might be smarter than they were. Maybe she would be allowed to be prefect.
The teacher told her where to sit and once she was in her desk she sharpened all her pencils with a sharpener that Patrice, one of her mother’s friends from the market, had given her. She placed the pencils in a straight row beside her exercise book. The other children did not have sharpeners, so Miriam sharpened their pencils for them.
She behaved well in class. She never spoke to the other children when the teacher’s back was turned. She copied the letters he wrote on the board very carefully. She would even do a few extra copies of each letter just for additional practice. When the teacher walked by, she hoped he would notice her extra work, but instead he would point out to her how she had copied a number of letters backwards.
Reading remained her worst subject. When it came time to practice reading aloud, Miriam would just repeat what she heard the other students saying around her. She did this each day, until one day, when they had to take turns reading aloud to the class alone. When her turn came she could not sound out the words that the other children had read so easily. After stumbling over the first two words, making the rest of the class erupt in giggles, she simply stopped.
The teacher stood up, walked over to her desk, and asked her if she had fallen asleep.
She said no.
Then what was she doing?
This was not a question she really understood. She was sitting. She was looking down at the floor. She had been trying to read. She had been trying to do what her mother said to do in school: learn.
“I am learning,” she finally ventured.
“How can you be learning if you cannot read?” the teacher said.
This was another question she did not know the answer to, but the teacher did not seem to need one. He walked back to his desk and told the girl next to Miriam to start reading. Miriam hated the other girl for the ease with which she began pronouncing the words. Tears came to her eyes and she
wiped them away with the back of her hand.
At the end of the week the headmaster called her to his office and told her she should go home and not to return since she was not serious about learning. Miriam was sure her mother would be angry. She was so sure that she debated not going home right away, but then she decided her mother would be even angrier if she came home late.
Her mother listened and was very quiet for a while. Then, she went to the kettle, poured some tea, and replaced the kettle on the jiko overly hard. Miriam told her that she had tried her hardest. Then to Miriam’s surprise, her mother said that she knew. She knew Miriam was a hard-working child and that Miriam had tried her best. It was the teacher’s problem, not hers, she said. They would find a different school.
Oliver’s cough did not go away. He made sure to wear his red knit cap as well as his sweater to stay warm in the cool mornings, but the cough persisted. He was afraid it was because he was not praying enough. So he prayed in the morning and the evening too, like his mother, that he would get better. He accompanied his mother on all of her trips to the doctor now. Sometimes afterwards he would feel better, other times he would not.
One day when his mother and he were coming out of Uchumi, they saw Adrianna. She did not appear to see them, even though she was quite nearby getting into her car. Oliver called her name and waved to her. He knew she heard him because she looked up, but then she turned away, got into the car and drove off.
Oliver did not understand. He knew his mother was angry though because she did not speak for the entire walk home. When they did reach the apartment she called Pricilla, took the phone into her room, and closed the door.
One day, when he arrived at school, Oliver’s teacher asked him to go to the headmaster’s office. He was afraid because he knew children only went to the headmaster’s office when they were in trouble. Although the one time he had been called to the headmaster’s office it was because he had received an academic award, so perhaps he would get another—although he thought this unlikely because they only gave out awards at the end of the year and that was a long way away.