Reading and Reflection Nepal: Workshp day3: stories, sad things and smiles
Workshop day #3
WaaaAAaahh. BIG BIG BIG day. Lots of writing. Lots of drawing. It’s WORK time. Yo.
Last time, we made the kids share in class what happiness is. Although most kids participated, we got similar answers like “I would be happy if I was a doctor” slash engineer slash nurse slash I want to do great things for my country and this would make me happy. We got the students’ aims. I also thought we got the answers they thought we were looking for. They are only 12 to 13 year olds…we knew there were things that made they happy-er? At least immediately. Mind you. We were not undermining what the kids said, but we just had gut feelings that there has got to be more to their source of happiness than that. So, a light bulb went off in my head and I figured I’d make the kids discuss about “What kind of things make (them) you sad”. We would make them write whatever they shared. Then, we would surprise them and instruct them to draw whatever happiness is for them. My only prompt was… “well if happiness is when all your sadness is put away, isn’t it?”. This made a lot of them go back to what they wrote about sadness and the drawings came out pretty amazing. Of course, the girl who said she is sad because her parents went to court and separated had no different kind of drawing than kids who said they became sad when they didn’t get what they wanted their parents to buy them. Also, these kids’ drawings were no different than the kid who said she becomes sad when she doesn’t get to visit her village for more than a year or…any different from the kid who said she becomes sad when she returns home and is given so much work that she has no time for homework…or any different from the kid who wrote “I get sad when my friend gets kidnapped.”
What I’m trying to say is, how do I show to the rest of the world what these kids are going through??? It is difficult for kids growing up in Nepal at this time. I want people to know how they are struggling and how they are living through it.
I thought a lot about it and realized some things about this.
I know we can’t publish a book called “sad stories of nepali kids”. This book we are putting together is going to be about happiness. To know about what makes these children happy is to know how they fight or try to fight through what makes them sad. This opportunity to realize what things have been making them happy or being able to dream about the things that could make them happy is important. Happiness is important.
love and peace,
Sneha.
