One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [63]
“I don’t know what to say to you,” she said. She liked to draw. Her favorite subject was Art. She sang a song to the translator and myself instead of talking. Her favorite song, she said, taught to her by her mother. It is one of the songs women sing when they are getting water from the well, to pass the time together. After the song, she spoke a little more freely and told us about her daily routine.
Nicole went to school in the mornings, but only if her grandmother did not need her for work until later in the day, and only if her clothes were in good enough condition for her to feel decent. If her clothes were soiled or damaged, she stayed home, she said. It is not appropriate for a girl to go out in torn clothing, and as she approaches puberty, not safe either, said my translator.
At school, she recited her lessons and obeyed the teacher. She is polite without being exceptionally astute, I was told. I have met other girls a little older than Nicole who say more, who reflect more deeply, but Nicole possessed a gentleness that I found endearing.
Her face flickered with a nervous smile every time I asked a question. I got the distinct impression that Nicole was not often asked what she liked or thought. Even though she had trouble thinking of what to draw and had to be prompted to depict her favorite game—Monkey-in-the-Middle—I detected in her a creative impulse that far exceeded her resources. Her desire to communicate in song spoke to this, as did the depth of her Monkey-in-the-Middle drawing. In the picture there are three girls, no more than stickish figures in the kinds of little skirts most children draw to show what is female. One of the girls faces out of the perspective of the drawing with a downturned mouth. She is the girl in the foreground of the picture and looks quite a bit like little Nicole in crayon on paper. She had drawn a self-portrait, she confirmed (Figure 16).
What she could not express in words, she showed me with the little picture of herself in her perfect red dress. Nicole’s real dress is slightly worn out and beginning to fray at the edges.
“My favorite place to be is the well,” she said. I can picture her, the little girl in the picture, tossing a ball back and forth and splashing around in the water.
“I have lots of friends to play with at the well,” she said. “I like the well more than any other place. In school, the boys take the balls away.” Even doing drawings before our interview, the boys took half of Nicole’s paper away.
“At the well,” she explained, “I can play with my friends and have no worries. I play jump rope and monkey-in-the-middle, and this is my best time.” She smiled proudly, unlike the little girl in the drawing.
This is not to say that girls are the only ones who have a hard time in refugee camps or that they are the only ones who have to manage their own survival or that of their friends and families. Boys face many problems as well. The lack of opportunity can make them feel inadequate, unable to make the leap to manhood that employment and self-sufficiency signify. Without much to do, they are easy targets for military recruiters, criminals, pimps, or drug pushers. Seen as adult-like, with adult capabilities (look at Johnny and Luther Htoo, look at Paul, the precocious child-soldier), boys are often sent from the camps to the cities to work on their own, support themselves. They become part of that mass of boys on the streets of cities of all the world, hopefully finding fellowship with each other, staying clear of crime and unscrupulous police officers, and surviving.
To go to the city where there are opportunities or stay in the camp where there is international aid? To go to school and prepare for the future or to work now and have something to eat, to feed the younger siblings? These are no easy choices for young people (or adults either!). The most resilient kids I have met seem to be the ones who engage with these choices, who think critically about them, who feel a sense of responsibility