Maniacs - Katie Burke

I knew that most of them hadn’t eaten yet that day, even though it was 11:00 a.m. They would not eat until 1:00 p.m., just like every other day – except weekends, when they are not at school, and do not eat at all. I feel sad, thinking of how ravenous they must be by Sunday night.

I am working with children in Kawangware, a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Kawangware is the most poverty-ravished place I have ever seen. The poorly paved streets give way to roads of dirt and sludge – most likely the feces of the humans and animals who have few designated “restrooms” (i.e., holes in the ground), and no private ones. Crazily driven cars and buses navigate the streets. Goats, cows, wild dogs, and garbage – endless piles of garbage not awaiting any collection – litter the dirt roads.

These are the conditions in which the children I’ve met live. Infested tin shacks, with no electricity or water, are their homes. They can barely move around in these tiny, dark boxes: If their families are lucky enough to have a bed, it occupies the entire dwelling.

I wonder at their unbridled joy. They sing and clap and cheer all day, for any reason. They find the magic in everything. Absolutely nothing is mundane, gets overlooked, or is forgotten. It all registers with them as the most wonderful thing they’ve ever seen, heard, or thought about.

These little maniacs scream when I enter the room for the first time each morning. They clap and shout, “Hello, Katie!” in orchestrated fits of glee. When I ask, “How are you?” They proclaim – all together, and in singsong voices – “I am fine!”

I enter the room with construction paper, and they scream and clap again. I cannot figure it out: Though they need almost no reason to express ecstasy, but I don’t see why my fifth or sixth time entering their classroom that day is remarkable. I usually get screams on only the first each day.

My heart breaks when I see them marveling, looking expectantly at the construction paper in my arms. They have shouted for colored paper; it is that exciting to them. When I announce that they will each draw on a sheet of the paper, it seems greater news than their humble hearts can hold. When I ask them each to choose their own color of paper, they are completely blissed out. This simple art project has transformed their lives. They will never forget it, I can tell. And all I can think is that it’s so unfair.

Yes, they are the lucky ones in so many ways. Entitlement is a miserable way to live, and children in so many other places in the world suffer it. How lovely to appreciate everything, effortlessly, as if life were just one big adventure after another – when for the rest of us, it is just construction paper, and those all around us are only people ... nothing to cheer about here.

Still, I know it is the ravaging poverty around them that engenders such profound gratitude … even if they don’t know it. Should they starve and be entirely deprived of any material objects, just so they can smile as brightly as they do, and experience more happiness than any other children I’ve ever seen? How fun to be a maniac, but I don’t forget that their school waits until lunch to feed them because there’s only money for one meal per day. And since they don’t eat at home, the one from school must occur in the middle of their waking hours. And when we offer to bring food in the mornings, their teachers inform us that eating so early in the day makes them vomit and causes diarrhea, because their systems are not used to eating until 1:00 p.m.

I try to push these realities out of my mind, and focus on the wide smiles and twinkling eyes before me … because those are every bit as real.