Baby Herding

For all my regaling you of culture and colors in Africa, I have yet to reveal to you what my daily life is like. It begins with seven of the world’s most beautiful children.

Around the hour of 9:00 my day starts to look very much like shepherd-training with children. Sometimes the mothers walk their babies to class, sometimes they bring their kids later and hand them through the window, and sometimes the mothers send them with us. So depending on the day, I find myself guiding anywhere between three and six toddlers without the shepherds usual rod and staff (This is what you’d call ‘advanced shepherding’). The road to the preschool is short, but wild. Overgrown with thistles, sharp grass and small, thorny bushes, the dusty tire tracks are more akin to a minefield of your foot’s worst nightmare. I once walked through the grass to the resident volleyball ‘court’ and before I was halfway there the bottom of my flip flops had become a solid patch of thorns digging into the plastic soles. Thank God for plastic.

For some reason this grassy path is terribly interesting to the little ones. Every half step they stop to point to some rock or lone blade of grass and ramble something off in Swahili. Not understanding half of the baby talk, I usually just smile and ask why, which makes them laugh and then move on to the next incredible piece of dirt. Oh, to be young again, and possess that perpetual gift through which you unreservedly “see heaven in a wildflower.” (William Blake)

The next three hours is the incarnation of Babes in Toyland as they attack the room with balls, blocks and toy cars sitting in the corner. Our toy selection is small but, as always, it's the kind of thing where the box the gift comes in is as great as the gift itself. The day we tied strings to the front wheels of the toy cars and gave them to the boys, four of them ran around in circles for a full hour, just dragging the little, broken cars behind them. Each time they passed by I’d cheer and shout their name, and you’d have thought you were pouring Wake Up Juice from Back to the Future III into their little bionic tanks. Their faces lit up and they’d shoot off from the mattress, building momentum until the next time they ran past me and got another shot of Wake Up Juice.

Another favorite is the animal book, which consists of the weirdest array of animals you’d imagine. Everything from reindeer to pandas to mongooses are in there (I don’t even know what sound a mongoose makes). My ignorance of mongoose noises is usually my greatest lack as a teacher here. The moment you open the book the kids swarm to your lap, pile on, push each other off and then cry and get up and do it again. The average adult lap can hold three kids at a time but let me tell you—these Africans make sure you can fit six. They even sit on your ankles, if need be. As you read the name of each animal (in English…we’re going for bilingual here), they repeat it like little tape recorders on replay and then they giggle as you make the sounds. The sound effects are their favorite part by far. One picture of a monkey can keep them going “oo oo aa aa” for a full 15 minutes. And if you turn the page before they’ve satisfied their inner monkey for the day, they jerk the book over by them and turn the page back to the picture of the monkey.

As I look back, it’s hard to believe it’s been four weeks. We have come a long way since that first week in February when they were all kind of scared of the white-skinned girl trying to pick them up and play with them. Wile (pronounced Wee-lay) would scream and burst into tears if I even tried to come near him those first few days. Then he met a nerfball that I brought to class and we became friends after that. That week it was terrible whenever the mothers would drop a kid off or stop by to bring a snack. The kids would cry forever when their moms left. Now, they are too busy playing to say goodbye and we have more trouble getting them to leave at the end of the day than getting them to stay. We used to have to make sure the door was closed at all times or we’d invariably have some make a run for the base. Now, if someone comes and leaves the door open the kids get all huffy and go close it for us. Go back home? Not a chance. Today was no different.

It was all because of a blow-up baseball. Wile wouldn’t let it go and for the life of him, he wouldn’t leave without it, either. The trouble was that it belonged to the preschool, left out by some careless six-year-olds who’d gone back to class without taking it. Wile spied it and latched on. You almost need the Jaws of Life to get it out of his hands, and after that you needed industrial strength earplugs to drown out the sound of his wails. Wile was not happy. I looked back at Jackie to see her status for consoling the screaming toddler. She had one kid in her arms and two trailing behind. She’d lost her fourth charge to one of the windows by the classroom. Joel stood with his face pressed up against the glass, listening to the song the teacher was singing. Moses was wandering off to another classroom door. I sighed and put Deborah down and let go of Agape’s hand. We needed three more arms or a teleporter. I saw her put her kids down and immediately moved in to trade places, picking Joel up along the way but losing Zawadi to the next window down the line.

Wile continued to scream all the way down the verandah of the school and onto the road, when the next obstacle presented itself. The big red and white van sat parked next to the side of the school. As soon as we set foot on the dust, the bus drew the boys to it like a magnet with suction cups. Now four were stuck instead of just one. The only solution was to pick them all up and carry them til they were far enough from the bus that they wouldn’t go back. We got all but Wile, who still stood crying in the middle of the road by the school. Realizing that inviting him home was not the way to go, I waved goodbye and told him that he’d better build a house to sleep in so the animals wouldn’t get him. If only reverse psychology worked between language barriers.

Jackie looked up at me and then caught on to my plan, then rattled off something in Swahili. I didn’t catch all of it but in the middle I heard the word for ‘lion.’ I grinned as it came together. She told him that he’d better hurry up or the lion in the field was going to come and eat him. “I hear Simba coming now, Wile. It is lunchtime so you know he is very hungry.” Wile stood there, skeptical. Arms folded. Clearly, Wile did not believe that there was a lion coming. However, the rest of the kids did. Agape and Joel screeched and started running towards the base. Zawadi looked up with fearful eyes then picked up his feet and started running with spiraling legs towards the courtyard of the base, followed by four other toddlers now absolutely certain that a simba was on his way. Wile stayed planted but shouted something as we half walked, half-carried the rest of the kids back to the base. As soon as we were out of sight, Wile freaked out and started running towards the base with us. Five minutes later he saw the door to his room and all memories of baseballs and lions were forgotten. At least for now.