The Least of These

The King will reply:

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

~ Matthew 25:40

When Jesus spoke these words, He was speaking of acts of mercy and compassion: feeding the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes, hospitality to strangers, visiting those in prison. 

It seems like most of my blog posts have recently been about schools in Niger and ways that I am helping in this.  Sometimes, throughout the Fall, I felt like I was “drifting on the winds of need” – and in one of the poorest countries of the world, the needs are endless.  But, after reading this BBC article … I realize that the work and effort that I have put into “my” two schools the last six months has been aptly placed!

This report shows that Niger:

1. is in the top 10 countries for LEAST amount of children in school

and

2. topped the list as the country for the LEAST amount of learning in school.

And then I thought of the above verse …. whatever you did for the least of these.  An odd twist to the verse – education not being part of what Jesus spoke on that day.  But nonetheless, for me today – a small paradigm shift. I think of these children being the least of these …. and being the least of these in some ways contributes to their hunger, lack of water, lack of clothes.  A cycle of poverty with so many stressors, it is hard to “pick” one as the main contributor.

Education on many levels is a grassroots part of my work here.  Education on field work, animal health, child health and survival.  And this year, I’ve been involved in two village schools – education for children.

The first of which, you’ve heard of and seen many pictures.  The BBC article speaks about access of school not only for rural children … but for girls.  And this last weekend, I’ve discovered how the mini-school in Kongu has impacted this need.

On Sunday, January 19 – something new happened.  Three new girls were brought to school by their mother.  They are three little girls from the Djarma huts down the road.  When the chief’s son, Brenda, and I were assessing the number of children in the 1/2 km radius of the school location – this family’s father was not home, and so we were not allowed to come in and ask how many children were in the family and their ages.  The chief’s son told them of the school starting and we left it at that – and the children never came.

Until January 19 …. one and a half months after the school started, the mother showed up with her three girls to bring them to school.  They had now seen what school was, that all the neighbour’s children were attending, and the mother declared school good and enrolled her girls!  I was so excited to see these girls now attending!

The second thing I learned on January 25… there is one girl in school who is about 13 or 14 years old.  When we were surveying the families, we asked about this girl because all the children from this small Djarma village were gathered around us.  Her parents declared she was getting married in two weeks so would not attend.  However, since that day – the family changed their mind and decided it was better to send her to school!  Now this girl, instead of being a child bride (and joining another sub-group of statistics in which Niger scores the highest in the world for child brides), she now has a chance – a chance to still be a girl, to learn to read, to go to school.

This is the school of which you know – “mini-school” in the Fulani village of Kongu.

I recently had the opportunity to visit and help a second village school. 

My night guard comes from a small Tuareg village called Tinadakal.  It is located outside the capital city of Niamey.  Just last year, in 2012-13, the government provided a teacher for school, but our team helped them with some of the materials for the school as well.

This school year, my guard asked if we could provide mats for the children, so they would not be sitting on the ground, and textbooks for the next school grade. There are 55 children in this school.

A few weeks ago – Tim, Brenda, and I headed off into the bush with my guard to visit his school.  Admittedly – it was a day of cultural learning for us … “close” to us meant something completely different to my guard – for despite his high level of education, his concept of time and distance was a challenge for him to communicate.  We drove way further than we had anticipated!  We bumped through fields with no huts in sight – being told that the village was “just” on the other side of the mountain!  We almost called it quits.  But, the joy on the faces of these children and villagers was worth the trip. 

(We were so far from the middle of nowhere, we wondered if any of these children had seen white people before.  And we giggled over the idea that this day might go down in village folk lore: “Remember the day the white people came??”)

We were greeted by a crowd of parents who could not even wait for us to leave the vehicle before they had gathered around all of us to shake our hands and thank us for coming! 

The women came – and circled us and greeted us with the Tuareg welcome: a high-pitched warbling throat cry …  a welcome of which I have only heard stories and thought never to hear, as travelling North into the desert and Tuareg villages (where one would expect to hear this greeting) is no longer possible. 

The men came – and surprisingly, many shook my hand, though each one smiled and gestured their welcome to me with their hands.  Their pride in the school and the learning opportunity for their children evident in their welcome. 

The children were lined up in rows in the straw school hut waiting with their teacher to call “Bonjour” when we walked through the school door!  It was so beautiful to see these children in the school.

 

We brought a surprise for them – along with the mats for the children to sit on,

and the textbooks to read and learn from,

we brought more of the blankets from our team: 1 for each child in school.

 

This one in the middle became my favourite – the cloth being from the year I was born!  It was kinda neat to give this one away!!  Both Brenda and I engaged in a little more of “quilt envy” as we passed out the quilts! 

Soon, the quilts and textbooks were all distributed, and we had spoken with the village elders.  (I even found a few people speaking Fulfulde with whom I could converse!)

Then we headed back to town with our hearts filled with joy!

It was a few hours filled with joy …. but in the grander scale of what this article writes and the UN goals, it could be considered a small drop in the bucket.  For the article speaks of answering this dire need for education in terms of generations – that the girls in these photos will be grandmothers before primary school is achieved as a basic right in the world. and further as a right for girls – 2111 is now the predicted target year! 

I cannot even imagine a date so far in the future – that this goal is so seemingly hard to achieve, the UN has changed their goals from 2015 to 2086 for rural school accessibility … and further, that 2111 is now the target date to include all girls in rural locations!!  These girls and boys – they have made it past the statistics!

But in terms of Kingdom impact – so huge!  The world would consider these 110 children in Kongu and Tinadakal “the least of these” … least amount of children in school, least amount of learning for those who make it there.  But Jesus called out to minister to the least of these in His name.  Jesus takes those who are “least” … marginalized, forgotten, downtrodden …. and He makes them KNOWN!  God’s heart cares for the “least of these”!!  And today, in my heart, these children are no longer “least” …. they are KNOWN!