In Reply to: I guess you do what you do posted by tunaman on Wednesday, 11. July 2012 at 19:09 Bali Time:
9 children from the streets, we had a very interesting day talking to them about not going to school, why they do this, do their families force them etc etc.
Really eye opening day actually. For one, every child had their money to buy chips, soft drinks, chocolate etc (and did this all day when they passed a warung) and one boy had given up begging and took the money from his younger sister as he was "too fat" to beg (his words, not mine).
When we discussed schooling, they asked seriously why should they go, of course our answer was to get an education and a good job. Err derr, they have a good job, not an incentive. We tried, how about peers, err derr, there is 9 of them (actually more apparently but these were the ones the government could bring in voluntarily), they have peers. What about knowledge? Once this question was pondered, a small girl, maybe 6 said, do you mean learning? we tried another way of wording it. How about learning about how things work, adding up, reading etc. I was shocked to learn they had self taught themselves to read, write and add up.
Tomorrow I will go back with a fresh look, I'm a little stumped as these kids earn more than me. They at least liked fishing with our village kids, playing with no need to beg and going to bed early...we got something right, maybe we can work with that tomorrow. Maybe we can just help them to be kids.
I will also need to know how to answer our village kids questions as to why these kids have so much money and don't have to go to school....and what is McDonalds?