Is it September already?

Wow! That's way too long not to have blogged!

A thought has been lingering in my mind - the visit to the hostel boys at Brahmanbaria. it's a pretty typical hostel arrangement. Underprivileged boys whow would otherwise miss out on an education live at a hostel where they are fed and safe and they get an education - all the way thru high school

Westerners (predominantly) sponsor these kids and they exchange letters with them to encourage them

We went there in early December and we took Christmas presents. Little bags of $2 Shop toys which we carefully organised to be about the same size with similar small gifts in them appropriate to either a younger or older child.

The boys dutifully lined up from youngest to oldest to receive their gifts (youngest to oldest) and shook the hands of each of us to say thanks

And it was all very weird.

These kids really do have NOTHING. They had a damaged cricket bat and some 2nd hand gloves and about 4 wickets to share amongst 50 boys. The "warden" also proudly showed me their sports ball. Yes - one ball.

They did have a couple of musical instruments and the odd boy had a small gift that a sponsor had got thru to them - but that was it

And here we were linign them up to receive their bag of gifts - and I guess we felt really good about what we were doing... at the time...

But now, thinking back it feels weird.

What was the point of these gifts? "here - we have money you have none - let us buy you presents?" "Why?" "Because it's Xmas" "Yeah...?" "And you should get stuff at Xmas" "Why?" "Cos it's good to have stuff...and Xmas is when we give stuff...and you don't have any stuff...?" "OK?"

Maybe I'm being too philosophical and maybe it didn't feel this way then - but now it feels like we were giving "stuff" to them because we felt bad that we had stuff and they didn't - and that it would in some way make us feel better about our stuff if even these poor kids had a bit of stuff too... that we'd be bringing them up to our level... and how good we were to do that...

We did talk to these kids and get to know them - and I am sure that their lives are better because of that hostel - they are certainly filled with more hope... but somehow now it feels like giving them things cheapened our relationship with them...

Not sure...