When I was younger (a good deal younger) I used to teach
mathematics to anybody that was interested. It was a simple way for me to earn
a bit of pocket money particularly when I was going through college (we,
genuinely poor students, had to pay fees at that time ;)).
Unlike my incredible brothers and sisters, I have very
little obvious raw talent, however I am told by a few that I was actually quite
a good maths teacher (one of my brothers credits me with him getting through honours
maths in his leaving certificate – I suspect he just managed to pay off the examiner
;)).
As it happened I absolutely loved teaching maths (and
therein lies a piece of wisdom that has stayed with me to this day – allow children
follow their passions and they will find their career), but never in my wildest
imaginings did I imagine how this simple passion would be the basis of a story
that gave me a short but beautiful glimpse of the divine…
****
You do not have to be a child psychologist to know when a
child has been traumatised. Perhaps its some built in human instinct that
allows us understand that a deeply troubled child needs help. The human instinct to protect a child is
crucially important. Children truly are society’s most precious gift. From a
Christian spiritual perspective there is enormous wisdom is recognising
children as those closest to the kingdom of heaven.
That said, if this is true, it’s an instinct that is sadly
under utilised in our world. Worse, there are so many examples of children
being abused in different ways. And the consequences of neglecting or abusing
children are enormous.
I believe the abuse of children to be evil in its rawest
most awful form.
****
Mary is 10 years old and she has had a most difficult life.
Her short time in this world has been an enormous struggle and it is written
all over her face and her demeanour. She
was not planned and when she entered the world there was no security, no
welcoming party and no support structure to give her a good start in life. She
came into a world of recrimination, rejection and regret.
The first few years of her life included times when she was
desperately hungry, when herself and her young struggling mum were constantly
on the move looking for work and a place to live. When she was very young she spent
long periods of time with her grandparents so her mum could try to stabilise
things.
The poor little soul was flotsam in a raging sea.
And then there were men in her mum’s life who brought
further misery to the child. Mary was regularly beaten for simple reasons like
crying because she was hungry or making a nuisance of herself just exercising
her natural childish curiosity.
Marys approach to coping with all this was to withdraw into
her own world. She took the view that if she said nothing, nobody would notice
her and that way life would be bearable.
I have known Mary for a couple of years now. She is one of
the quietest people I have ever met. If you ask her a question she immediately
looks to her mum for permission to answer. You often get no answer to the
simplest questions like ‘how old are you?’
When she does answer she mumbles in a barely perceptible
voice and stares at the ground.
In school Mary struggles. Teachers reckon she is 2 years
behind her peers. Recently, it became possible for Mary to attend a good fee
paying school. However, she had to do an interview in order to be able to
attend.
The feedback from the interview was that she would not be
able for the school and that she had serious learning and communication difficulties
particularly when it came to maths. Her mum pleaded with the school and eventually
they agreed that Mary could attend but only if she took extra maths tuition
(this of course cost extra money).
Extra tuition meant that Mary stayed behind for 2 extra
hours every evening to do ‘maths grinds’.
Essentially that meant getting up at 6.30am, starting school
at 8.00am and finishing at 5.30pm. Then going home, doing your normal homework
and then all the extra work you got from the tuition.
That would be a long day for anyone.
****
In the summer of 2009 it so happened that I was staying
close by to Mary’s house in Mombasa, Kenya. On a couple of occasions I noticed
her sitting on the floor (there was no furniture in the house) doing her
homework. Because she was so quiet, she never asked for help even though it
turned out she was struggling.
It soon became clear that she was getting more and more maths
homework from the extra tuition in an effort to improve her mathematical
abilities. She was spending hours and
hours trying to keep up but was getting nowhere. At the end of every couple of weeks
she would do an exam and fail it.
Looming ahead of her was the end of terms exam. If she
failed that exam the school would recommend that she be kept back a year.
I sat down with her one evening and discovered that she had
50 problems to do. These were non trivial problems and each took about half a
page of maths to finish. I remember thinking that that was a lot of homework
for a 10 year old!
So, on the basis of nothing ventured nothing gained, I
decided to give her some maths lessons…
****
It was not long before one big challenge became clear. When
Mary did not know the answer she would write nothing down. When I pushed her on
this it turned out that the same lack of confidence in her social outlook manifested
itself in the way she approached maths. She was scared of writing down the
wrong answer in case of the consequences so writing nothing down (or withdrawing
from the problem) was better than a bad attempt.
When I gently pushed her to have a go I discovered that she
was actually well able to do the maths.
She grasped concepts quickly and was very disciplined and methodical in
her approach. Not only that, but once she grasped something she was quickly
able to repeat it in different scenarios.
I tried to encourage her by making jokes when she made a
mistake and kept telling her that there was nothing to be scared of when you
got the wrong answer. More often than not getting the wrong answer can be a
good thing in maths. Generally that means you have learnt something new, that
a particular approach does not work or that you realise that you need to
improve your addition!
In any case, so began a tiny confidence building exercise
that was akin to nurturing a tiny seedling in a category five storm.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Mary and I spent many
hours together over the course of a month tending to this fragile little
seedling….
****
We can view poverty in many different ways. One classic way
of viewing poverty is that it makes people make extreme choices in their
lives. People make these choices because
they have no other choice. People can choose crime, prostitution or other
desperate measure to survive in the difficult circumstances they find
themselves in.
In many ways, people who choose these paths become the very
visible side of poverty. There is a
terrible very obvious tragedy to people who find themselves on these paths and
the consequences to them and society are very real and damaging.
What about those people though, who choose to withdraw and
be anonymous? Those that cannot cope
with the circumstances that they find themselves in? To me there is a greater tragedy here. Were you to get into the head of somebody on
this path you would find a truly lost and lonely soul overcome with the
challenges of life. Oftentimes they have lost all hope.
Over the course of my life, for good or for ill, I have met
a few people who have been in this situation. I have learnt something
fundamental from these encounters. If
all we do in life is give people hope we are imparting the most precious and
wonderful of gifts.
Mary is one of those people.
A poor child, born into a harsh world, lost and lonely on life’s
journey. Unfortunately she is one of many children in these circumstances in
the developing world.
But never under estimate what happens when you give somebody
hope….
****
At the end of the month Mary did her maths exam. No amount
of interrogation with her gave me any sense of how she had done. She just would not answer any questions about
the exam – all questions were met with a blank stare which was her typical
response to anything which she found difficult to answer. I have to admit that
I hate exams. Even though I went through the educational system as a successful
exam ‘product’ I think it’s a terrible crude, unjust and ultimately futile way
of measuring somebodies ability. My biggest concern for Mary was not whether
she was able to do the maths problems but rather was she able to cope with the
exam pressure. In times past teachers would beat her for failing the exam. This
is not untypical in Kenya and comes from the Victorian model of education
that they inherited under British rule (the same system that we are still
struggling to consign to the history books here in Ireland;)).
A week or so later I arrived
back at my apartment early. I was standing at the balcony and I saw Mary
getting off a Matatu (the local bus) and making her way to the house. She was
clutching a piece of paper but her countenance suggested she had just been
given bad news. Her face was taught and stressed and I have to admit that my
hopes of good news were dashed.
I went out to meet her as she
came up the stairs frantically trying to think of what to say to encourage her.
Her mum joined me in the corridor, both
of us grim faced. I gently asked her how had she got on and tried to reassure
her that no matter what the outcome, that all would be well.
She passed the paper in her
hand to her mum who carefully opened it up and read its contents.
What happened next was
something truly beautiful and I honestly wish I could have captured it better
than these few words.
Marys Mum looked up from the
paper and over at Mary with a look of astonishment on her face.
‘You passed your maths exam
Mary…and the teacher says that there has been vast improvement and to keep up
the great work….’
I looked across at Mary – the taught
and stressed look had vanished. She had
a look of disbelief on her face like she had found something precious that she
had deemed lost forever. The poor girl had not believed that she had passed the
exam till her mum had read the note.
Suddenly, like the spontaneous blooming
of a fabulous flower, her face lit up with a radiant smile, her eyes wide, bright
and soft with tears. It lit up the corridor
and then reduced myself and her mum to tears! A few group hugs later and we all
were laughing and giggling uncontrollably.
If one could have somehow captured
that brief moment of joy in its purest essence and spread it out far and wide there
would be no doubting that love and hope are alive and well in this broken
world.
Mary took the paper back and
held onto it for the rest of the evening. She maintained that wonderful smile
for a long time. There was an extra spring in her step in everything she did.
She did not say a lot – it’s not
her way - but you know what - that is
very much another day’s work.
GMcD August 2009
****
There is a wonderful epilogue
to this story but that will be revealed another time;)
