Pinned the girls

Last week we attended the closing ceremony of the school year.  It was on a Sunday at 4pm. The ceremony took place at what seemed to be a church at West Point. The place was packed with children, parents, family members and the school staff.

There were children from all ages, from kindergarten to high school. Among the children; several girls from the “More than Me” foundation.

My favorite part of the ceremony was when they called the kids to the front and the parents and relatives “pinned” them. They attached different “prizes” into their uniforms: candies, money, ribbons. The luckiest got 20 or 30 Liberian dollars (less than 50 US$ cents). It may look like a very small amount of money but for some of those families, 50 US$ cents can be the income of a week.

Other kids received ice cream or soda as a special treat. It was great to see the excitement in their faces trying to get even the last drop of soda out of the can with their little fingers. And that is the thing that will never stop surprising me about Liberian kids: their ability to smile and be happy with so little.

These things seem to be so insignificant, things that most of us could probably purchase every day. I bet my nephews will even be disappointed if that what they get as a “prize” at the end of the school year. But for a single mother with five or six kids, who works selling cookies earning 10 US$ cents a package, spending one dollar in a can of soda has to happen only in a very special occasion.

The ceremony lasted almost two hours and at the end the kids returned home happy and proud.  However, I could not stop thinking that many of these kids are going to spend almost two months away from school. For some of them this will mean playing in the streets and have fun. For the “More Than Me” foundation’s girls, it will mean two months having to work on the streets, being at risk of sexual exploitation or spending more than one day with eating (the only meal many of the girls get a day is the one provided by the foundation at school).