"I eat, you eat, he eats, we eat, you (plural) eat, they do NOT eat." As the poet Gloria Fuertes says, so much can be said with so few words.
Africa is the continent of the future. In this region of the world, the most babies are born. Thousands of children are exposed to difficult and traumatic situations every year. War, terrorism, poverty, and the effects of climate change are some of the main problems that affect millions of African children. Africa is also the continent of change. Advances in education, economic growth, the emergence of technology, and the fight of African feminist movements are transforming the reality of the continent.
One of the most revealing things about a child's development is their gaze.
In their gazes, I have discovered incredible things throughout these two months. One always expects a child's gaze to be clear, transparent, infinitely curious, and often obsessively mischievous.
However, life is never so rosy. There are many children in the world who die of hunger every day, and children are undoubtedly the most affected by all the misfortunes that plague the four corners of the Earth.
But what surprises and perplexes me at the same time is the gaze of some children. Every day we see children with translucent gazes, more characteristic of adults, or even the elderly. Gazes that are not mischievous at all but rather sad and tired. While most children are still exploring what things are like, what the world is like, it seems that some have already gone beyond and are asking themselves why. And perhaps, what is worse, some of these children have even answered that question.
As if they are looking not to find out but to confirm. A touch of sadness, almost of hopelessness. I'm not sure if this gaze is the result of some experience in the family or school environment, I'm not even sure if their parents or siblings were aware of it. But certainly, something in those children has made them mature beyond their years in an extraordinarily premature way.
That gaze in children bewilders and unsettles me at the same time. Because it seems completely out of place, something that could hide something completely unexpected and unpredictable. Usually, it doesn't scare me, but it lingers in that neighborhood.
Children are not a different species, they are just young men and women in the stage of education. But just as sometimes, against all odds, wine sours in the barrels when it shouldn't, perhaps some children speed through life in such a way that their gaze becomes adult too soon and easily evolves into the gaze of an elderly person. The gaze of someone who has already answered the why and knows that nothing can be done to change things.
These children are little monsters that progress brings us. I would like to understand why, but I'm not sure if after truly comprehending and understanding the depth of these children's thoughts, I would see things in the same way as I do now.
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