On Elmo, empathy & other emergency relief
In a last glimpse over my shoulder before heading out the door, I caught my 2-year-old’s gaze: a cloudy pair of eyes peering up from a tangle of blankets on the couch. Flushed and fussy with a breaking fever, he had snuggled up with his dad, a cup of watered-down juice and an Elmo doll — his most prized possession — to watch Sesame Street and grumble about my departure. Sick kids are business as usual for most parents, especially when our children are small, but that doesn’t soften the sharp edge of the empathy we feel for them. I’ll admit it: I dragged my feet to my job as a writer and editor at ChildFund International.
At least, until I booted up my computer. When I went to check and see if any new photos had come in from our country offices, a familiar face rattled my apathy.
Hi again, Elmo — and Adnan, age 10. Adnan likes drawing and wants to be a doctor when he grows up. He also happens to live in the Sigi District of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, where a 7.5-magnitude earthquake, followed by a tsunami, recently killed more than 2,000 people and left hundreds of thousands more homeless. His school was among more than 1,500 destroyed in the disaster.
Although ChildFund doesn’t operate programs in Central Sulawesi, we’ve been on the ground for several weeks delivering emergency aid in the form of clothing, diapers, blankets, cooking utensils, soap and more — and, more importantly, protecting children from additional harm. Adnan’s photo was taken at one of the 10 Child-Centered Spaces ChildFund set up in the area. The heart of our emergency response programs, these spaces are designed to protect children in a post-disaster environment, giving them somewhere to go where they’re safe from things like environmental hazards, violence, neglect and human trafficking.
But the spaces are also little pop-up oases in the midst of the devastation where kids can just be kids for a while. They hang out, play with toys, make art and act silly while their grown-ups go about trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives. Children play games and learn songs and dances designed to aid recovery from trauma. And trained staff are on-site to talk to them, even about the hard stuff.
Most people I know, including myself, can’t conceptualize the magnitude of loss that kids in Central Sulawesi have experienced. To my own child, a hard time is a sick day spent spitting out a thermometer and slurping little cupfuls of bubblegum-flavored medicine. Yet although adversity is not equal, it is universal, and there’s connective power in that shared experience.
There’s something about recognizing someone you love in the eyes of a total stranger that feels like an invitation to be used more efficiently for the healing of the world. How can we challenge ourselves to be better helpers, not just because others are sick or sad or poor but because we have been, too — because their struggle for survival is ours? What can we do to see to it that even when the earth cracks open and normalcy is swallowed up in the sea, kids like Adnan still find reasons to smile?
