Kids Need Trees

Sometimes just the simplest things, things that we often take for granted, bring such joy and pleasure to our kids. Today was a fairly quiet afternoon and I took a trip up to the shelter to see what the kids were up to and to do a little work on the computer at school. As I was walking down to the shelter from the school, I heard this raucous laughter from the large empty lot between the two compounds. Some kids were yelling "hi" and I just assumed they were kids from the community as they will sometimes take a short cut through that area. I was surprised when I looked up and saw about 10 of our kids up in a big tree. Boy, was I glad to see that!

Our kids are quite sheltered most of the time. We have a lot of kids to keep track of and it just isn't possible to have them going outside the compound unsupervised in just any direction. There is far too much trouble to get in to without going too far from our compound. And if our kids didn't manage to find trouble, trouble would almost surely find them. Lawlessness is not unheard of in our neck of the woods.

And kids need trees.

A couple of months ago I had some of the kids and Uncle Patrick come over to the empty lot to watch some men finishing cutting down a tree that had had a huge branch fall into our compound onto a couple of our employees. What kids wouldn't like to see guys slicing through a tree with a big, noisy chainsaw. Anyway, there was another big tree in the area so I encouraged the kids to go play in the tree for a while. They had a great time so I told Uncle Patrick to bring them back over sometime. Today they did, even bringing along a big rope to make a swing. Everyone got a chance to play Tarzan or Jane and even Uncle Patrick and Auntie Lourdes climbed up in the tree with the kids. Hence, raucous laughter today.

Kids need trees.