The courage of children

March 4, 2010

Dear Julie,

Janet Goodin runs the Christian School for the Young Years in Cape Girardeau. She decided to find out what they could do for the children of Haiti. One need is to establish preschools that can be set up in tents because people are still afraid to go back inside buildings. But children need to play, especially in the wake of a disaster.

Goodin and her staff and the parents and children associated with the school gathered the toys and learning materials needed into nine kits to be shipped to Haiti. Some of the children wrote and illustrated books for the children who need them. Now the school is collecting dolls and stuffed animals that will go to Haiti later. These are special dolls. People who bring one in are asked to remove at least one of its limbs and sew the doll back up nicely.

Children in Haiti are having difficulty coping with being amputees.

An epidemic. That's what news reports have called the amputations that became necessary in Haiti after January's earthquake. Because of the lack of medical care available immediately, life-threatening infections set in quickly. In the past two months, thousands of people have had limbs amputated in Haiti, a country where superstition is strong and people with disabilities are believed to be a burden or cursed.

Even before the earthquake, work was scarce for the able-bodied, and many amputees in Haiti were left with no choice but to become beggars. The government spent $2 per person annually on its citizens' health care.

The earthquake destroyed three-fourths of the rehabilitation facilities for people with disabilities.

In a country where little goes smoothly, the usual wheelchairs don't work well, so most people who need one are using crutches.

Much must be overcome. In Chile and Haiti, people need our encouragement. People everywhere do.

This year the students in Ms. Hummel's second-grade class at Blanchard Elementary School are writing a how-to book. I'm trying to help and learning a lot myself about the things second-graders want to know how to do.

Adrianna is writing about how to catch a squirrel. Caleb wants to know how to parachute out of a helicopter. Sabrina wants to know how to make a coin magically disappear. Breawna is learning how to care for an abused animal. Jowairia wants to figure out how to make nail polish. Trinity is finding out how to write her name in Japanese.

Tyler is researching how to get on "American Idol." He was not discouraged to find out that he's about 10 years too young to qualify.

Discouragement is difficult to find in children. It's the rest of us who sometimes misplace our faith in the future.

Last week DC and I went to see "Carousel," the musical about a man who kills himself because he can't support his family. At intermission Janet Goodin's husband Lester told me about the dolls. He was leaving the next day to truck the kits to Mobile, Ala., where they were to be shipped to Haiti.

At the end of "Carousel" the grownups and children in the cast sing "You'll Never Walk Alone," a song that encourages us to keep going "Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown." The tune had always sounded a bit sentimental to me before. Not so much now.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.