The Pencil Boy

There were four of us in the back with Mwalimu driving. As we headed west on the Moro Goro Road and then turned north at Chalinze, I knew it was going to be a warm day. At some point, the pavement ended and the road became dusty and somewhat bumpy. We had another two hours to travel, and I was already starting to drink water in anticipation of a long day. Around the bend on the right shoulder of the road stood two young boys, frantically bouncing a puppet and waiting to get our attention. I waved as we went by and watched the boys disappear in a cloud of dust. Several hours later we arrived in Korogwe.

Seven hours later as we made our way back home, there, on the side of the road, stood the two boys. Once again, as they saw us, they frantically waved their puppet. We stopped and they sang a song and made the puppet jiggle up and down. One boy engaged Mwalimu in conversation in Swahili while my wife tried to talk with the other. They were covered with dust and had been standing in the road for more than eight hours waiting for someone, a tourist preferably, to stop. I asked Mwalimu what they wanted, and he replied that they are waiting for someone to give them a pencil! I was stunned! In an age where people are throwing computers in the garbage because they are not fast enough, there are still places in the world were a boy will stand in the sun for hours waiting for a six cent pencil. There were no pencils and no paper at the school, this boy attended. So they learn to write by scratching in the dust with their fingers. This boy thought that if someone would give him a pencil he could learn to write and perhaps rise out of poverty that was engulfing him.

I was tired and hot and dusty. I looked at that boy and wept tears of rage. 50 American dollars, provided pencils and paper for this boy and all the other boys and girls at the school in Karatu for a year. It was my first experience with extreme poverty, and I was surprised because I guess I expected an emaciated starving child. Instead, I came face to face with a couple of happy kids shaking a puppet trying to get a pencil because someone told them that if they learn to write they would no longer be poor, and it would be easier for them to learn if only they had a pencil.