A Natural Family

Guest post from J...

The guest house where we stayed in Addis is attached to the babies’ rooms, and the big kids (ie, 3 years old and up) live down the street at (get this) The Big Kid House.

It’s hard to leave a baby behind, but K and I had promised to take pictures of a couple of the big kids for parents who are still waiting to travel, so I headed down the street one afternoon with S and L, who were angling to be the Most Popular People in the Big Kid House by bringing tons of candy with them.

We arrived just as the kids were leaving their rooms from naptime and joining together in the common area for a little singing and dancing.

And nothing says ‘Hope you had a nice nap’ like thousands of milligrams of sugar bolting through little kids’ veins.

I got to share a particularly sweet moment with a little boy who we’ll call Dawit. He, like most of the kids, had several different kinds of candy, and as he was working on his Skittles, he came over to me and held out a red one.

‘For me?’ I asked, feeling a little insecure about the fact that I don’t speak Amharic.

He placed it in my hand and smiled. I thanked him, and he reached up toward my hand, presumably to take it back, pulling the ‘almost share’ that children are so good at.
Instead, he pressed my hand toward my face. So I popped that sticky little red Skittle right into my mouth. It’s the little things that can get you. I chewed, looking at Dawit, thinking about the special moment we were sharing and the wonder of children that can shine through despite language barri-

S: ‘Dude! Did you just eat that?!?’

I assume her accusatory tone is the result of her missing part of what’s happening here, that it’s the result of her thinking I just took candy from, you know, an orphan. ‘He wanted me to have it,’ I explain, ready to launch into a soliloquy about sharing and nurturing and the basic goodness of all people.

S: ‘So?!?’

If this were an episode of House, here’s what would’ve happened next:

[Tight shot of my face, mouth hanging open slightly. As understanding dawns in my eyes, the camera zooms to the back of my throat, down my esophagus, and into my stomach, which is already churning the red Skittle. As we attain the most extreme closeup of the Skittle, we can see millions of angry little micro-organisms eagerly checking out their new digs.]

‘It probably isn’t all that bad,’ I think to myself, as I turn to see Dawit take several Skittles, add them to a stash he has created by folding up the front edge of his shirt, then stuff that stash into the front of his pants. That’s when I knew the Skittle would probably want to fight later.

The Skittle won…