Through The Eyes of A Child

Children don’t wear glasses but their vision is clearer than mine and yours. Alianna is two? Three? I should know her age because she is one of the adorable kids on YouTube @Aliannaandfam. She drew a portrait of her father, who I must admit is doing a fantastic job of being her professor. The mother has her hands full with the baby.

Alianna drew little circles which were supposed to be eyes and the nose. I didn’t think the portrait will ever make it to the National Gallery, until she added her father’s hair. In one stroke, she drew tight conical shapes around the forehead. Her father is black. That is what the child sees. Rihanna’s son will probably draw something that looks like Rocky A$AP’s braids because he is the father. That’s what he sees. A baby boy from Japan or Korea will draw something different.

What a child sees is the truth. Rivers, lakes, waterfalls, streams and ocean are water, gifted by rain. Not oil, not honey, not blood, water. We might not agree because we live in precarious times where we say a woman who thinks she is a man can sleep in a male prison cell and nothing will happen to her. She can be a ‘male’ swimmer and undress in a male locker room, and nothing will happen to her. The NCAA forced Riley Gaines and her team mates to see Lia Thomas, a man who says she is a woman in their locker room.

What a child sees is the truth. That is why children call people they see for the first time auntie or uncle. They even understand age. One day I was doing some ‘power walking’ and two little boys shouted: Gijima gogo, which means run/jog grandma in Zulu. I turned to chase them, but they disappeared.

Rude boys. That is not important, what is, is what they saw: a human being, a female, and an old female. That is the truth.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.