Children Are Not The Same

Kids love school to make friends.

They are. The way they are conceived and born and the food they eat on the mother’s breast. That’s why some slave women in the South breast-fed white babies because plantation owners did not want to ruin their husbands’ object of affection. 

Kids are the same. They like their sameness. That’s why they gravitate towards each other even before they are one year old. Mothers and aunties come closer when they see a three year-old attempting to pick up a toddler. Babies extend little arms to touch another wonder of the world. They are the only wonder of the world. We just forgot because the priority is the pursuit of happiness brought about by money. Trouble begins when we put clothes on their backs. Then kids become different, different as in superiority vs inferiority, different as in the right to live and destiny to die.

Investment bankers earn more money than kindergarten teachers because they identify water resources, gold, platinum, olives and cactus plants that can be stolen from countries where babies run around naked because ‘they’re poor’ and not because they are babies. However, kindergarten teachers are richer because they watch kids approach and explore each other, come to some conclusion then hug each other.

Kids lose that innocence when they grow up. They learn about being exclusive. In all world wars, there  were parents who made sure their sons did not die in the trenches. They were assigned soft army duties because of parents’ money and connections. It’s only poor people that are fed the patriotism diet.

Kids are the same until geography kicks in. Parents explain why they live here, but their grandparents were born and died over there. Then the vicious circle begins. The free air kids once enjoyed becomes color coded into flags, prayers, shawls and hats. They become heirs to the belief that kids are not the same. Some have the right to live, others are destined to die.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger