Thought I’d like to share this web-site with you, today. http://www.karmatube.org:80/ I subscribe to the email newsletter and was interested in the lead story/video which then linked to the Friends Without Borders site, providing a little more information. Terrific idea and a concept with which I’m not unfamiliar.
I was part of a career-military family for over twenty years, raising a daughter in this interesting…sometimes challenging…environment. She was born into it, which meant her childhood was changing schools, friends, cultures, countries every two years or so. Some may think this is difficult, hard on a child to accept the making and leaving of friends and most times knowing they will never encounter those friends again. Very little of such a life ‘lives into perpetuity’ but, you know, it really is not a bad thing if you have the right attitude…and most of those kids do if we, as parents lead a positive way. Sometimes, however, it’s our children who lead us. By the time our daughter was five years old she had lived in three countries and just arrived in a fourth where she was about to attend kindergarten. Aside from the last four years of her education, every school she attended was a DoD school, (an American school on the military post at which we were stationed) but, for the most part, her after-school activities were with our neighbour children…none of them class/school mates…for we chose to live in the communities of our host country. So I watched this video of Friends Without Borders and reran the ‘video’ in my mind of my daughter’s childhood and friends. How easy it is for children…how easy it can be for us to learn from them that a smile, laughter, generosity and the willingness of children (perhaps even the necessity?) to have and be friends with one another.
Within only a day or two of our arrival of these countries I watched as two 5 year old children, neither speaking each other’s language, approached each other, communicated and played happily for several hours…becoming each other’s ‘best friend’ before that day was over. It began with an honest, open look; a smile. One word spoken in English the other in Italian, two shakes of the head with confused looks then a shrug of the shoulders as they began to play. Oh, they chattered back and forth, laughed a lot…and I learned. It wasn’t long before each was learning the other’s language, arguing, best friends becoming “I don’t like her today” but, as children do the fall-out lasted all of ten minutes, maybe an hour at most. Other local children were soon pulled into the camaraderie, the families became friends and we shared birthday parties, family celebrations, traditional holidays. We didn’t share religious beliefs but we were privileged to be invited…and accept…to participate in each other’s holy days observances, traditions and celebrations.
Leaving our friends, their culture and country was always a sad occasion for all of us despite the fact that we adopted and took with us many of their traditions. We never saw any of them again and certainly never will, now, but we have never forgotten them or the feelings we have for them. These days I hear a great deal of criticism, sometimes mockery, often patronization of other countries, their way of life, what they “have” or “don’t have”, and it’s just sad because those with the biggest voices in that respect have probably never taken real time to get to know our fellow travellers on our life’s journey. Maybe never watched two 5 year olds, strangers and literally foreign to each other ignore all of that and become instant friends.
We have Doctors Without Borders, Friends Without Borders…wonder what the chances are that someday Nations (Humans) Without Borders might be a reality? One can hope.
