We did this!

There are things you do in your life that are good, and occasionally, there comes along some things you get involved in that are great.

Standing on the second floor landing at the Collège Saint-Esprit of M’bour, looking over the assembled mass of children in the inner courtyard, I could not help but think, this is great. Observing 25 red faced 17 year old kids (red faces caused by a bit too much sun following that supposedly wet and cold Vancouver winter and the fact that we had spent the major part of yesterday swimming in the Atlantic…well…let’s just say the kids swam in the ocean, we more mature adults bobbed in the ocean…) mingling, talking, laughing and occasionally dancing with 1300+ students from the college, just having a great time as if they had known each other since birth. Three little words came to mind, three little words that I could not help but repeat in my mind….we did this, we did this.

I could feel the ‘goodness’ in that courtyard. I could feel the enthusiasm and the excitement of the African children as they finally met and mingled with these Canadian kids whom their teachers had talked about for a while, some of them even remembering by name the Canadian kids that we had brought over 2 years ago. I could feel the excitement and the pride of the awestruck Canadian kids who moved around shaking every hand that was extended to them, hands that would not let go and would hold on to them as if not to lose this new found connection they had with a world far away and so different from theirs.

We did this, we brought these kids together. A deep sense of pride seemed to engulf every iota of my being. This excitement, this youthful exuberance, this sense of discovery, this communal bonding between kids of two different worlds, this courage to go beyond one’s comfort zone, this driving search to find hope in a world where hope is the only thing left, this was Yaakaar. We did this.

Again, I realized the enormity of Yaakaar, the enormity of what we had done. Yaakaar is big, bigger than any single one of us, bigger than the sum of everyone involved in it, from the kids themselves, their parents, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts who have supported them in their quest to come to Africa so that they could experience first hand how to ‘make a difference’, to the thousands of kids and their families on this side of the world who are impacted by the work these kids have done to support them.

Yaakaar is bigger than those thousands of books and kilos of clothing that our families have succeeded in bringing to Africa, bigger than those 60 scholarships given to those 60 kids who otherwise would not be in school today, bigger than that millet grinder that the Yaakaar women’s group have donated to the women of Ndoundok.

Yaakaar is the gift of giving, its those tears of joy and compassion that come streaming down a 17 years old Canadian student's cheeks when he holds on to a baby at the Warang orphanage and realizes that this small child has nothing, and that he, due to the fact that he was born on the right side of the global tracks, has everything. Yaakaar is the awkward feeling that overcomes you when a teary eyed mother comes up to you and thanks you for giving her daughter a chance in life, by paying tuition so she can go to school. Yaakaar is that sense of inadequacy and ineptitude when you’re here in Africa, and you quickly come to realize how wide the chasm between the world of overabundance that is ours in North America, and the world of poverty and desperation that is the reality of the African continent.

Yaakaar is also about learning and understanding, sometimes coming to grips with some of the weirdest paradoxes such as overhearing a Canadian kid explaining to her African counterpart how she managed to scrape enough money to travel all the way to Africa - from collecting pop cans and bottles and selling popcorn at lunch hour in school, to piling boxes at WalMart and flipping burgers at MacDonalds; and then hearing the African counterpart respond that her parents would never permit her to engage in such fund raising because it would be too demeaning and only ‘poor people’ would do that.

Throughout this first week of Yaakaar 2011, I’ve had many moments like the one I experienced on the second floor landing at College Saint-Esprit on Monday. I refer to them as Yaakaar moments. All of them feel good, all of them feel great. All of them brought on those same three words…we did this.