From the one primary school where the children gather for assembly, we walked with the students heading to the other school. The younger children (kindegartners) took the "bus."
That's right... a bull powered school bus!
As we were watching the little ones load onto the cart, we saw a small girl with her father and she was obviously having a hard time parting with him. And in turn, he appeared very concerned about the situation as well. I asked our "guide" (a lovely Italian woman) about the girl and her father and she told me that the girl's mother died a few weeks ago of malaria. The father had been very ill as well and lost his job because of it. He now had to go look for work but it was difficult because of having his small daughter at home with no mother to care for her. Brijlata didn't have a sponsor yet, but they were taking her in hopes of finding one soon. Today was her first day at Sandipani Muni. My heart broke listening to this story.
I snapped a photo of Brijlata before I heard the story about her situation:
Chris took this photo of G and me walking with the Italian woman to the next school. She was full of information, including the story of Brijlata, and I greatly appreciated the time I had with her.
I think this was the moment of "Chris, I have something to tell you, it's terribly depressing, but I think we've been given a sign..."
And if the story of Brijlata wasn't enough of a sign, our child handing her biscuits was.
I cried the entire time I watched my 6 year old daughter hand out biscuits to children who otherwise would have had no meal if it weren't for this school.
As G continued to distribute the breakfast we sponsored, Chris and I cried together.
I wanted to hug all of these children! So cute, so innocent, and their lot in life so not fair.
It took us about a heart beat to decide that we needed to find out more about Brijlata. We saw her father watching through the classroom door, making sure everything was okay on her first day. Call us crazy, or emotional, but we just felt that this was meant to be - we were meant to sponsor Brijlata.
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