Hikmah

I’ve recently felt a stirring to look for ways to help the “orphaned and the widow,” and I recently inquired about opportunities with a school teacher friend of mine explaining that I wanted to help those less fortunate than our family. I was thinking about trying to help in a soup kitchen or an orphanage but she came back to me with information about helping one of her students, Hikmah. Hikmah is 14 years old and in 3rd grade because of the difficulties in continuing an education here. She is an orphan and is being raised by her very elderly grandmother in a house that I have to say, when I saw it, thought it was the emptiest I’d seen here. Only rough rice paper mats lay on the floor as a place to sit off of the dusty floor. Hikmah can’t afford the $2.00 a month fees to go to school let alone the .50 cents a day transportation to and from school. Books are, most likely, a luxury she will never be able to afford. My heart ached for her, and as I talked with her uncle and grandmother explaining to them how I wanted to help with Hikmah’s education I was struck by how hard their life must be. Anna came with me, and as I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye, I instantly realized the privilege she was born into just by being an American and Caucasian. Hikmah’s uncle, to my embarrassment, repeatedly instructed his niece to not throw away this incredible opportunity – that an education was absolutely necessary to “advance herself.” Hikmah’s grandmother, a woman whose few rotting teeth bore witness to a difficult life, couldn’t stop touching me and hugging me and just saying thank you over and over. I left stunned by the gratitude of this family for such a simple thing (in my thinking) of providing less than $20 a month for a young girl to attend school. My hope is for Hikmah to be able to attend school regularly and gain an education, but I already suspect that it is I who will learn far more than she will from this relationship.