Life lessons

Let me first set the stage:

When we were in Africa picking up the kids, we met our friend D and R. Through the many hot days of being in Africa we talked about everything. One day, while sitting on the steps of the church, we got into a conversation about what we thought each others' houses were decorated like (we were a little bored). When we told how our living room was decorated in eclectic stuff and lots of wooden masks, D strongly cautioned us against keeping them up. She tried to explain the implications of the masks and tried to get us to understand that our kids have seen more than we would ever want them to see. NOT that we did believe her, but we were adopting a 5 and 3 year old (or so we thought), how much would've they really seen? But we wanted to do the right thing and had my sister take them all down.

Fast forward:

The girls room is always such a mess. They mess up their room so much that they can't play there or even see the floor. Then they go to the playroom and do the same, then to the living room...etc. I decided to pack up all the girls toys in their room and they could play with one thing at a time. In order to do this, I had to make room in my closet...where the masks were. I took them out of the closet and stacked them up to take them down to the building. Of course, that all didn't happen the same day. When B got up to leave the next morning, he knocked into the masks and they went everywhere. Needless to say when the kids got up and saw them, they were the new "toy of the day."

Later that day, Kp was talking freely about the masks and what they meant to her. Listening to her talk about it deeply saddened me, and truly understood what D told us. I don't know if I could even do justice repeating the stories she told. If you could, imagine your sweet little 3-4 year old girl relaying to you that these masks are scary to her because people put them on and eat other people. She has a fearful response to these masks. We asked her who taught her about them, and she said that her Mama did. I can't imagine a mom teaching a small child about these things let alone having her witness them first hand. According to her, people wear these masks to eat other people. Daily I am thankful for many things...getting the kids as quickly as we did, is always one of them.

Those who say "(African country our kiddos came from) isn't all that bad." They are right. It's actually worse. And until my dying breath no one will be able to convince me otherwise, or convince me that children are ok there...