Right Hand Fork,
Left Hand Knife: Fine Dining in the Eighth Grade
We had the annual Eighth Grade Formal recently. It’s
always funny, and it’s always sad that the parents don’t get to see their guys
clean up so nice. One guy was so scared about being incorrect that he wrote on
his hands: RIGHT HAND FORK, LEFT
HAND KNIFE. One guy was so excited about getting to sit with the girl he liked
that he was bouncing off the walls for days before. When he got back to the
dorm, he was pretty subdued:
Me: What’s the matter?
Them: I was so excited when I found out I got to sit
next to her, but after two minutes, I ran out of things to
say.
Me: What did you do?
Them: I looked the other way the rest of the night.
It’s easy to forget how hard it is to be an eighth
grader, and how awkward that age can be. Sometimes, I think that the bravest
people I know are eighth graders at this school; to go through that interesting
stage of life away from your parents would be so
hard.
We get back to the states on July 17th. It is
a long journey; we leave at
This time we will be traveling with the dynamic duo, who
hate crowds and new things and not getting enough sleep, so we are going to try
to slip into town as quietly as we can, and once we get our sea legs back, we
hope to get to see everyone. We will be living in
My hope is to not work until September. We are all
tired, and we will have lots of work to get everyone readjusted to
If you wish to continue to support the feeding program,
any monies that come in after May 2004 will not be used until August 2005. If
you can continue to support us while we are on home assignment, we would
appreciate it. We understand if you can’t, but if you can, that would be
helpful. Our largest supporter has
not been able to support us for the last several months, so we will need to
raise additional support when we are back. I’m not sure what kind of job I will
be able to get for just one year, but I will get something. But we are going to
try hard to spend part of this time at home resting; we are
tired.
RVA has asked that the feeding program would cease while
we are away. All of us work more than full time jobs, and adding this would be a
distraction to a new staff member. The staff members who have been here for
awhile have their own projects, and most everyone is stretched pretty thin. The
feeding program takes a lot of time, and it is probably for the best that it
takes a rest for a year.
So it was quite bittersweet to be on the last delivery
for a year. Headmasters got quite
emotional as we told them we would have to curtail the program for a year. I had
to explain that there was no more money in the fund, and I needed to be there to
supervise, but they have seen the fruit in this program, and as I listened to
grown men telling me about children running that didn’t run after noon because
they would normally be too tired, I thought: burn this into your heart. Let it
hurt.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should inform you
that I received a kickback from this program, and I’m not giving it back, no
matter what.
I couldn’t give it back anyway. My name is on it. In
fact, it is so specific it says `A Gift for
And I’m not sure anyone else would want a purse with my
name on it.
Yes, a purse. Why, I don’t know. But it was made by a
parent at one of the schools we feed, and although I try hard to discourage that
kind of thing (there is nothing harder in the world than receiving stuff from
people who have nothing) what could I do?
I’m not even sure what to DO with a purse. But I do have
one now. So there you go, and back off.
We went to Kenton this week. This is the school that has
started having afternoon classes for the first time since we started providing
lunches because before the lunches, the kids didn’t have the energy to handle
the afternoon classes. It is very remote, and almost impossibly beautiful,
surrounded by large green hills. It was also so poor it would take your breath
away.
(The library @Kenton)
It is so poor. But they had some entertainment for us.
They had a dance troupe, and a young man who played a homemade xylophone. At
closer range, I could see it was made with discarded fence
posts.
And it sounded so great. It was the most amazing thing,
this little kid playing this wonderful music on this junky homemade instrument,
and I thought how it would have been his right to think `I can’t do anything on
this piece of junk’ and not try. But he knew what was in his
hand.
I have pondered this for days. What is really in my
hand? If I looked at what I had differently, would it change the way I lived my
life? If I knew what I really had, how would I
change?
One last thing. The woman that opens the computer center
gets there at 7, and from
Kids have been arriving at
The programs are bearing such fruit. Please help us grow
them. It would be wonderful to
expand the feeding program to cover 100 schools, and build 24 more computer
centers. May I ask you if you could ask your church or corporation if I could
speak to them? I need some larger venues in order to fund such expansion, and I
don’t know how to do it without your help. Can you help us help these
kids?
Will you look and see what is in your
hand?
And no, you can’t have my
purse.
Your
pal,
Steve
PS. One of my best and oldest
friends in the world (since sixth grade) has a book coming out in July, and I
want to do a shameless plug for it. The name of the book is the Millennium
Matrix by Rex Miller, and I had the privilege of reading the draft copy. I read
it with a mixture of wonder and depression. It will make you think and ponder so
many issues in our society. It depressed me because I wondered how someone who
went to the same junior high and high school could be so much smarter than me.
Here is the link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787962678.html
Stateside
Address:
Phone:
011-254-20-32046-252
peifer@kijabe.net
http://www.yourpal-steve.org/