LESSONS BORN IN PAIN: LESSONS FOR ALL OF US

Nico van Oudenhoven

Even in the most desperate, dismal, and grim situations, there are people who live on, work, walked on, take care of their families, and do not give up.

These are women and men, young and old, who, among the most painful, hurtful, and agonising circumstances, have found ways to cope and sometimes even to flourish. And especially noteworthy: they had done so sometimes in the most inventive and innovative ways. Just to name a few well-known examples taken from a world-wide canvass:

formation of mother groups under most oppressive regimes
making ingenious toys and learning materials from scrap materials
men taking on traditional ‘female’ child-rearing and household tasks
creation of safe community-run playgrounds
creation of communal floating vegetable gardens
knowledge and use of local medicinal herbs
production of low-cost aids for children with physical impairments
teenage children playing classical music with instruments made from junk material found on a dump
‘wise grandmothers’ filling the gap caused by a severe lack of psychiatrists

LESSONS BORN IN PAIN: LESSONS FOR ALL OF US

Children acting as interpreters
New roles for imprisoned mothers and their children
14-year-old boys running a radio station, with lots of music, but also with lots of useful information for their agemates in a refugee camp
boys and girls together making sanitary pads, this to keep girls in school and to fight stigma – inreasing the number of women in parliaments lowers maternal mortality
putting a plastic drape beneath a woman in childbirth, measuring the loss of blood, reduces maternal mortality
home schooling via secretive networks for girls where formal education for girls is not allowed

save guarding and introducing traditional street games, using only pebbles or knucklebones, to preserve culture and provide powerful educational tools
teachers and students as equal partners in running an ‘Escuela Nueva’ in out-of reach and underserved areas
building on traditional cultural but nearly lost accomplishments and under-appreciated by the dominant order, indigenous teachers together create new expressions of culture.
locally maintained, community based early warning systems that inform local NGOs about families that run the risk of ‘getting under’.

There is so much more and far more exciting. One has to be there to see and appreciate it. This is a truly astounding finding. Therefore, the first task, so to speak, as an outsider to observe, listen and interact extremely respectfully with the people that one encounters: parents, care givers and certainly also the children and young people.

Many have found solutions to cope, to survive, to keep their children and communities safe which need to be recognised and above all validated.

selective focus photography of magazines

They also usually carry significance for much wider audiences and can help to bring new life into prevailing care and education practices of children and young people as well as community adhesion and action. They also could contribute to the prevailing research, practice, and policies All reason, therefore, to be utterly humble and grateful.

Sometimes, these lessons are brought from the Global South to the Global North by people who have been exposed to severe ‘toxic’ environments, as documented by investigative journalist Harry Kleine.

He portrays in his book ‘Wie We Zijn’ [Who We Are] the lives of 25 women who settled in the Netherlands after they fled their homelands that had become ‘hells on earth’, due to extreme violence, brutality, injustice, cruelty, and other forms of life-threatening inhumaneness. Each of them offers some lessons learnt of good advice. Striking, is their lack of resentment or urge for revenge. Their messages give hope and courage. A selection:

• How can we learn from each other?

• Our lives are sources of inspiration

• It is never too late for a new start

• Follow your heart

• You can realise your dreams

• Open yourself to good advice

• Don’t try to compete with the expectations of others

• You can’t do it alone

• Be open to each other; they teach you how to connect

• Diversity helps us to move further

• Contribute to the country that welcomes you

• Open hearts and doors to people in need

• Have compassion with yourself

Granted, these comments are made by women, how hard and painful their journeys were, who somehow ‘made it’ and stood out sufficiently enough to be noticed.

The presumable high numbers of women who were not ‘successful’ have been left out, they are invisible as individuals and their voices are not being heard. Their ‘lessons’ born in pain may be much different. But still.

Nico van Oudenhoven is the Senior Associate International Child Development Initiatives [ICDI] See: ICDI.nl; Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands

Images collected from different sources

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