The Parsnip Girl
From the window of my van where we sat stuck in traffic, I watched her pull tops off the parsnips, picking through a stack to choose the best for her family. As she sat them on the scale, I thought maybe she didnât want to be charged for the extra weight the useless stems might add to her transaction. Smart thinking for a child her age.
She was maybe 7 or 8⊠maybe 10 if you factor in possible malnutrition. I thought of my daughter, about the same age, who loves it when I tell her at the grocery store to get 3 cucumbers or 4 tomatoes⊠my daughter who is learning how to tell if an avocado is ripe or how to pick bananas. She feels grown up and accomplished when sheâs able to help me in the store. But I canât quite picture her on her own in a crowded market like this, negotiating like a pro and gently chiding the vegetable seller until he throws another small parsnip on the pile in exchange for the small wad of bills she places in his open hand.
âMy daughter would have a lot to learn here,â I say, to no one in particular.
âBe glad she doesnât have to know how,â someone says back.
And I am grateful for this simple truth. My daughter doesnât have to know what itâs like to stretch a few small bills into enough for a meal. She doesnât have to negotiate with grown men to feed our family.
And given where Iâm seeing this little girl â on the edge of a refugee camp with God-only-knows how many people (800,000? 1 million?) â it isnât lost on me that my daughterâs vegetable-buying-skills arenât her only knowledge gaps with this girl in the beautiful orange dress. Though I donât know details of this girlâs story, Iâve heard enough to know itâs unlikely to be one of protected childhood innocence. I think about the possibilitiesâŠ
My daughter doesnât know what itâs like to flee across a river in the dead of night, balancing babies and baskets of belongings on her head and hoping to make it to the other side.
My daughter doesnât know what itâs like to hide under a pile of bamboo while her mother is raped, while her father is shot. She doesnât carry the memories of saying goodbye to the grandmother who is too old and frail to make the journey; the one they left behind.
My daughter doesnât know what itâs like to frantically gather a few belongings and run to the cover of trees before the fire thatâs been set to her village consumes her humble house, hoping to escape the eye of encircled soldiers with guns aimed at people fleeing.
Iâm so glad my daughter doesnât have to know.
But I canât ignore this little girl who does know. I see confidence and intelligence in her strong posture and the way she doesnât shrink back from the adults around her. I see her motherâs lessons come to life in the way she tosses the vegetables in her hands, picking through the piles until she finds the ones she wants and inspecting each for unacceptable imperfections. I imagine sheâs quick-witted and bright, just like my daughter. Iâd imagine that if sheâs given the chance to dream, sheâd come up with something fantastic for her future. She might want to be a teacher or a doctor or maybe even a pet groomer, just like my daughter. She could be an executive or an astronaut or whatever else she wanted to be.
⊠If she werenât here.
I know miracles are possible⊠and maybe her life will someday be a story so fantastic itâs made for the movies. But reality tells a different story. Reality says life isnât meted out on scales, is it? Sheâs not getting opportunities in equal measure to the losses she has experienced. Sheâs not even getting the same helping of possibility that my daughter receives every day. The equations of human experience are rarely balanced.
Iâm unwilling to come to a place like this and tell you about how happy everyone is, even though they have nothing. Itâs not that it isnât true⊠there are beautifully happy people, content and thriving right where they are. And we should humbly look for lessons we can learn from othersâ lives.
But sometimes I think we like to say that to ourselves because it makes us feel better about not doing much to adjust the scale.
And as I watch the little girl out the window, I find myself wondering what the world would look like if I took her education as seriously as I take my daughterâs? What if I cared for her emotional healing as much as I would care for my daughterâs? What if I advocated for her future as much as I do for my daughterâs?
What would the world look like if we each did that for one child who wasnât our own?
Traffic unsnarls and the cars move on. She disappears from view and I will probably never see her again. But there are millions of little girls buying parsnips and boys driving rickshaws and girls gathering firewood and boys herding sheep and girls cleaning houses and boys laying bricks and girls selling their bodies and boys running drugs. And the questions remain in my heart⊠What if we each tried to balance one little lifeâs scale?
What if she didnât have to know only this world either?
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Iâm so grateful to Partners Relief & Development for bringing me on this trip. Iâve learned so much about their work on the ground and my admiration has only deepened as Iâve seen up-close their efforts to bring free and full lives to children of conflict. If you want to be a part of balancing the scales, Partners is a great place to check out.
This blog is from Partnerâs supporter, Carrie McKean.Â
https://carriemckean.com/2018/10/24/the-parsnip-girl/Â