Abuja, Nigeria: Four rooms, full of the future

May 22nd, 2006 7:30 PM EST
By Meighan Stone, ONE Communications Director

Where I grew up, school assemblies were never as incredible as the one we saw today: a Chancellor, a rock star, an economist, a TV news anchor and one amazing Nigerian Finance Minister, joined by over 350 kids singing, marching in unison:

Nigeria “Parents listen to your children,
We are the leaders of tomorrow…”

They sang outside their four room schoolhouse to Bono, UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, Dr. Jeff Sachs, Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News and Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi, classrooms open to the sun and filled with the most basic tools to educate and inspire: a simple blackboard, desks and benches made out of rummaged wood, one poster on the wall and a few pieces of scattered chalk. They sang in lines marked by rocks, the same rocks spelled out on the ground the most generous, African of words: “Welcome”.

It’s incredible how much the people we meet do to make us feel welcome in their schools, villages, homes. You look around and are amazed at what people can do with so little, and it makes you wonder what they could do with even a little more. Books. Paper. Crayons. More teachers. A square meal at school every day.

The things any kid in school in America takes as a given.

Chancellor Brown and Bono asked a classroom of children what did they want to be when they grew up, and the answers could have been the same as a classroom in Des Moines, Iowa: teachers, doctors, engineers, even a few who thought they might be up for being a rock star or economist themselves. Hands raised high, hopes even higher, Minister Ngozi asked them how many of them had sisters or brothers in college, and only a few hands went up. I wanted all of them to be in the air.

Bono met a group of children afterwards who had gathered around the school, kids from the neighboring huts and tin roofed homes who weren’t able to attend school themselves but had come to check out the new visitors. They were beautiful and told us all the reasons they couldn’t also sit in those simple benches and desks, reasons that sounded different but could all be described in just one word: poverty. After embraces and smiles and conversation, they started shouting “ONE” together with Bono.

Maybe, as ONE, we could start raising our voices even louder for them too.

“Parents, listen to your children,
We are the leaders of tomorrow…”

TAGS: The ONE Blog

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