Growing Up

There is a two year old girl who lives in the house next to us named Grace.  Her mom sells fish for Regina and she has just started leaving Grace behind while she sells for the morning.  When we first moved to our community, Grace would go with her mom and all would be fine.  Now, however, her mom has to run away in the mornings before Grace realizes she is gone.  While I recognize it as a step in growing up, it is also incredibly sad to watch every day.

Lately, her mom has been telling her that she needs to “pee-pee” before going to work.  She will leave her basket on the ledge of the porch and run into the latrine building near the house.  When Grace sees her go inside, she’ll walk away slowly back onto the porch.  After a few minutes, her mom will peek out, see that Grace is gone, grab her basket of fish, and run out of site.  Ten minutes later, or so, it will dawn on Grace that her mom is still in the bathroom.

She will toddle her way over to the latrine and knock on the door, repeating “Mama?  Mama-oh!” until someone comes and hauls her back to the porch.  She cries and cries, falls asleep, wakes up, and the process will start again.  All this anguish is forgotten, however, when she sees her mom come home from the market.  The tears suddenly stop, she gets a huge smile on her face, and she waves at us as if to say, “See?  She did return for me!”  She is growing up small-small, but until then, we are left watching her question why her mom must spend hours in the latrine in the morning.  :)