Pencils of Promise

Chicken, chicken, rooster!

It’s hot out and we’re lurking in the shade. We talk to each other in mixes of Lao, English, motions and laughter, understanding little and smiling much.

The kids of Pha Theung are out of school for the day, free to play just a while before going home to prepare meals, look after siblings, clean the house. Our languages don’t mesh well enough for us to have conversations–we fall short after a few words and settle with laughing, passing snacks around, and looking at one another.

But here, where our lives, languages, and cultures couldn’t be more different, we have one way of communication in common: the language of play.

With some help from Kua and Vuan, two seventh graders, I rally us all together in a circle. We hold hands, the growing group of us, ages 3 to twenty-four, and take steps back and fold down onto our knees.

I don’t know the Lao words for duck and goose, so I improvise. Cai, Cai, Cai-poo!, I say, ‘chicken, chicken rooster!’

I stand up, twenty-five sets of eyes on me, and start walking around the circle. I tap each child on the shoulder, being careful to avoid touching heads, a holy part of the body, in this Buddhist culture. Boua, 7, perches up on his heels and smirks at me. ‘Cai, cai, cai cai..’ I chant slowly, ‘Cai-poo!’

Boua is up in an instant, chasing me fiercly around the circle, now raucous with laughter.

I barely escape his speedy steps and slide in to the open spot in the group. ‘Oh, dee-lai!’ he says, patting me on the back. Very good.

We play again and again, chants of ‘chicken, chicken, rooster’ filling our group, until slowly, one at a time, they start to leave. Parents are coming back in from the rice fields and it’s time to get home.

It ends with just Boua and I. I tell him that he’s very fast, the fastest seven-year-old I’ve ever seen! He pats me on the back again, with the warmth and reassurance of someone much older.

And this is how we learn: Interacting, exploring, running, using our motor skills, coordination and language.

It may be hard for us to communicate at times, but we have this secret, international language of play, learning and education. Something that is uniquely ours, for every single one of us, and continues to benefit us all: Education.

Photo credit: Nick Onken

Tags: Pha Theung