Helping the Children

Helping the Children

Last week, I wrote about my tactical flashlight amazon and its amazing use. This post will tackle far from my previous post.

I was sitting on the sidewalk watching the children as they bend a construction steel on a trunk of a young mango tree shaping it round for a basketball ring. I knew they didn’t have difficulty bending it so I decided it was not yet time for me to help them. The steel was long so there were enough levers for them to bend it round the mango trunk. Once the steel was round enough resembling a basketball ring, they nailed it to a piece of plywood. After cutting the extra length of the steel with a hacksaw they borrowed from another neighbor they nailed the plywood on a branch of the mango and then began playing basketball. After a few shots and a few dunks by the tallest boy among them their basketball goal got detached from the branch.
They nailed the steel on a thin plywood and nailing the plywood on a small branch. It was a grown man’s job badly done by children. I went to them and helped them. I sent one of the boys to find a thicker wood 2 inches thick, 3 inches wide and about three feet in length where the steel was to be nailed. The boy came back with the right wood. I nailed the plywood to the wood the boy brought and then nailed the ring on it and then nail it back to branch. And then they were playing basketball again. After they got tired of just shoting and dunking, they played three on three. In the middle of the second three on three game the board got detached from the branch and the ring got detached from the board.

My work was poorly done too but it lasted longer being the work of a grown man. And then the children were doing nothing. I suggested to them to learn chess and invited them inside my house where my chess board and my chess books were. But chess, although a very interesting game, is difficult to learn. And being sedentary unlike basketball that their body is always active, they got bored, they became impatient as children always are.

After some listening about the basics of chess and some comedy of bad games, one after another they went out back to the shadow of the mango trying to restore their basketball board leaving me in my house with my chess alone.



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