April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month. This is a time for us to rally as individuals and as a community around the rights of children.
I’ve always been struck by other societies, like the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania who measure the well-being of the entire tribe by how well the children are doing. “All the children are well” means that life is good. It means that the daily struggles of existence do not preclude proper caring for the young.
Rev. Dr. Hilary Barrett explained this well in a 2009 meditation:
“When adults from different villages encounter one another on the African plains, it is traditional for them to exchange a greeting by asking one question: ‘How are the children?’ But when the Masai people ask one another “How are the children?” they are not really asking how are your children, the ones in your own biological family — your children alone. The questioner wants to know how the children of the whole village fare.
“And just as the question is standard, so is the answer. Even warriors with no children of their own always give the traditional answer: ‘All the children are well,’ meaning…that peace and safety prevail, that the priorities of protecting the young [and] the powerless are in place; that Masai society has not forgotten its reason for being, its proper functions and responsibilities. This traditional greeting among the Masai acknowledges the high value that the Masai place on their children’s well-being.”
Those of us in the United Sates could learn from the Masai’s values. When evaluating the state of our communities and our county we should look at the safety and well-being of our own children. When doing so, we will see we have a long way to go. We should be investing in children’s welfare on the front end, rather than spending exorbitantly on delinquency and prisons on the tail end.
During the month of April, and for all time, we owe it to our children and our children’s children to lift them high, to ensure that the U.S., and specifcally Colorado Springs, is the best place in the world to be a child and to provide them with safe passage into adulthood.
Trudy Strewler Hodges
Director, CASA of the Pikes Peak Region
