The Green Crayon

Every Sunday afternoon at 4pm, I would head to the center of our village, where there was a large, concrete slab. (Many construction projects get started in Africa that are never finished because money ran out, so it was just a huge slab!) By about 4:15pm, I usually had about 60 Zambian children ranging in ages from 2 to 15 there. As we pulled up, I would hear them yell "Wa Boola!!!" (She's come!!) And they would suddenly just appear from everywhere!!

I worked hard during the week translating a Bible story from them from English to Tonga, and then memorizing it. (This probably helped me the most in language learning because it was basic Tonga meant for children to understand!) I would share the story, show pictures, ask a few questions, and then we would do a simple craft together, usually just coloring a picture.



I had quite a supply of crayons, but my supply got smaller and smaller with each passing week. I knew that the kids were stealing them and taking them home, but I could never catch any! Each week I asked them to please not take the crayons home so that there would be enough next week for all of the children!

One week, a church in the States had sent me a package of 5 jumbo crayons. These were huge crayons, so it was very easy to keep track of these. I took them, knowing that they would probably end up stolen. Sure enough, at the end of the afternoon, only 3 of the crayons were returned. We saw that we were missing the yellow and the green crayon. I asked about it, and several boys claimed that "so and so" had taken the yellow one. He ran when he heard his name mentioned, but they tackled him and drug it out of his pocket! He ran home crying--I was a bit traumatized by all of this but unsure of what to do! Well, the green crayon never turned up, so I told the kids as best I could in Tonga that I was very disappointed in them for stealing. I explained that people in America sent these crayons so they could have them every Sunday and that maybe I should not come anymore if they could not be respectful and keep from stealing crayons. (I know, I know, it's just one crayon, but it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing!!!!!!) They all just stared at me in shock as we left that day.

Ok, OF COURSE, I was still going to show up the following Sunday!! But I hoped that some of them wouldn't steal anymore.

The next morning at around 9am, we hear children's voices coming to our hut. We look down the road, and there is a group of about 3 kids (who are supposed to be in school) triumphantly holding up a green crayon! They were yelling (in Tonga) "We found it!!!! We found the green crayon!!!!!" They were SOOO excited to proud to have "apprehended" it! The whole situation was hilarious...The funniest thing was that the one holding the crayon and yelling wasn't even THERE that Sunday!! He had just heard about it and helped recover it! I'm sure the whole village was talking about the white woman's green crayon that was stolen!!

*Disclaimer: when we moved back home, we gave each of the kids a ziploc bag of their OWN crayons!! And we also left a huge supply at the school!