On one of our last visits to the orphanage, we decided to bring markers and give them pieces of paper from a notebook. We asked the director of the orphanage to instruct them to draw pictures of their experiences/their lives. All the kids stared at us, confused, and we were pretty sure that what we asked was lost in translation. In an effort to encourage them and get them started, Katie took a sheet of paper and started to draw a picture of her life: her parents, her sisters, her pet dog, her husband, her house, etc. Soon they were busy drawing and coloring, bent over their masterpieces with determination in their serious faces. They put them in an envelope and then we painted nails, constructed and threw paper airplanes, played some hand-clapping games, sang some songs, and left feeling good about smiling and laughing with the kiddies we only had a few days to be with.
We looked at the pictures later that night and were once again horrified, paralyzed, and helpless before the shocking realities of our new young friends at Mae La. The pictures that our little friends drew mainly depicted the process of displacement they experienced, leaving their homes, running away from the Burmese military, people being shot/killed. They know violence and fear in ways no one ever should.
These are some of their pictures. These are some of their experiences.
"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." Psalm 82:4-5
