Amin

I was in the bus a little boy came in begging me to buy one packet of napkins. He was not dressed well, his cloths dirty,his face burnt with sun..I asked him:" you are not going to school?" he said:" yes I am" I asked again why he is not at school at the moment. The answer was shocking for me. He said restating the words of his father:" I should work because my father says that we do not need school since there are people with the highest degrees and they are not working but they are beaten when they ask for a job" I had tears in my eyes.. and I asked him about his age. He was seven and a half. His name was "Amin" I smiled when he told me:" it's the first time that someone talk to me and ask me about my name" Then he gave me one packet of napkins begging to buy it. I took it and he smiled.I wanted to know more about him but the bus stopped and he ran away from me. Amin is just one case.There are a lot of kids like this. Kids who are not going to schools, kids who are pushed away from their childhood at an early age, kids that can not do something but obeying their parents by going to work at a very early age..it hurts a lot to see this over and over..kids are supposed to be at schools, kids are supposed to be plying with their mates, kids are supposed to be nurtured and cherished. I blame parents who gave birth to kids that they can not take care of. It's confusing me when I see rich families that have only one or two kids while poor families have four, five,six, seven.....etc I want to understand this, I really don't understand why it is like this. I remember one day I met a woman who asked me to help her because she has 5 children to feed. I told her why did you give birth to them since you can not take care of them. She said:"Mektoub!" in Arabic ( literally meaning: it's written..meaningfully: it's destiny).Well, that's a common answer in my culture and religion. In case you dare and say that's not you will be judged as a non-believer or worse. It's a really complicated issue. I always talk about this. I always try to make people aware that what they are doing is not just bad for their kids but the community as a whole. I have participated in a campaign for using birth controls, it was so hard because we targeted villages and illiterate women. For them, everything is "Mektoub" but all of them we're respecting us and the majority of them said:" I wish I had been to school".