"I cannot do all the things that the world needs,
but the world needs all of the things that I can do"
As the 45 sweetly accented voices repeated this chorus over and over my friend, Emily, and I could not help but notice the way that one little boy's gaze never left us. He paid no attention to the choir director's enthusiastic arm-waving, but steadily studied the two of us as we sat on the wooden bench in the back of the church.
This is Nelson. At age 10, he really looked more like he was seven years old. He arrived early every day, wearing his Sunday best, a blue and yellow sports jersey tucked into khaki dress pants secured with a belt pulled tight abound his abdomen. Around 7:30 am he would take his place on the exposed foundation of the school that acted more as a bench for the children to sit on while we finished preparations for the classes that would begin at 8:00.
Usually sitting by himself on one of the front rows during the morning assembly, it never appeared that he had too many friends. But the smile on his face exposed the delight and enthusiasm that he felt for the Art Camp that we were putting on for these kids.
One day, Emily and I went on a walk on some of the paths outside of the compound where we had been staying. We explored some roaming trails and found a few local folks that we greeted with hearty Bon Swa-s, and took some photos of some of the children herding goats. We found our way the dirt soccer pitch where the kids passed around whatever they could find to act as a ball. And suddenly Nelson appeared, wearing only some baggy blue shorts, running over to us, holding our hands, delighted to indicated to the others that he knew these foreigners. Our lack of language skills didn't ever allow us to really get to know much about this boy, but I think that it wasn't actually too difficult to fill in the blanks on what his life was probably like.
On the bench in the church, as Emily and I sat watching Nelson singing this beautiful refrain in both English and French, I turned to Emily and said,
"Look how Nelson is looking at us - I think that he's singing us a love song."
After the song ended, we waved him over and he almost flew across the church to squeeze in between the both of us.
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