Rocking Bears

Saturday Janet and I piled into our truck with three friends and seven “rocking bears” and headed out for an orphanage, “Les Ailes de Refuge,” (The Wings of Refuge) in the town of Yako, 70-miles from Ouaga.  There was a story behind the freshly-painted wooden bears riding in the back of our truck. They were completing a journey that began on the dusty, sunbaked streets of Ouaga well before we left for Yako.  The bears were actually coming full circle.

A wiry and well-tanned Kate Royal operates a small mission on a dusty, rough road in Ouaga.  Her mission is a refuge for boys from a hard life of begging on the street.  Besides refuge, Kate’s mission offers food (usually rice with some sauce, a bit of meat or fish and whatever else is available) steeped in the Gospel and the love of Jesus; a chance once more to play; to learn to speak French (more universally useful than Mooré, Jula, or Fulfulde); and to begin to learn a trade—carpentry—and maybe a way off of the streets.  The boys make small stools upon which many Burkinabé sit and more recently they crafted the very solid “rocking bears” that could easily grace the shelves of Toys R Us.

Shortly after arriving at the orphanage we carried the rocking bears to a rare shady spot next to one of the classrooms.  We set them on the ground, stood back and watched as a handful of toddlers slowly made their way cautiously to the unfamiliar objects.  Likely beckoned by the bear’s smiling painted faces, one-by-one each child reached out to touch a bear.  The most adventurous encouraged by volunteers climbed into a seat and almost immediately began to rock back-and-forth as smiles sprouted and giggles belied delight with the strange, new playthings. 

 

I watched one young, blind girl warily sweep her tiny fingertips across the bear’s freshly varnished and painted surface.  As if an image were slowly building in her mind’s eye a smile blossomed on her lips.  She felt her way to the seat and climbed onto her bear and headed off to where ever she imagined.  Next to her a stout young man with a joyously round face already upon his mount, twisted his small hand as if to rev the engine on a “moto” and “brrrrrrmmed” his way down an unseen road.

The bears made a round trip, but to a place they had never been before. The bears began their voyage at the hands of young men—many of them orphans themselves—back to the hands of other orphans.  With them, the bears carried the hopes of young craftsmen for a better life and the desire to help make a slightly better life for other orphans while demonstrating and sharing the love of Christ for some of “the least of these.”  We all learned a lesson that day; sometimes the biggest thing you can do is what you can do for the smallest.