The flip side of the coin

Our good friends, the Albertyn's are back in Zimbabwe, and making a difference. (read their full story here)

They are changing the future of school children in an epic way.

Life altering.

Truly.

Each time I get an email from them it shifts my life into perspective: it helps me to see what really is important and what I think is important.

I was surprised by my reaction to one of their recent emails though, that included some photographs and information about some schools even more rural than the one in which they are working. Conditions which you and I would never consider schooling possible in.

Can you make out the writing above the door?
This is the headmaster's office.

One of the rural classrooms. This school was on a farm
the government bought back from white farmers
in the 1980's.

These kids just break my heart. The odds they
are facing....

Another classroom

One of these far out rural schools is next to a gold mine, and Mark commented that many of the girls do not complete their schooling as they are taken as wives for the mineworkers.

That simple fact has done me in. Here I sit, with an education that is probably worth hundreds of thousands of rand in today's economy, writing about how I think girls should be educated about how noble motherhood is, and how important it is. I'm not necessarily using that education to its full potential. I spend my time writing about how angry I am with Western society that it applauds academia at the expense of family....but at the same time, on the other hand, I am so saddened that these girls don't seem to have a choice, an opportunity, to 'do' something with their lives. Incongruous huh?

Where does that leave the argument? Or me? Is it the complete imbalance between the rich and poor societies? I'm trying to figure this one out.

Food for thought huh?