Eva Joy - "Bernard and the Blanket"

There are 80 students at Graceway Victory Academy, a free preschool in the slum of Tuwani. Someday I hope to be able to tell 80 stories, but for now I’ll have to start with one. It’s the story of Bernard, or “Benny” and it’s one of my favorites.

Benny is one of the bigger kids in the older class (called “Top Class”). He’s about eight years old and he wore the same tattered red sweatshirt to school everyday. It was the only shirt he owned besides his school uniform. I liked him right away. He had an attitude like he was too cool for us, a proud face, stubborn nature and a very short fuse.

It took so little to set him off. At least I think so. We spoke almost no Swahili and yet were attempting to teach English and Math to kids who knew little English and whose learning abilities varied so greatly that it seemed we were boggling half their minds and boring the rest. So trying to find out what was setting Bernard off was not easy. All we knew was that things would seem quiet when suddenly Bernard was throwing his fists. Fighting was how he resolved every situation. We ran out of ways to separate them because the room was too small for it to matter. I would stop the class and make the boys repeat over and over, “No fighting!” until they had cooled off. Five minutes later it would start up again.

One day he was particularly heated about something. He was chasing his friend Stephen in and out of the class room, pummeling him with his fists any time he got within reach. I could not stop him so I sent the class out for early recess and caught Benny as he was charging out against his new foe. I sat down and restrained him on my lap as he struggled. Bernard had always looked so strong, but as I held him I realized that his baggy old red sweatshirt was covering his malnourishment. I prayed for him then began to repeat in his ear, “Nakupenda, Benny. I love you.” I did this until he stopped fighting me and then let him go. He immediately went searching for Stephen with fists already raised. After that I told him everyday, “nakupenda, Benny. No fighting, ok?”

The last day we were there Wycliffe handed out the blankets that ladies from Berkshire County and my aunt in Michigan had made. Many of the children live in homes where there was only a mother who could barely care for them, so they live like orphans. But the blankets were given to what Wycliffe referred to as “total orphans”; children who had lost both parents.
Bernard got the red blanket. I thought it was perfect for him. Honestly, I hadn’t known he was an orphan until that day. He held onto that blanket and smiled at us. This is a picture of him with his red blanket. To look at it, you would never believe he was too tough for love, too stubborn for instruction. What you see is a young orphan boy receiving his first blanket and being told it was made especially for him. His face was changed. He had material proof of the love we had been showing him and he finally believed us.

Later that day, my mom and sister told me that they saw a boy punch Benny, unprovoked. Benny raised his fists and then paused. He looked at Jenelle, smiled and put his hands down. “Mzuri sana, Benny!” she cried, meaning “very good”. Benny’s smile widened at the praise. When she told me about it we were both fighting back tears. It’s hard to explain, but if you had seen the change that came over Bernard you would understand what it is like to see evidence of the changing power of love. We weren’t very good teachers and we didn’t know how to resolve the boy’s fights, but we knew how to love them. The generosity of our home community backed us up and lives were changed.