Michaels Worku

The following is a story that I wrote about a student at the school for an MCC quarterly update:

 As Remember the Poorest Community’s 194 students line up to sing the national and regional anthems every morning, Michaels Worku stands at the front of the Upper Kindergarten boy’s line.  Michaels, or Mikki as he is called by his friends and teacher, is a small boy with a gentle face, intelligent eyes, and a ready smile.  In class, he is always ready with an answer and eager to use what he is learning.  He takes great delight in meeting a new academic challenge, and accepts any mistakes he makes with good humor and a willingness to try again.  Yet, some days Mikki’s focus is not in class.  He comes to school hungry or tired and finds it hard to pay attention to his lessons.  On those days, the difficulties of the small seven-year-old’s life spill into the childhood sphere of learning and playing.

Mikki, like many of the students at RPC, has a difficult family life.  His mother was unmarried and still in high school when she became pregnant.  His father has not been involved in his life or provided any assistance. Seeking to give Mikki a chance at a good education, Mikki’s mother sought out RPC as the only nursery and kindergarten school in their city of Nazret accessible to low-income families.  So that he could be near the school, Mikki moved in with his aunt who lives very near the RPC building, though he returns to see his mother on the weekends.  As the primary care-giver for not only Mikki, but also two of her own grandchildren, Mikki’s aunt sometimes struggles to provide for the family.  They live in a house own by the neighborhood government, and to make money the aunt sells onions and other vegetables on the street. Often that meager income is not enough to meet all their needs.  Mikki sometimes comes to school without having eaten breakfast or without a lunch.  The life he shares with his aunt and cousins, whom he refers to as his brother and sister, is not an easy one.

Nevertheless, the chance that Mikki’s mother and aunt have provided for him in his attendance at RPC is an important one.  As the only free kindergarten and nursery school in the city, RPC supplies its students with crucial preparation before they enter the public schools in grade one.  RPC has given Mikki a beginning foundation for his further education, and his has thriven in school, earning second rank in his class of forty students.  Mikki says he wants to be a doctor when he gets older so that he can help people in need, and that he enjoys school and likes his teacher because he likes to learn.  Those may sound like standard student answers, expressed more for the gratification of those hearing than out of true feeling.  To observe Mikki answer a difficult question in class and then look up at his teacher smiling with pride, however, reveals the deep truth in his answers.