Playgrounds

Next door to our building is an elementary school. When we're down in the carport in the mornings we can hear high pitched voices calling to each other. They get higher and more insistent when they spot us through the barred windows on the second floor that see over the wall. The brown faces with big smiles press to the window and call to Enzo and Lena. The babies never notice but I always get distracted. It must bug the teachers too because on a couple of occasions someone has come along to close the shutters with a bang.

Yesterday the AUW students and faculty faced off in a basketball game in the court at the school next door. The kids and I went to watch. It was the first time we'd been in their courtyard. I thought that maybe we could spend time on their play equipment when the little ones lost interest in the game. I had seen the play area and from our rooftop. From 5 floors up it looked quite cheerful. By "quite cheerful" I mean that everything was painted red.

The playground consisted just of a couple of metal swings and two teeter totters (one of which was broken and unusable). We played on both for a while and unsurprisingly little people did get hurt. Ragged and pitted concrete doesn't make for soft landings, even when covered in a thick layer of dust and litter. The kids had the most fun jumping off a broken concrete staircase whose railing was nothing but rubble and whose metal frame stuck out threateningly in all directions.

Sometimes it's hard to remember the green grass surrounding the network of colorful playgrounds we were once accustomed to.

A friend of ours once told us a story of an international aid organization that raised money to build a playground here in Bangladesh. It was to cost 10,000 US dollars to get the playground here and set up. The money was raised by donation while people here found the perfect village and location for the park. Everything was in order until a government official announced that there is a tax on something like that. About $15,000 dollars, he thought. The organization tried to negotiate and explain how they would never be able to pay a tax like that. In the end, the playground was built somewhere in Africa.