When we decided to have a baby we were camping in Nepal, surrounded by green mountains, near India’s border. We found a place near a river. Diego and I thought it was perfect to rest after weeks of no stop cycling through Himalayan dusty roads. We shared our morning bath with langurs, some big grey and white monkeys. Sometimes local people visited us. Bringing fruits or meat they sat around our huge world map.
Then we started sharing our travel stories. We made friendship with some praying mantis, and some spiders, and every night the crickets played songs for us. Life was so simple and so deeply true. We sat sometime one beside the other to look at the map. In those moments suddenly we feel so hungry and we start travelling. Yes. I think that is why we got so far. When we watch at the map nobody can stop our dreams. However, at this single moment and in that mountain, we also looked at the sky. We felt we want to have a baby. We wanted to have a baby and share with him or her all this beautiful craziness, this lightness, this so simple way to live and feel the word “love”-
I was sure that we could do it. We could have a baby and keep travelling. I was sure we had enough love inside to face all the challenges on the way. We decided to make a family without any long term plan but to live and enjoy every moment.
We have two children now. Mael is ten years old and Oiuna is seven. Until now, we did not fulfill their life with a lot of toys. They do not have a confortable bed every night. They do not go to a school, and they do not do homework at night. They childhood will not be full of certificates but I am sure about something: it will be full of colorful and shared memories.
Many people ask me about the education of my children. I like they ask for it because it is maybe now the most important thing I can share with the world: one alternative thinking about how to educate the children. Actually education starts before the kid is born: because to raise a kid, the first thing we might try to do is to educate ourselves. The kids will observe you and the all the people around. The kids will watch and copy. We should try to think the maternity and paternity out of the norms of the doctors and the schools. Education does not start from Monday to Friday in the working hours when the school open. The school is something more permanent. It is the way you will live your pregnancy and give birth, it is the way you will feed your new born baby and then it is the way you will treat the kid which whom you will live together for such a long time. It is this way of being and this everyday dialog with this human been. All this is the school. I know we are in a tough and very competitive world. Nevertheless I think that the people who less suffers are the one who have the skills of dreaming, and imagination, and creativity: people with freedom and not afraid. The people who really knows who are they and can choose their own way.
I do not think you need to have travelled for 13 years to offer an alternative education. I do not think is the easiest way. I think if you feed the curiosity of the kids then you will spread the love of learning. If a kid love to draw, for example, is good you give all the possibility to this kid to go ahead on his passion, and do not try to push him to be good in math. In the other hand if he loves math he might be so fast to learn this discipline and maybe he is not good a writing… what is the matter? We should encourage our children to shape more in what they love and in what they are good about. Help them to discover who they are. Give them confidence and love, because this will be the base on what they will build their personality. Kids need to learn perseverance and persistence. No doubt. However there is many way to learn that. A child who is one week carving a piece of wood to make a sculpture is actually showing how deep he can go in what he likes. A couple of year ago my son was crazy about stones. He asked me to read him a full encyclopedia about it and he was several months breaking all kind of stones he found in his way. Since he got very interested about geology we finally proposed him to climb a volcano. After 10 hours walking, my son keep walking, smiling, he wanted to reach the crater, and he gave all the power to do it.
I think we also have to show to the children that happiness does not come buying things. We live in a system that makes us believe very often that the only way to be happy is buying. Actually, when you buy a good flat you don’t use money but your life time. If you need fewer things you are freer. I want my children to understand what they really need. I want them to learn how to fulfill themselves with wisdom, experience, sharing, passion, with what they have inside of themselves and what people have to share around them and with the nature, so generous, fragile and strong at the same time.
People continue asking, how do you do every day? There is no routine in our life, there is no a magic formula. I improvise every day. I do not know where will start and end the day. What is sure is that I never give more than 2 or 3 hours school per day. I mean, the school sitting, studying traditional subjects. And sometime the school is in grassland, or in a beach, somewhere in a mountain, or in a mechanical workshop where we try to fix our bike or car… We just find a nice place; take some books and notebooks and study. We also take some time to write our travel books with drawing or paintings, stories or pictures.
At the same time it depends on where we are. If we are in a jungle we will look for animals and plants. If we meet new people and we all feel to share we will pass the day playing together. Maybe we will trek a mountain, or swim in the river, maybe we will walk across the Great Wall talking about the Qin Dynasty. Childhood pass so fast and it is a moment that every one of us will always remember: I want to give them a joyful childhood, and this is for me the priority. The space is open, so the kids can use this space, and they have a lot of time to play. I think playing is so important for children. In a game the creativity develops their ideas, the relationship. There is nothing more serious than playing.
People ask me if I am worry for my kids: I am not. The world is a big school. My children learn tolerance and differences. They learn how to deal with very different situations; they learn to respect others and themselves. We also consider that every person we met could share something. In Indonesia or Argentina, in China or Russia, all the people we meet are also their teacher. From everyone we can learn something. I don t know where we will be in a year, or in three years. I do not know who will be my children when they get older. But I know I will encourage them in any way that make them happy as I do today.
I do not wish them to worry today about the future. To live in the present time is so important. They will face, of course, a lot of difficulties in their life, like all of us. But I really hope that they will have the skills to see in each step that “problems” are “challenges”. I think there is nothing more important in the life to know who you are, what you love and what you want to do. Then, with some inside strength, a bit of dreams and fantasy, a pinch of poetry and magic, a good dose of love and will, and a big amount of imagination, I am sure the children will be able to reach the freedom they need to live their life on the most colorful way.
with love,
Anna
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