Snow

One of my sponsor children asked me about snow a few months ago. What was it? How did it feel to touch it? And did we get a lot of it in my country?

Mariam is seven and comes from a small village in southern Mali where it gets close to 40 degrees centigrade in the summer, and during the coldest months rarely gets below 12-15 degrees centigrade at night. I tried to figure out how I could explain the concept of snow to a child who had never seen snow or ice, or even experienced anything really cold. Then I heard they had a refrigerator at her local community centre and managed to organize for someone to show her the ice box in there. I explained that snow fell almost like rain, that children would play in it, and I found some photos of the snow covering everything in our back yard. I also managed to track down a children’s book in French for her, in which white was the predominant colour because the story took place in winter. Thinking I had done what I could to explain about snow, I sent it all to her. A few months later I received a letter from her. One of the things she wrote was, “Thanks for the colouring book” …..