Making It Happen

So far, I could only guess how difficult it is to raise a child properly (what ever that means!), but this trip was a true revelation.

I bet I still can only guess. As the philosopher Thomas Nagel puts it, if you want to know what it is like to be a bat you have to be a bat, otherwise you simply imagining yourself as a bat.

Quite a few people got involved to organize schooling for Nasa and securing a job interview for Baaskaa. Orphaned kids, who don’t belong to anyone in particular, but to an abstract entity like a government, need a huge amount of support to get things done.

There is me, who initiate things; then there is Selenge, who gets things rolling; her friend or acquaintance who knows someone who in turn can put us in touch with someone else; and then the actual target figures, the teacher or the manager. To complicate things even further, they then have to be willing to be lenient, because our kids rarely meet basic requirements. They often don’t have a proper ID card, an address or a social security number. Teaching our kids, or employing them, is always more work for the respective authority. Our kids don’t have an education that holds up with others, they have not learned linear thinking or planning. While today is crucial, they don’t perceive tomorrow as significant. These disadvantages need to be recognized by the teacher or manager and dealt with individually.

Nevertheless, we got it done. I am very proud of our results, but without Selenge, nothing would have happened. She was the one who got the right information, made the right connections and persuaded people in the right position to listen to the kids.

I am not the only one who recognized that. When asked about our relationship, Baaskaa announced us as his Mongolian and American mothers.