Parental Privilege

When we speak of privilege, we usually think of gated communities, abundant food, uninterrupted electricity, et al. But for the last 7 years of EQUATE Foundation, I have noticed that there is a whole other level of privilege that we never think of as such.

Let me break it down for you. You’re in school. The teachers ask that you bring your parents. You go home and go back to school with either one or both, or even a guardian.

In 2020, when EQUATE was just new into the area of education, we had two beneficiaries who when we sent for the parents at home, the boy had no one present. I had met both his mother and father but when COVID hit, the parents left the home for the village. This boy had to ask a neighbour to come but by the time we got to the school, he couldn’t trace the neighbour. Long story short, he showed up. A bit late but he showed up.

I felt a lump of guilt and shame for not knowing how lucky I was that I didn’t have to scout through a neighborhood to see which neighbour could show up for me as a parent.

Fast forward to today. These two minions call me mummy while at school. The first time the girl called me mummy, I was checking her box for what was missing and had to be replaced. Her “but mummy…” sent a shock wave through my body. I shook off the stillness trying not to show her that I’m shocked because I didn’t want her to feel awkward.

We’ve been sailing with that but they have no awareness that on some days the school ask me to fill in their mother’s and father’s names and I cannot even add “deceased” and even if I did, a deceased person also has a name.

Where kids I studied with, told stories about their mother and fathers, I felt like an outcast for not having a story to tell about my father. I stood in the lines of those who have lost one parent. I knew where my mother was. I also knew my father’s gravesite and yet for these kids, they have no name, no location or face of what their parents look like.

Their birthdays are estimated. Not because their parents didn’t record the date but because they were abandoned by the every people that had to protect them.

Some visiting days at school are chill but others come encased in trauma.