It was early afternoon when we landed on the dirt strip. It was to be a meeting with district officials and the elders of a small village on the Swahili Coast. As we taxied to a stop, the two of us surveyed our surroundings to get a sense for what sort of welcome we might expect. I picked out a man in uniform standing alongside what appeared to be village elders. Our earlier coordination and perhaps our intentions seemed to have paid off though our larger objectives remained in doubt. Then I noticed a small group of children standing on the edge of the clearing. Their dark eager faces beamed a mosaic of curiosity and shyness, excitement and wonder, and some underlying thread of adolescent defiance. I snapped a quick photo and as I lowered my small camera, I realized for the first time, where true promise in this effort would be found and where the best human outcomes in this new war would be sown.
Children of Steel
They rise to a crucible of dry dusty streets, their joy fired under a deafening sun
Pastel plastic bags are the tumbleweed confetti for their parade of youth And fashioned into a sphere for an endless afternoon
Wide, eager eyes and bright white smiles and dreams hardened on the prospects of cleaning cars with a dry rag and a can for coins
They are the daydreams of an unwashed world The bright reflection of an unreachable place
They run unaware of their poverty and so in them no poverty exists
Stainless and un-scored by the sharpness of want
These are bricks made without straw, the unexpected blossoms of an untended garden, nourished by rain from a cloudless sky
They are Hope’s unburdened seedlings
Sprouting with no husbandman and running barefoot among stones
Needing only to be watered with the knowledge that they matter
Pruned with Love’s discipline and staked by Faith’s hand
Fenced with prudence from small-hearted men with heavy despotic eyes who devour even the seed corn of an abundant harvest
They are the ones of whom He spoke, “Feed my sheep”
In a land of unbridled avarice these are pearls among swine
In a land want of secure foundations these are stones rejected
A multitude of salvation passing unnoticed at midday
These are the dawnlight stars in whose bosoms briefly pause a new morning’s promise,
from whose metal will be wrought the day’s swords or ploughshares
These are whom we seek for these are Children of Steel
CDR RV Gusentine, USN
Camp Lemonier, Djibouti