Visiting the dreamland

At the HOPE House, every time I am there, girls like to sit with me and chat, chat and chat. One day as we were chatting, I asked them casually what would they like to be when they grow up?

Well…..I was surprised by some of their responses. Most of the girls had very conventional answers (doctor, nurse, police officer) except for three. Two out of those three want to be astronauts. I couldn’t keep my inquisitiveness to myself so I asked them how they got that idea to become an astronaut?

They said that they had read in the newspaper about a lady by name Ms. Sunita Williams who went up to space and stayed there for 60 years and came back. After I corrected them about the duration being 6 months, I wanted to fire them up a little bit more so I acted ignorant and asked them to tell me more about Ms. Williams. Their faces lighted up and told me all about her voyage to the space. They described about the space as a place where they cannot walk and water floats in the air.

The best of all dreams was of a 9 year girl who said that she want to be an inventor. How many times do you hear a 9-year-old child tell you that they want to be an inventor? So I asked her if she knows what she wants to invent and she confidently said, “YES” and continued “Wireless electricity”. I was stunned at her imagination. When probed, she said that she is tired of chaotic electric poles in our country and she wants to change that.

What made my day was being aware of her background. When she was admitted to the HOPE House, her family was abandoned by her father and malnourished. She came from a neighboring state so she couldn’t read or write the local language to admit her in the school. After convincing the school that we will double up our efforts to help her we admitted her in a lower level class and hired a private tutor to help her and girls like her. Rest is history. We have a child with full of dreams and full of life.

It only reaffirmed my belief that every child has dreams irrespective of their economic status and it takes an adult to help them to fulfill their dreams.