I recently realised that some rivers have perhaps grown relatively too wide to be crossed.

Abou came from the Senegal/Mauritania/Mali region and was sleeping on the streets of our neighbourhood (Amsterdam, NL). Thank god not winter yet. He spoke no English nor Dutch so I had a couple of conversations with him in French. I shared food and gave him some practical survival gear better suited for our cold wet climate than that he had with him.

Gradually it dawned on me that the educational gap between our complex, highly structured (read controlling and demanding) and expensive society and that of his region was gigantic. There is very little demand in our society left for unskilled labour nor the willingness to invest heavily to assimilate and help him adapt so that he could somehow fit in. With some shame, I must admit that there is no interest in our current society for his amazing survival skill set and calm dignity.

By talking to him I realised to what extent our kids are sucked into and moulded by our system from the day they are born and go to kindergarten. Everything from how our brains are wired to learn to how we are taught to socially interact. I too had to re-learn some when we moved here when I was 10. Only decades later, after someone pointed me to Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions, did some of my adaption issues make sense in hindsight. There is no good or bad; just differences, selected by the past historical pressures of the local context.

After 3 or 4 months our ICE (IND) must have picked him up because we never saw him again. But I keep thinking of what, within my limited capacities, I could do better next time. I tried getting him English lessons but the teachers I contacted all refused. I now know that I'll give a phone with unlimited wifi (for Duolingo and auto-translate) so that he at least can learn English and access whatever he wants to access.