When the morning comes

13 | webale

"You got some moves, Dawit!" I cheered, watching the young, Eritrean boy dance to the music I had put up. His hands were on his hips, he twirled around, winked at Gloria when he stopped at her desk, who giggled at that. I chuckled, cheered him on some more, until it was Gloria's turn.

Gloria turned shy, pressed the side of her body against mine. With her seven years old, Gloria was quite the appearance with her afro-textured hair twirled into two tight buns on top of her head, her pink dress and white shoes. She hadn't been here for a long time, came from Uganda and we had yet to figure out what her eyes had seen.

It was clear that she went through something traumatic and since music was a non-medical cure, such as reading for me when I was little, I decided on having a simple start of the morning with some music and dancing. Most children took the challenge right away, threw their culture into their dance moves and floated through the classroom.

To say it was a pleasure to see was an understatement. I enjoyed the different cultures, the way each child had their own characteristics and personalities. Their own tempers. Beliefs. But maybe mostly, their braveness. Their hope.

Turning to Gloria, I crouched down to her height, looked into her eyes. "Hey, how about you think of a song and a nice few dance moves, while I put on some music for Amira?" Gloria nodded right away, reached for my hand and stared at the computer as I typed in the song Amira wanted. After a lot of typos and pressing onto the wrong song for a couple of times, I managed to find the right one and Amira started to dance right after.

We traded the Eritrean atmosphere for the Syrian one. I was impressed, looked at Amira with my mouth almost open wide. There was something about these children that made me think twice about everything. Without having to put much effort into doing something, they all danced so naturally. It was as if all of them were gifted with that talent for no reason- why wasn't I gifted that way? They didn't have to try so hard, yet it came out beautifully.

Then their smiles. The smiles they almost always had on their faces, no matter what they had been through, said more about them than words ever could. Something about the hope a child could have always moved me. It was the strongest kind of hope to exist- I was sure of that. No matter what happened to children in life, they always had hope for the next day to be better. They barely sulked in their miseries, always tried to get the best out of the moment that would follow after. They surely could be seen as a huge inspiration, and maybe I had to take notes for once.

Gloria tapped onto my shoulder, the music had stopped. I turned to her. "I dance.. if you dance."

Standing up, I twirled around, making the children laugh. "Gloria, how can you ask me that? I'm as stiff as a.." I pointed to the pictograms from the theme we'd had a few days ago; the farm

"Rake!"

The children laughed harder, copied my stiff dance move.

Chuckling, I sat back down onto the desk chair, helped Gloria type in the song she wanted. However, when it started to play, Gloria kept standing where she was, mouthed along with the song but didn't dance. I raised my eyebrows at her. "Don't you want to dance?"

"If you dance, I dance."

I gave her a look.

"If you dance, I dance." She repeated.

Letting out a deep breath, I stood up and reached for her outstretched hands. Right after, a huge smile appeared on her face and she started to move her hips. It went fast- too fast for me. I glanced at the video behind me that was displaying onto the digital board. Insanely talented, once again, those children who didn't even go to dance classes or something like that.