Yeny and the Children for Peace (5 page)

But Yeny hoped that this Saturday he would take a break. “I know you don't want me to go to the big peace meetings, Papá,” she said, “but now there's a smaller meeting to plan a Peace Carnival on the soccer field. A few kids are getting together on Saturday for that. So I was wondering if I could go, and you could come along to see that it's not dangerous at all.”

Papá frowned. Mamá stopped feeding Carlitos his mashed-up rice, and turned to Yeny. “A Peace Carnival sounds just as dangerous as the peace meetings, Yeny,” she said.

“But I don't think it
is
dangerous,” said Yeny. “And besides, the meeting on Saturday is only a little one. It's a few kids trying to get the word out about the party, so children in the neighborhood get to know each other and become friends.”

Aunt Nelly arrived at the table with a plate full of plantain. No one spoke. Every one of the children, and Yeny's parents, were looking at Yeny.

She took a deep breath. She'd have to be careful about how she said the next part. It could work well, or it could scare her parents even more. She hesitated for a moment but then decided to hurry up and get it over with. “The party is important, because there are lots of kids who don't like each other, even though
they hardly know each other.” At once she remembered her terrible dream, and before she knew it, she was telling them about Joaquin. “He's so mean, and since I'm new, he's picking on me the most. And if I don't meet some new people fast, Joaquin might turn everyone against me, and I won't have any friends at all,”

Papá put down his coffee and pulled Yeny close. “Why didn't you tell us about this Joaquin sooner?” he asked.

Aunt Nelly pulled out an empty chair. Yeny flopped into it. “I didn't want to give you another thing to worry about,” she said. “And I thought I could handle it on my own.”

“She's doing a pretty good job,” said Juan, “but Joaquin's scary. He's tall, and yesterday he was throwing rocks at us on the way home from school.”

Elena, Rosa, and Sylvia stared. Carlitos banged his spoon on the table. Yeny blushed, suddenly feeling like a baby herself for tattling like this. She didn't want to be a sapo, a big mouth. She'd only mentioned Joaquin so that her parents would let her go to the meetings and the party.

“You weren't hurt, were you?” Aunt Nelly asked.

Juan and Yeny shook their heads. Her parents and aunt gave each other one of those adult looks that she couldn't always read, and her father cleared his throat. “I think you're right, Yeny,” he said. “This party does sound important, and I think it would be
good for you to be involved in the planning and to meet other kids. I still don't like the idea of you going to a big party here in the city, but I'll go with you on Saturday for your planning meeting. There's a little café across from the soccer field and I can go there for a coffee and meet some new people myself. If you need me, I'll be close by.”

Yeny flung her arms around his neck, almost knocking her chair over. Maybe her brave, happy father
would
come back to her eventually. Maybe it was only a matter of time.

Yeny, Juan, and Papá made a happy trio on their way to the Saturday morning meeting. Elena and Rosa and Sylvia had wanted to come too, but Papá had said that two young people were enough for him to keep an eye on for one day. If everything went well, he'd let the other ones come later. And he still wasn't sure he'd want them to go to a crowded, dangerous event like a Peace Carnival.

They could hear the excited chatter on the field well before they got there. Yeny walked faster, and tried to hurry Juan and Papá along, but the sidewalks were crowded today with families enjoying a stroll together, or buying
empanadas
from vendors. Normally, Yeny would want to stop to see what the hot, fried
pastry pockets were stuffed with—meat was her favorite, but the potato ones were good too. Today, though, Yeny wanted to get to the meeting as fast as possible.

She had never seen such a big field in her whole life. It was bigger than all the houses in her village put together, and there were probably about thirty children there. They were running and shouting and jumping, and Yeny could hardly wait to join them. With Joaquin nowhere in sight, maybe she'd finally get to talk to some other kids.

“I'll be right here if you need me,” Papá said, stopping at the café across the street from the field. The shop had a few little metal tables outside, and several men in white straw hats with wide brims sat drinking coffee. A little way off, a small yellow dog watched them with one ear up and one ear down. The men nodded to Papá as he arrived.

Yeny and Juan dashed across the street. David and Beto were already at the edge of the field, waiting for them. “You're just in time,” David said. “I think Celia's about to start the meeting.”

Nearby, a girl in a bright blue T-shirt climbed onto an empty plastic fruit crate and clapped her hands. Yeny watched her. She had already heard about Celia. The grupos armados had killed both her parents, so now Celia lived with an aunt, and she was one of the kids traveling around the city to talk to children about peace. But Yeny had expected someone older. How could
someone this young be organizing meetings? She didn't look much older than Elena, who was thirteen, and Yeny couldn't imagine her sister organizing anything.

Motorcycles roared past, and car horns blared. At the far end of the field, a few men were kicking a soccer ball around, just like the boys in the village had always done on Saturdays. Yeny and María Cristina used to love watching those village soccer games, which quickly grew to dozens of people playing and cheering. The games would go on for hours and paused only when a donkey or a horse had to get through with a load of bananas or firewood. She wondered if María Cristina was watching a game like that in the camp right now.

Celia smiled out at them from atop her fruit crate, and the kids crowded in around her. Yeny, Juan, David, and Beto made sure they were as close as possible, so they could see and hear everything. Celia thanked them for coming. “
Gracias por venir
. I've got great news,” she announced, in a strong, clear voice.

“About the party?” David asked.

“Nope, we'll get to that in a second,” she said. “I want to tell you about something even bigger, something that goes far beyond this neighborhood.”

Juan, Beto, David, and Yeny looked at each other. Yeny hoped she wasn't planning a party for the whole country now, because her father would never let her come to something
that
big.

Kids organized the meetings themselves, and every now and then, they asked for a bit of adult help.

“I've been talking to other kids, and young people everywhere are gathering together in meetings just like this one. Sometimes we meet at churches, or at a boys' and girls' club, or at a school, but always, we're talking about our rights. With this many people involved, things are definitely going to change.”

“What do you mean, ‘our rights'?” asked a little girl with short pigtails tied up in pink bobbles. “The things we've done right?”

“No, no,” Celia said. “I mean the things we need and deserve—like food and shelter and peace and justice. Did you know that there is a law that says we are supposed to have those things? Our Constitution says children have the right to food, shelter, peace, justice, and many other things. No kid should ever go hungry, or have to sleep in the streets, or be afraid to go outside.”

“Afraid to go
out
side?” called someone from the back of the crowd. “Some of us are afraid to stay inside! My cousin's dad hits him so bad that he doesn't want to be at home when his father is around.”

All the children nodded. Everyone knew kids whose parents hit them, some much worse than others.

“Well,” said Celia, “it doesn't have to be that way. As I said, we have rights, and every single child should have enough to eat, and a roof overhead, and no one should ever suffer violence.”

They all looked at each other, and everyone started talking at once. “Where's the food going to come from?” “Who's going to make us safe?”

On top of the fruit crate, Celia waved her hands until they calmed down. “One at a time,
por favor
. One at a time. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Each one of us needs to know what our rights are, and then we can figure out why they're not being respected.”

“I know! I know!” said David, waving his hand and jumping up and down. “It's because people don't have enough money, and they don't have enough to eat, and they get mad and hurt each other. If only everyone had enough food, then no one would get hurt.”

Yeny thought about that. “But not everyone who hurts people does it because of hunger. The people who took away our land were already rich. They only took it because they were greedy and they wanted more.”

Celia was nodding.

“But the people who work for greedy people are always hungry,” said a tall boy with the beginnings of a beard. “Greedy people offer money to anyone who will go out and get more land for them. And some people are so poor that they'll do anything to survive.”

“Even hurt others,” said Juan.

Yeny shivered. It was exactly like what Papá had talked about a few days before. Yeny hoped her family was never so hungry that such a dreadful job seemed like a good idea. But she knew that many people didn't feel they had a choice. Sometimes, the grupos armados threatened to hurt someone's whole family if he refused to join.

“Often it seems like there are too many problems to fix,” Celia said, “and there are lots of situations that kids can't change. But there are things we
can
do to stop the violence. Because it's not only violence between adults, right? Sometimes children are mean and hit each other too. The idea of the Peace Carnival is to get everybody talking about peace. And better yet, it'll show people that we can get along and have a good time. Now, who here has some ideas about how to spread the word?”

“We can announce it at school,” said Beto.

“We can tell people on the radio,” Juan suggested.

“We can put up signs,” said Yeny.

“Those are great ideas,” Celia said, pulling a tiny notebook and pen from her back pocket. “Now what are we going to need, and how are we going to get those things?”

Hands shot up all over the group. Kids offered extra pencils, scrap paper, and felt markers that their older brothers and sisters didn't use anymore. Juan said he knew someone at the radio station that he could ask, and someone else said that he'd talk to the principal of his school to see if the carnival could be announced in every class.

Radio and school broadcasts helped spread the word.

“The next step,” said Celia, still scribbling in her notebook, “is to figure out what we're going to offer at the carnival. What kinds of events will we write about on our signs? And what will we tell the radio and the schools about?”

“Great food!” shouted a tiny boy at the front.

“Contests!” called out another.

“Singing in the streets!” cried David, and did a little dance. Yeny joined in, and pretty soon they were wiggling and jumping around the field. They hooted and hollered, and Yeny felt happier than she had in weeks. She wished María Cristina were there to join in the fun. But no matter what, Yeny was going to make a good life for herself in the city, even if it was hard work.

When everyone had collapsed into a laughing, exhausted heap around the fruit crate, Celia turned to a fresh page in her notebook. They continued making plans.

The next few days flew by, now that Yeny had a job to do. “Hey, have you heard about the carnival on Saturday?” she asked every child she came across. She asked the boy who sold buñuelos on the street, and Rocio, the girl who lived next door, and a group of older kids who passed them on the way home from school. “It's going to be great. Spread the word.”