Aziz

Aziz is a Liberian refugee. He spent six years in his home country before arriving at a refugee camp in Ghana. At the age of eleven, after five years in the camp, he came over to America. I know very little about what he saw while in Liberia and then in the camps, which are often nearly as bad as the places left behind.

His pictures tell me stories, though. In an abstract series of sketched and decorated hearts, he repeatedly inserts stitches and drops of blood falling like rain. The more hopeful ones contain leaves, placed symmetrically over the white paper.

Aziz attends Freedom Middle School. Bennett, who runs an activities center in Clarkston and who introduced me to Aziz, tells me that it is one of the most troubled schools in a county rife with troubled schools. I visited Aziz's house today to talk about getting him into a better school and possibly displaying his drawings in a gallery. It's difficult to see kids like him with stunning stories, packed into troubled public schools without space or time to discover their gifts.

My vision for working in the community is to help kids like this, who show aptitude in the arts, to get the boost they need to tell stories and earn a living. As we work together to develop and market their voice, they will see the redemptive love of God at work in their own stories. It's an urgent task, since you can lose their interest to sex or drugs or gangs or despair in a matter of weeks.

Ian