7th meeting

Our today's story - "Six Blind Men and the Elephant"

As we sat down today on the carpet, dividing ourselves into "ladies' side" and "men's side" of the circle, Umm Uzair asked, how we felt, when we were sick. All of us agreed that we felt very sad, when we were sick. Then, Umm Uzair asked us the next question - how would our life change, if we would not have the index finger of our right hand? We started thinking about it and realized that we would not be able to write properly, eat properly and even hold things properly in our right hand. And how would our life change, if we would not have our right hand up to our elbow? At this, we had to admit that we would not be able to do even more things... And what if our legs would not be working? It was even scary to think about it - we would not be able to run and walk. We would also not be able to drive cars, becase our legs are needed for working the pedals.

Now, what if we would not be able to see? What then? How we would go about doing things? Vajih said that we could smell things. Somebody else suggested that we could feel things with our hands. And it truly is so that the people, who cannot see, rely much more than us on their other senses. Umm Uzair asked us all to close our eyes for a few moments and try to imagine, what it would be like not to be able to see anything.

When we opened our eyes, Umm Uzair surprised us by saying that blind people also can read books. We asked, how could that be? She said to us that they use special type of books and special type of alphabet. Their alphabet is called Braille and every letter consists from a combination of elevated dots you can feel with your fingertips. Books written in Braille have thicker paper than the books we read - the paper has to be thick enough, so that the dots can be felt by the reader. Blind people slide their fingertips over the book's page and read this way.

Umm Uzair encouraged us to be thankful to Allah (swt) for being healthy, because good health is also one of the blessings of Allah (swt). It is not easy to remember to be thankful for this blessing. Only when we fall sick or some other trouble happens to us, do we realize, what a blessing it is to be healthy and fine.

Now, from this we proceeded to our today's story "Six Blind Men and the Elephant". It was an Indian tale about six blind men, who had never in their life seen a real elephant. One day, they went down to the river to get to know, what an elephant was like. Each one of them touched a different body part of the elephant and based on this, they decided for themselves, what an elephant was like. For example, the man, who touched the trunk of the elephant, said that the elephant was long and rubbery like a snake, while the man, who touched the side of the elephant said that the elephant was high and wide like a wall. Thus, all six of them got different ideas about what elephant was like and started to argue among themselves. Then, the elephant spoke and said that all of them were right and that there was no need to argue - his every body part was indeed different.

After reading the book, we played a couple games. Umm Uzair had prepared for us a pillowcase full of interesting objects. We took turns putting our hands inside the pillowcase and taking hold of one of the objects. We had to describe to the rest of the kids, what shape that object was, what material it was from, and for what it could be used. Everybody had to guess, what object that was. Since Umm Uzair had picked quite unusual objects, the guessing was really challenging! :)

Afther this game, we played another game. We could now imagine first hand, what it would be like to be blind. Umm Uzair selected one of us and covered that persons eyes with a thick dupatta. Then that person was turned around several times and had to catch other kids in the room, who were giving clues about their location by clapping hands. This was looots of fun!!!