HW 32 Responding to Riverbend

After reading from September 19 to October 5, 2003 in “Baghdad Burning” I found shopping for school supplies quite interesting. Riverbend talks about how shopping for school supplies at a young is a one of the many highlights of going to school. But this year her cousins two kids can’t go along with their parents to pick out their own supplies because of the dangers the war has brought. It is not even safe to bring children out on the streets because you never know if someone will try and abduct them or they may even be shot at. Because of this, Riverbend her cousin his husband and E had to go pick out the supplies while the children stayed home with Riverbends mother and father. When they had returned home from shopping the ten year old had loved the Barbie notebooks that Riverbend had picked out for but the seven year old was not a big fan of Winnie the pooh and had claimed she had out grown it. Also school had started late because of the war and so the children were happy to finally be able to get out of the house and see all of their friends. Usually each year children wake up early and walk themselves to school but because of the danger children must be escorted by several adults along with the school. The parents had meetings about how they would guard the school so that they knew the children and teachers would be safe. They also had a meeting about who was going to bring what because the school was in such need of supplies. For example, each week a new kid had to bring in two new pieces of chalk so the teachers would have something to write with on the chalk board.