September 3 in Pen Pal: wading to school

[asakiyume]

If you live in Mermaid's Hands, sometimes you walk to the mainland across the mudflats, sometimes you take a dinghy, and sometimes you wade. On September 3, Em and her sister waded:

The water was not quite knee high as we waded over. We had our shoes tied together by their laces and slung around our necks so we didn’t have to try to fit them in our backpacks.

In some communities in the Philippines, kids weren't so lucky as to have dinghies for the days when the tide was high--they would swim-walk a half-mile of open water to get to school, with their books wrapped in plastic and balanced on their head:


Source: Peter Shadbolt, "Yellow boats bring hope and education in the Philippines where the school run can be a swim," CNN, May 20, 2014.

When a Filipino blogger found out about the situation, he established a foundation that provides schoolboats. Now the kids can go by boat to school:



Here, meanwhile, are Em and Tammy, setting out for school. The houses of the kids in the Philippines were on stilts; Em and Tammy's house sits on a raft.



I realize Tammy in this picture looks rather like Em in the icon, whereas Em looks different from how I've drawn her in the past--because her hair is different in this picture ... and because I have very limited ability to make a person recognizably the same from picture to picture if I change cues like hair. (Also, Em in the icon is by Kelsey Soderstrom, a professional artist, whereas I'm a rank amateur.)

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine having to wade or swim to school?

I love your drawings. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I *can* imagine it! ... And I'm glad I didn't have to--or well... I'd kind of like to experience it? But I wouldn't like it to have been a daily requirement. Well, wading wouldn't be so bad. But not swimming.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Aw, Em and Tammy are so cute in that picture! <3

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yay, I'm glad you think so!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Lovely photos and drawing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It's a nice story, too, about the school boats :-)

[sovay]

I realize Tammy in this picture looks rather like Em in the icon, whereas Em looks different from how I've drawn her in the past--because her hair is different in this picture ... and because I have very limited ability to make a person recognizably the same from picture to picture if I change cues like hair.

TINY WITTGENSTEIN, AVAUNT!

I like your drawings. I like that you draw your own worlds.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I enjoy drawing; I *love* drawing my own worlds. I just ... [insert Tiny Wittgenstein here]

But yeah. Maybe Wittgenstein could please go look at the color blue or something, for a while.

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

Very emotive drawing. I used to walk home from school through a forest with lakes and stone ruins.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ruins of what?

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

A collapsed dam - one of the lakes was dry.

[w. lotus (from livejournal.com)]

I love the idea of the schoolboats!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Painted yellow and everything :-)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

What an awesome initiative on part of that blogger.

I love your drawing! Em and Tammy look so sweet, and you can see how much they love each other.

Erik Amundsen's picture of Em, back when she was M--

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes--they call him a blogger but I'd like to find out more about him.

And thanks. Drawing Em multiple times is making me realize how much my sense of her is based on aspects of her personality rather than her looks. To draw her consistently, I'd need to decide, once and for all, exactly what her eyebrows look like, what the shape of her face is, what her body type is (this I've pretty much decided), and so on.