Universal Children's Day

Today, November 20th, is Universal Children's day and here in Amdocs, we celebrated this by inviting over some school kids and entertaining them for half a day. In fact, amdocs centres around the world did this today, as this was a company-wide initiative.

The kids were around 10-11 years old and this was like a field-trip for them . The day started off with a guided tour of our premises. I am sure that they would have been surprised at the emptiness of our offices, for it was 8.30 in the morning and most of us wake up at this hour! Then there were some presentations about the telecom industry and amdocs, some techie stuff, which surprisingly generated a LOT of questions, making this session exceed its allotted time by more than 200%. Then there were few songs followed by a romanian dance and an indian dance. These proved to be big hits with the kids shouting for more! The day ended with a magic show, which was equally enjoyed by us, the volunteers , as much as the kids!

At the start of the day, there was a general intro-talk about amdocs and its employees in general. Well, when you have 400-odd indians , there has to be a mention about this in any talk about this centre. Somewhere, the questions from the kids ventured towards the colour of the skin and about the concept of being white-skinned. Our director had to give explanations like "Don't judge people by the colour of their skins" etc. They even had question about Turkish Cypriots.
I fail to understand how such issues are on the minds of 10 year olds! Their minds are corrupted by thoughts of racism and enmity with the turks. The average Cypriot citizen is well mannered and very open to foreigners. But, the current generation of kids are not even remotely close. In fact, we had been warned before not to go to places like Mc Donalds, Burger King and other hangout places on Friday evenings, as it is the time for all the school kids to be there. Luckily, I have never faced any major issues barring a few stray incidents where drunk cypriots/kids have shouted at me asking me "What i was doing in their country" and asking me to pack my stuff and leave "their" country.

This Sunday, there was an article in the Cyprus Mail about how foreign children are finding it difficult to cope up in the schools of Cyprus. We have lot of kids of Indians studying here in Limassol who i have spoken to regarding this situation. All of them seem to have a similar answer. The early days in school are good, but as the kids grow up and reach grades 2 and above, the other kids kind of realise the "difference" and the foreign kids become isolated. Even today, i noticed one chinese/japanese kid sitting all alone in the room while all the other kids were huddled in groups. If you read the article, you will be surprised at the kind of responses the kids give.

There are lot of Sri Lankans and Filipinos here in Cyprus, many of them working as domestic helps. One kid when asked about Filipinos responds "I had a Filipino in my house; she was relatively good, she obeyed me; she was good". Another one when asked about Sri Lankans says "Let's just say I don't like blacks"! The kids are not to blame. Their parents should take the effort to educate the kids and correct their perceptions.

Cyprus is a member of EU. Being a member of EU exposes you to the "invasion" of your country by other nationalities. This is a way of life in EU, whether you like it or not. Cyprus has to force itself to adjust to the modern "borderless" way of existence!

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