Fred's Honesty

Last week we introduced you to Emmanuel, a smart kid who has had to grow up quickly as an orphan in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Now meet his pen pal Fred, an ambitious and laid back kid from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. When we first met Fred, we thought he was shy. He seemed so serious and quiet but once he started talking, we couldn’t stop listening. He tells it like it is.

[In Bed-Stuy] Some people fight about…money, girls, and stuff like that. Stupid things. But we don’t get involved in nothing like that.

[People] probably think, you black so you a bad little kid. Like really disrespectful cause you just black…fights all the time, curse, but it’s not true. It makes me feel like I ain’t nothing. A black piece of dirt.

I didn’t know, like, it would be that violent over there [in Sierra Leone].

That’s crazy how they don’t got the things that we got. Like medicine…to help them not to be sick and die at a young age.

He [Emmanuel] wants to be a DJ when he grows up and I like music too. First he’ll have to get a skateboard, and then I’ll teach him how to ollie.