It takes a village?

Reader question:

Please explain “it takes a village” in this passage (what “village”?):

You see, Hillary understands that the President is about one thing and one thing only – it’s about leaving something better for our kids. That’s how we’ve always moved this country forward – by all of us coming together on behalf of our children -- folks who volunteer to coach that team, to teach that Sunday school class because they know it takes a village.

My comments:

That was American First Lady Michelle Obama speaking on Monday at the Democratic National Convention making a case for former first lady Hillary Clinton to be the next President.

Appropriately, Obama used the expression “it takes a village” because some years ago, Hillary Clinton wrote a book by that exact title, which, in fact, helped to popularize the phrase.

Appropriately on another level, both Obama and Clinton are mothers who have brought up children – successfully, too, you might say, by any measure. Appropriate because “it takes a village” is believed to a shortened form of the saying “it takes a village to raise a child”.

Many believe this saying, or proverb originates in Africa or somewhere among American Indian tribes. Whatever the case, the idea remains the same and easily understandable.

The village is the local community in which we live, or used to live. In primitive times, people didn’t move about so much, not from city to city or even country to country as migrants do these days. Back in the day when most people didn’t move from place to place, many did not move at all. When I was small, for example, I heard of country folks who had never visited the local town or city merely tens of kilometers away. In fact, a few of them very seldom left their village. The rare outside-the-village trip they ever made was to a neighboring village they can actually see on a roof, over there on the other side of the river.

And that was 1970s, so you can easily imagine what it was like in primitive times.

In those primitive times, that is to say, the village was their one and all community. Numbering several clans or a few dozen households at the most, the village was kind of like an extended family. I mean, those communities were very close knit. They had to be that way because together they were stronger, especially in times of trouble or danger, be it recovering from a landslide or fending off invaders.

Anyways, in these situations, it’s easy to see why it takes a village to raise a child, meaning everyone, young or old, some time, in some way may lend a helping hand to bring up a mother’s child.

That’s simply traditional village life, where everyone chips in and lends a helping hand whenever they can.

When I was in college, I had an American professor who always felt in debt to all of us because we Chinese, he said, were always trying to help him do everything even though he could more than manage by himself.

I understand the situation he was in perfectly. I myself tried more than a few times to help him, too, whether in reaching for a newspaper on the shelf or locating the can opener to open another beer, all sorts of things of that nature. It is the Chinese hospitality thing. We are too conscious (often to a fault) of the fact that this is a foreigner who, in a foreign environment, surely has a problem facing him every way he looks. Perhaps it’s precisely because we ourselves travel too little and therefore had a greater fear of the unknown than otherwise and therefore imagine that the foreign traveler must have a similar fear of everything to a similarly large and alarming degree.

Not true, of course. The foreign devil is much stronger than that. Most of them are at any rate. Anyways, my American professor used to say something along these lines every time he refused one of our offers of help or assistance:

“You Chinese are always ready to help. If you ask them for a finger, they’ll give six legs, two of their own, the other four borrowed from the village.”

That’s the idea of the village, one’s community and one’s society.

So, in short, whenever you hear a politician, almost always a politician, say again that it takes a village to do something you know they’re merely saying it takes the whole society to do it. In other words, it takes more than the effort of a single individual.

The erstwhile village can be a city, a country or the whole world.

All right, media examples:

1. The president announced today an important initiative, called America Reads. This initiative is aimed at making sure all children can read well by the third grade. It will require volunteers, but I know there are thousands and thousands of Americans will volunteer to help every child read well.

For Bill and me, there has been no experience more challenging, more rewarding and more humbling than raising our daughter. And we have learned that to raise a happy, healthy, and hopeful child, it takes a family. It takes teachers. It takes clergy.

It takes business people. It takes community leaders. It takes those who protect our health and safety. It takes all of us. Yes, it takes a village. And it takes a president.

It takes a president who believes not only in the potential of his own child, but of all children, who believes not only in the strength of his own family, but of the American family who believes not only in the promise of each of us as individuals, but in our promise together as a nation.

It takes a president who not only holds these beliefs, but acts on them. It takes Bill Clinton.

- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton Speaks at the Democratic National Convention, PBS.org, August 27, 1996.

2. GOLD CANYON, Marta Saint-James loves animals, especially dogs, and if a dog should go missing in her community, she puts that love into action.

“Within minutes,” Saint-James said, “the whole community is on the alert.” It starts with a phone call, email or a post to her website, Gold Canyon Dog Owners Group, when a dog is either missing or found.

Saint-James gets a photo of the dog — and so begins the PAW Alert. “Time is of the essence when a dog is missing or found,” she said. She attributes the success of her system to the many volunteers, to the businesses that get involved and to the “blessing and help” of the employees of the Pinal County and Apache Junction animal control departments.

The adage “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is important in this network-based PAW Alert that boasts a 97 percent success rate in reuniting lost dogs with their families.

Saint-James and her husband, Curt Fonger, have lived in Gold Canyon for 14 years and have been very involved in trying to see an off-leash dog park built in their unincorporated community.

Saint-James said that at the onset of a PAW Alert she sends an email to “key people” in Gold Canyon. While the community is unincorporated and has no animal control or parks and recreation system, there are a few organizations such as the Gold Canyon Community Connection and ADOBE, or the Association for the Development of a Better Environment, and these groups have members — with email addresses.

She said there are other people she knows who have large email lists that help out with a PAW Alert. Contact is made with thousands of Gold Canyon residents. She also reaches out to the local pet clinic, the Pinal County and Apache Junction Animal Control, and uses Facebook or whatever means is necessary.

“Really, it takes a village,” Saint-James said. “It takes a lot of people.” She has many contacts including subdivision groups and HOAs. She even targets the alert depending on the breed of the dog. If it’s a large breed that likes to run, she’ll cast the net wide. If it’s a small lap dog, she keeps the alert closer in. “The more people that know about it, the luckier we’re going to be in finding the owner,” she said.

- PAW Alert: Network reunites lost dogs with families, CNN.com, TriVallyCentral.com, April 10, 2013.

3. You see, Hillary understands that the president is about one thing and one thing only, it’s about leaving something better for our kids. That’s how we've always moved this country forward, by all of us coming together on behalf of our children, folks who volunteer to coach that team, to teach that Sunday school class, because they know it takes a village.

Heroes of every color and creed who wear the uniform and risk their lives to keep passing down those blessings of liberty, police officers and the protesters in Dallas who all desperately want to keep our children safe.

People who lined up in Orlando to donate blood because it could have been their son, their daughter in that club.

Leaders like Tim Kaine who show our kids what decency and devotion look like.

Leaders like Hillary Clinton who has the guts and the grace to keep coming back and putting those cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling until she finally breaks through, lifting all of us along with her.

That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.

And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

- Transcript: Read Michelle Obama’s full speech from the 2016 DNC, WashingtonPost.com, July 26, 2016.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.