I have a friend who says that good things happen when life gets awkward. There have been plenty of chances for good things to happen here. One of us introduced herself by saying, “My hat´s name is _______,” another of us asked a Bolivian if they enjoy eating “back”; I keep forgetting that I´m not supposed to really kiss people on the cheek, and we all spend a good chunk of our day grinning like the “No, Espanol,” fools that we are. It´s alright. We laugh. They laugh. Good things happen. Mostly, I´ve been amazed at how possible it is to communicate without speaking the same language.
Last week, I hauled and shovelled sand with some girls from the Baptist seminary. While we worked we found two little frogs crawling over the dry ground, covered in sand. So we grabbed some plastic cups, caught them, and carried them down to the wettest spot we could find to set them free, but not before plastic cups were shoved in some girls´ faces and they ran away screaming. Everyone laughed.
On Sunday in Cochabamba we washed some babies from North of Potosi. North of Potosi is a World Vision postcard. All the land is sand coloured, the sharp grasses that spot the hills are sand coloured, the adobe shacks are sand coloured – look like they´ve sprouted from the dirt they were made from. The mothers that brought their babies to be washed travelled the 350km from there to here with their children by walking, by hitching rides in the backs of trucks. They come for a few months to beg a living, sleep in the streets, and then make the trek back home again. But there aren´t a lot of baths to be found when you sleep on the streets, and so, on Sunday afternoons, these women bring their children to a tall tent that is pitched in the city square for a few hours. They are given milk and bread outside, and when they are done they bring their babies into the tent.
I washed the littlest ones – took off their layers and layers of clothes and poured warm water over their black hair and chubby arms and legs. Mostly, the babies only blinked and were silent even with the soap and shampoo and the washcloth that scrubbed at the layers of dirt and snot under their noses and in their belly buttons. Some of the mothers handed their babies off to me and then waited outside, and some of them helped quietly in the washing – calm and matter-of-factly as we striped, washed, rinsed and dressed their babies in clean, donated clothing. There was hardly more than a word that passed between us. Later, some of the women undid their long black braids and washed their hair in the square, worked out the knots with small plastic combs and re-braided them tight, smooth and shining: their glory. Driving back to our rooms that night someone said, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me.” No one said a thing. I tried not to cry.
We are all storing these moments up in our hearts here. Some of the moments we can already speak to, sort through, organize, and some of them are standing awkwardly before us, smiling, nodding, well-intentioned and waiting for someone to come along and understand them.
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