My Marbles

What to say. What to say. What to say. I have all these words rolling around my mind like a bag of dropped marbles. And they may come out jumbled or they may come out in perfect sense but I think I’ll leave it up to chance at this point. Here goes. My feeble attempt to describe my day. We went base walking today another Monday, another day visiting the men we see every week, we prayed, we read the Bible and gave them food. As much as I hate to say it, it doesn’t impact you as much as it did the first time. The first time I shook their scarred hands it shook my world. And now it’s a mere rattle. I am happy to see them now, they know our names, they don’t make me sad. As we prayed next to a man injecting cocaine into his veins with a rusty needle I didn’t feel. It’s reality now…and you can only feel so much before you stop feeling at all. I was contemplating the severity of this problem when we stumbled upon a corpse of a woman leaning against a brick wall. She looked at us with that blank stare. Nothing but blankness occurring behind those vacant eyes. Her head rolled from side to side and she stared at us with a goofy smile displaying the few teeth she had left. Her chest was exposed and I could count her protruding ribs like a cage that imprisoned her from the inside out. She had a bottle of glue in one hand and in the other a tiny baby that lay sprawled across her arm like a scale that would eventually tip to one side outweighing the other. I had a hunch at which would be easier to give up. The baby didn’t flinch as the flies crawled across its face, into its eyes and nose. She didn’t attempt to cover herself or her infant. And the familiar burning at the back of my eyes was back. And I felt and I felt too much. And I wasn’t sure where the strength would come from to stand there in view of a month old infant, drowning in the addictions of a mother who was doing all but reaching for a helping hand to save herself or her child. As we walked away, awful thoughts began to creep into my head. Plots…would those metal detectors detect a cluster of tiny bones in my suitcase? Could I put a supply of water and food like a hamster inside my suitcase? Would it cry as it flew back to America among the luggage of the lucky few? Maybe I could run back and replace her baby with a piece of paper reading I O U…I doubt she would notice, she may even thank me…But I walked on. Walking back, it was all intensified. The dirt and mud that caked the bottom of my feet. The dust that threatened to choke the slightest bit of clean air from entering your nose. The hundreds of people walking by. The rainbows of trash mountains that lined the sides of the road like layers on a cake. The clanging of people beating metal like the clanging on the bars  of a prison, the chants of little kids mindlessly  memorizing the Koran in school. They couldn’t be more than three or four. The same old man leaning against the same old wall his beard a mass tangle of dirt mud and trash eating from the same black trash bag eating the same trash he ate the day before and the day before and the day before and the day before. The same little kids who ran after us with their teary eyes and silly smiles, their dirty clothes and their reaching hands always wanting to shake our hands. When we left Eastleigh, it started to rain. The rain in Africa is brown, it doesn’t clean it dirties. It makes the things that weren’t brown-brown. It equalifies. And we passed the trash bag houses tied to the brick walls. And a cold front blew in. And the equalifiying rain decided to add a chill to those who were already drenched. And I had to wonder. Do the people who live under those trash bags curl into a ball when it rains? Does the trash that compiles their floor cushion them and conform to their shape or does it poke and protrude into their skin a constant reminder of where they are and where they live…Do the fleas and ticks under those trash bags bury themselves as far under the trash as they can get to escape the smell, or do they welcome the body as a feast? Do the people under those trash bags stay dry, or do those trash bags leak? And when they leak do the people under those trash bags wipe the brown rain from their faces or do they let them roll down like tears that have long gone? Do they curl their mud caked toes and pull down the scraps of pants over their toes when that chill comes, do they cover their toes with decaying food and plastic? Does decaying food and plastic insulate? I don’t know. And I will never know, and for this I am thankful-and for this I am sad. Because I can’t imagine the strength it must take to live under a trash bag. To LIVE under a trash bag, to convince yourself that life is still life. To convince yourself to continue to breathe. In and out. In and out. To continue to breathe. Even though there’s nothing left to breathe for. 

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”

And this was my day. And it was another Monday. But do love Africa. I love that to get from point A to point B you have to brave a matatu which is a 13 passenger van that they cram 20 or more people on, they squeeze you into spaces you never thought you could, and never should be squeezed. They sit men on ladies and make you sit in strangers laps. I love that I have whip lash right now because a herd of goats caused our matatu to stop abruptly, causing the matatu behind us to hit us. I love that church is this electric atmosphere of people filled with a common passion for a common God. I love the resounding songs sung at the top of their lungs in a language that I am still clueless to that bounces off the walls and into your heart. I love the clapping and swaying and excitement for our God and for each other. I love that the roads are so full of pot holes that a simple drive feels like a ride at six flags. I love that African people are the loudest, most passionate people I have ever met. I love their bright colors and bright smiles. I love that everywhere we go there is a procession of tiny kids in tow screaming MAZUNGU!!! (white person) at the top of their lungs announcing to the world that we are here. I love the tiny hands that grab mine constantly. I love that when we get lost amongst the throngs of people in the city that there are several more than willing to grab us by the hand and lead us to where we are going. I love the dirt that equalifies. I love the knocks at ten at night on our big metal door that brings hugs and goodnights and I love you’s. And most of all, I love that I love them more than I ever thought I could.