My bare feet rest gratefully against the cool, rough concrete below my cot. The mosquito net that is draped around me from the crown of my head, where the hanging loop stands proudly over me like a jester’s cap, with the bottom tucked underneath my toes. The Emmaus Crew is to my left, through a doorway, in a concrete room with an aluminum roof, approximately twelve feet by thirty feet. We’re in Belmopan, Belize and our contact, Alfonso tells us that we’re lucky because this ninety plus degree weather is unseasonably warm. Just last week the temperature topped 115˚ƒ.
My team is flopped like a bad scene from a fraternity movie with guys and girls tossed all about the room, with a precarious balance of clothing that serves to both prevent death from heat stroke while sleeping, and at the same time covers all essentials. While everyone is modest, Victorian values simply must yield to survival.
My own cot rests just outside the door, on the pila (a concrete three compartment sink that holds water for both washing clothes, dishes, and washing one’s person) space, an outside area on the back of the house, also covered with a metal roof. Two toilet rooms and a shower room are directly across from my cot, up three concrete poured stairs, giving me a supervisory perspective of who pees the most through the night.
I must say that it is quite amusing to see the various souls attempt to stealthily slip out from the sweaty dorm room of purgatory, only to find me looking up at them from underneath my bug-net-tent as the glow of a keyboard lights up my face like a penny dreadful serial.
My worries are much more earthly, as my back rests against the concrete block wall, with my over-warn pillow wadded up in the small of my middle-aged back and my shoulder blades touching the cool concrete as they protrude from my black wife-beater shirt and pin the mosquito net against the wall. While I’m in a cocoon, I’m aware that spiders (there are tarantulas here) and millipedes (they’re just as big as the tarantulas) can walk up the wall, access my mosquito net, and potentially crawl in from underneath.
This knowledge and my active, colorful imagination led to me calmly (while my insides freaked out) reaching for a headlamp to investigate what was brushing up against my left arm. To my great relief, the friend in my bed was only a gigantic cockroach who was just making his way through, exited, and scurried off across the concrete floor (where my bare toes are resting) in the darkness. This is the reality here… a centipede, tarantula, or scorpion can sting or bite, while a cockroach simply uses you like an exit ramp… and so cockroaches just are no longer a freak-out type of bug.
The three fans that rotate in the purgatory room are a familiar and soothing sound that provides a reassuring backdrop of civilization that provides counterpoint to the cacophony of bizarre and threatening sounds that generate from somewhere beyond the glow of my computer screen. Some are identifiable to my hearing, such as barking dogs, crickets, and frogs. Others are the stuff that can lead to Hitchcockian wonderings of imminent personal demise.
I imagine something jumping on my head, sinking in fangs, and then bounding over my body to the tasty young people beyond. I ponder which one would survive to the end and conquer the beast, avenging my death.
There is a distant screaming sort of triad that sounds in the distance at my eleven o’clock. My best guess is some sort of monkey. Nearly directly over my head is a type of amphibian or reptile that gives alarmingly loud barking sounds. The most disturbing noise by far, is the back and forth swishing of the high weeds on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the bathrooms, about 20 feet from my current location, including my illuminated head and exposed feet. I weigh the risk and balances and decide that a toe bite is an acceptable risk to find relief from this tropical nighttime humidity.
Of all these things, as my head begins to fall towards my lap, I remember that none of theme were the inspiration of why I opened the MacBook to type… it was this family.
The pastor and his wife must travel every six weeks or so to the capital of Guatemala. This involves a lengthy border crossing between the slightly cantankerous countries of Guatemala and Belize (they disagree on the matter of who owns Belize), a twelve-hour road trip (under perfect conditions and circumstances), and a painful stay at a national hospital where she receives chemotherapy treatments for her diagnosed cancer.
The cost of prolonging her life has exceeded the families’ means. They’ve sold their family home and moved in to a back room of the church. The pastor began four months ago, praying for her at the altar of his church and inviting the members of their congregation to join them.
No one came.
And then, by faith… they began traveling to the capital anyway, without the money they needed to cover treatment and pay the expenses of life such as rent, power, and water… and since the day they returned from the first session of treatments… the men of the church have showed up every single morning at 4 AM to kneel beside the pastor and plead to God for the life and complete healing of his wife.
Pastor also shared with me that he had been praying that teams would come to him so that he could see ongoing projects complete. He explained that Emmaus was an answer to that prayer as tomorrow our funding will cover the cost, and our sweat will cover the labor, of a new wall along the far side of the church.
I am blown away. To begin, how does one deal with the horror of hearing, “You’ve got cancer,” to serving as super host to 10 college aged students, a middle aged Gringo, and 2 Chapins. The food is outstanding. The team has decided, without dissent, that we’re ready for some great cold-milk cereals and some sliced, fresh, local fruit.
I fell asleep again (I nodded off five times during he service earlier, and I was a speaker), and I’ve awoken to the sound of raindrop on aluminum roofing. It is glorious and I am without complaint as the floodgates of heaven good this steamy earth.
I am thankful to just be a simple passenger on this journey. I’ll let the falling drops of life sing me to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment