I wring the sweat from my damp hair as I watch one of the village girls play. She’s crawling around in an enclosed cement space next to the school building. The wall is a couple feet high and has steps leading up to it, with a drain in the bottom. I’m not sure if it is intended to be a place to wash clothes or to bathe or something else. Whatever the case, today it’s dry and empty, except for this girl and her “toys”—part of a metal cage of some sort, several plastic spoons, a couple of old pieces of clothing that I classify as rags. She pushes these things around on the cement, rearranging them, putting the spoons in the drain, wiping spots with the rags. I’m trying to guess her game, when she hops out and runs away.
I think about this girl for awhile, this girl with the wild curly hair and angry birds shorts and shirt. I think about her life in these palm leaf huts. I think about the small hut in the center of the community that houses nothing but a TV and DVD player. I wonder what kinds of movies this girl watches and what she thinks of them. I’m told the people here are nomadic, and I wonder who carries the TV when it’s time to move.
The rest of my team is inside the school playing frisbee with a boy who’s proving to be a prodigy. But I’m just sitting outside, on the cement, thinking about this jungle girl. I wonder if she knows the path through the trees by heart. I wonder if she has ever seen anything different from these huts set up in patches over the hill. I wonder if this place is all she will ever know.
But most of all I wonder, “Why me?” So much of a person's life has to do with something they had no control over—the time and the place they were born. Why was I born to the kind of life I was born to, and why was this girl born here?
I suppose the answer to the “why me?” question is easy: It’s all part of God’s plan, and God’s plan is good and perfect. This is something I will remind myself of later.
“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,”
Acts 17:26
But it’s just that in moments like this I feel like a filthy, smelly, disheveled verson of Miss America. All of my smiling and waving to groups of strangers. Showing up here, playing with these kids for a while, taking a few photos, and then getting back in the car. And all this time knowing that at some point, months from now, I will return to my “real life” with a comfy bed in a bug free home with constant internet access. I will have all of the tools I need to acquire knowledge and formulate dreams at my fingertips. And this girl will most likely still be here, scratching around on the cement.
But I know she has a purpose, just as I have a purpose. She was placed here in this village for a reason, just as I was placed in my town for a reason.
I also know that “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:48)
I hope I’m doing an okay job with what I’ve been entrusted.
I wonder if this girl were to ever visit my “village” she would wonder the same things that I’ve been wondering about her. That while I’m wondering why I was so blessed to be born in my village, she’s wondering why she was so blessed to be born in hers.
These kids were so shy!
One of the huts:
The school building:
