That was my silent prayer as I left on the Race.
Please, God, no lice.
I thought getting lice would mean shaving my head, getting rid of all my clothes and sleeping gear, and that no one would come near me ever again.
Okay, so that’s a bit dramatic but I really didn’t want to get lice.
At first I thought my scalp was just dry. We had been working with concrete and digging for a lot of the week, so I thought I had just gotten enough concrete and dirt in my hair to dry it out. I lived in that ignorance for a couple of days.
Blissful, itchy ignorance.
But after trying to wash my hair several times, my little bubble of ignorance was also starting to wash away.
My head itched just as much as it had before, if not more. Not even putting extra conditioner in my hair helped. But I still clung to the idea that my scalp was just dry. After all, one of my teammates was complaining of her head itching too.
Finally, I was just tired of it.
I tried looking by myself in the bathroom mirror, but I didn’t have a clue about what lice looked like. I parted my hair in several different palaces, trying to examine my scalp. I did find what looked like little balls of dirt in my hair and, since I’d washed my hair several times, I was pretty sure it wasn’t actually dirt. But between my hair falling in my eyes and not knowing what to look for, I couldn’t come to a complete conclusion.
But I had my suspicions.
I sat on the toilet, put my head in my hands, and took a deep breath. Then I stared at the wall for a few minutes, gathering myself and itching my head.
Finally, I got up.
Time for a head check.
Quietly, not wanting to draw unneeded attention to myself (or create a panic about a possible lice epidemic), I asked Andie (my teammate) to check my head for lice. We trooped back into the bathroom and I stood in front of the mirror again.
Gently, she parted my hair and lightly combed through it with her fingers. She squinted and leaned closer towards my head. She pulled on of the balls of dirt from my hair and tried to examine it closer, but it fell from her fingers before she could look at it properly. She pulled another one.
I think she came to the same conclusion I did about them. They weren’t dirt.
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t spot any bugs.
Head check analysis: unconfirmed sightings of lice.
And so we made our way to someone who would know for sure. Quietly, Andie grabbed my hand and pulled me to our contact’s house.
She knew exactly what lice looked like.
And sure enough, I had lice.
Turns out, those things that I thought were balls of dirt were actually eggs and nits* from the lice.
And I had a lot in my hair.
And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Like several days’ worth.
And lice is super contagious. If one person has it, odds are a lot more people will have it too.
As a result, my lice invasion needed to be announced so that we could stay on top of the outbreak.
As we gathered the team, I stood in the back of the room, nervous about everyone finding out that I had it. That there were little bugs wandering around on my head, laying eggs and God only know what else. The worst part was that I was contagious.
I really just wanted to disappear into the bathroom and lock the door instead of watching everyone’s reaction.
Finally the moment came. Neala has lice. Everyone would need a head check.
Which, of course, everyone agreed to. If you potentially had lice, you would want to know right away. That I expected.
But their reaction to me was different than I had played in my head.
“Oh, Neala, not you!”
“Poor Neala.”
No ‘stay away from me’ or looks of revulsion.
No avoidance, but instead comforting pats on my arms and back.
I felt a little silly that I thought they would say or do anything else. I mean, this was my community. How could I think anything less of them? I should’ve known better.
It was awhile later, sitting in the bathroom with Andie blow drying* my hair and picking out bugs that I realized that getting lice was an attack. A personal attack on me.
After everyone got their heads checked (there were 23 of us in close contact with each other), we found out that I was the only one with lice.
Unusual since I had had it for several days and because it’s usually an epidemic.
I slept with my head just inches away from Andie. I had given hugs to several people. My brush and comb sat on the same shelf as everyone else’s.
And yet, I was the only one with lice.
Thinking about it, I realized that the core of my fear of getting lice was a fear of being isolated and alone. It’s an area of my life that I’ve struggled with in the past. But being in a community, like I have on the World Race, life hasn’t been isolated or lonely. Having a fellowship of believers that pour into each other and love each other through the good and the bad has been life changing.
So naturally that’s a place where the devil will try to strike. He knows my past and he thinks he knows where he can bring me down. If isolation is a thing of the past, then why not try and bring it back into the present? Why not try and destroy a community that is doing so much good for God?
I also believe that there was another reason for giving me lice: to make all of us a little less ready to love on the people around us. I most likely got lice from playing with one of the local schoolkids or from hugging someone at church. It could have come from anywhere. Now that we all knew that lice was a real threat to us, we all could have easily decided to withdraw and protect ourselves rather than continuing to reach out.
But I can proudly say that we didn’t withdraw.
And because this was an area we were being attacked in, we knew that our acts of love in the community had meaning for the people. We knew that our presence was making a difference in their lives. We knew we were doing something meaningful for the kingdom of God in Honduras.
Getting attacked didn’t make me isolated and it didn’t stop me from loving. Getting attacked made me angry. It made me want to go out and do what I could to show the devil that he didn’t and couldn’t stop me.
To show him that He who is in me is greater than he who is in this world.
* Nits are baby lice that are still growing.
*Fun fact, heat kills lice, nits, and eggs. It also makes your head extremely itchy because all of the adult bugs sense the heat and run to other parts of your head to get away. Later on we smeared Mayo all over my scalp and hair and then put a plastic bag over it. The Mayo and the bag suffocated any lice that were still alive. Then, after washing the Mayo out, we put a lice gel into my hair and combed out the nits and eggs. After that, I was lice free! Plus, my hair was super soft for a couple of days. There are some benefits to getting lice.
