A clean bathroom. I realize that many people don’t have giant tiled bathrooms with his and her sinks, a shower, and a bathtub. Despite that, I think I still expected bathrooms to be at least clean. In Palenque I got used to having no toilet seat, but in Rosario there wasn’t even really a toilet. There was a shack with a an elevated hole in the ground. It stunk like the worst porta-potty imaginable and was constantly buzzing with flies. The door had cracks and gaping holes thus allowing anyone who wanted to, to see in. It was disgusting.
Clean Water. We bought water in the town of Murra knowing that there wouldn’t be any available clean water in Rosario. Yet, we didn’t purchase nearly enough. We had to ration out our few bottles of water to make them last the entire weekend. There was no clean water anywhere in Rosario making our choice either go thirsty, drink another coke, or get sick from the contaminated water.
A variation in food. Rice and beans are cheap, but I never realized they were a staple with every meal…breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They try to mix it up, sometimes the rice and beans are mixed, sometimes they’re separate, sometimes they even have an extra vegetable included, but when it comes down to it, they are still rice and beans. There was no thai food, no indian food, no french food, just rice and beans, everyday three times a day.
My first reaction was to want to fix all this. I wanted to clean the bathroom thoroughly and douse it in febreeze. I wanted to buy water filters for the whole town. I wanted to open a thai restaurant and introduce them to curry. I wanted to explain that worship music doesn’t need to literally rock the house and that loud animals should be kept far, far away from the house. But, when I looked around at the inhabitants of Rosario, I realized that none of these issues bothered them in the slightest.
In reality, nothing really needed to be fixed. The bathroom served the same purpose as any bathroom regardless of it’s cleanliness. They are used to the water for the most part (although I think this is the one issue that would benefit from being fixed). They don’t seem to mind the lack of variety in their diet. At each meal they scarf down the rice and beans like they’ve never had them before. The noise level didn’t disturb anyone. The worshipers sang just as loud as the music, making a uniquely joyful noise to the Lord. And the locals didn’t seem to care about the animal noises that litter there streets every morning. Why did I think these things needed to be fixed?
I’ve always loved traveling and experiencing new cultures, but at some point during our weekend I forgot that. My western mindset said that something was wrong, that there was a better way to do things. But, the more I’m here the more I’m remembering that there is no right way. God made us all different. If every place was the same there would be no point in traveling, things would be boring. And God didn’t make us boring, he made us just the way we are meant to be.
