Most of my favorite parts of The Race cannot be confined to events, they are simply moments, feelings and times. Here’s a few from this month…..
Just My Cup of Tea
Every morning at Masana I am up between 6 or 7am. Everyone who knows me knows that that is no small feat. I am not an early riser. But each morning as I shuffle out to the kitchen to start my cup of tea, I smile. I can hear the boys’ laughter and voices as they enter the gate and move towards the backyard. I step to the doorway and am greeted by warm smiles and cold hands clasped in mine. I use my few Portuguese words of “bom dia!� and “tutte benne� as I hug their sleepy, stinky selves. I then sit on the back porch with them, drink my tea, watch them play checkers, talk with them, greet the stragglers and laugh at the crazy outfit of the day. Before I know it, it’s time for worship & breakfast and the day moves on from there.
Street boys live on the street. The street smells. Street boys smell. One of the most high stress yet hilarious activities of the day here at Masana is shower time. The boys don’t like taking cold-ish showers and being clean but to prevent at least a few diseases and let you get within hugging distance, they need to shower. One particular day this week was extra hilarious. It started with a few of us chilling with some of the boys on the back steps during a lull in activity. Almost in slow motion the �hit squad� (Ned Ved, Jr., Felix & Carlito) walks up, calmly grabs one of the resting boys by the neck and drags him off to the showers. What happened next was one of the funniest 15 minutes of my life. We just sat back and cried with laughter as we watched the ensuing chaos. Once the boys knew what was happening, it became a chase. Ned Ved and Jr. would split up- one would chase a boy around the house and the other would wait around the corner to catch him. One boy (affectionately called Bonnet Boy because of his unusual attire for the day) was particularly elusive. They would catch him and toss him in the shower but he would escape within a minute or two. With each capture he lost an article of clothing until he was down to his boxers and he had to just give in and shower. At one point in the chaos he was standing on a table yelling and another kid just swings out of a tree he’d been hiding in the entire time. My contribution to the whole thing was just sitting there laughing and encouraging the boys in Portuguese that they stunk and needed to shower. Good times, good times. J
Whenever there is a lull at the dinner table, you can turn to Ned Ved and go, “Story?�. He’ll nod and say “Shtory. Shtory. Hmmmm.� Then he’ll find a translator and begin. Usually the stories begin with “once upon a time� and usually they’ll end with “and they lived happily ever after�, but these aren’t your average fairy tales. They can be liberally modified Bible stories, involve happy but scheming woodland creatures, or be full of intrigue, betrayal, violence and poison. Sometimes all of the above. Either way, the audience is happy by the end. Ned Ved makes me smile.
The back porch here is the backbone of Masana I think. It’s the first place the boys gather in the morning and the last place everyone winds down before going to bed. Usually around 6pm or so I’ll hear a guitar strumming and know that it’s time to head out to the back porch to listen to Edson play guitar. He’s amazing. He’s been taught different things by different people here and there and puts it all together beautifully. We sit out there on the back porch, talk, laugh, play and wind away the minutes til suppertime. If I’m lucky, Felix will come joke with me in his lisp, Carlito will wonder in and then Ned Ved joins us and we have a full blown dance party. I can’t get enough of it. These evenings spent on the back porch have become my favorite thing this month.
