I still feel a big blank when a little kid looks at me expectantly for some sort of entertainment. That promises to make things interesting this month since we’re staying at an orphanage. The first day I hung out with the kids they kept asking for new games. I, of course, just looked helpless until they took pity on me and taught me a game instead, some sort of hand slapping in a circle thing complete with lots of loud words in a language I’m nowhere close to understanding. Apparently learning games is fun.
Then yesterday we had a dance party of sorts in the grass. Dancing is another thing that makes me uncomfortable in most circumstances. I was saved from my discomfort by a little girl who didn’t seem to notice. Her name is Puleng. She took my hands and jumped around to the music for about an hour. I even made her stop for a water break. I asked her at one point if she was tired. She said yes, but didn’t stop jumping around until she was called in for dinner. She never stopped smiling. Every now and then she would look up at me until I returned her look and then she would laugh hysterically. Apparently dancing is fun.
Then I got to thinking about the scars on her arms and legs and what story they may tell about the life she had before she got here. I know there’s an extremely good chance that her life has been affected by HIV in some way. That’s the case for most of the children who stay here. Her parents may be dead or maybe they left to find work in South Africa and never came back. Are her scars a remnant of abuse or neglect or disease or all three? I don’t know. I guess I could ask someone who works here, but then what? No, I don’t think I’m going to ask, not now. I know all I need to know. She, along with the other 27 kids, is here because it wasn’t safe for her to be where she was before. The staff here is working to find her a loving home, possibly with some other family members. She’s smiling now, all the kids are and I get to be a part of that for the next couple weeks.
One of the women who works here told me that when the rain falls it doesn’t return to the clouds without first having softened the ground it touched and when God touches something it is not left unchanged either. I hope we are able to leave something behind when we go because I already know the kids have already changed something in me.
