September 12, 2009

• band aids

   I bought band-aids. my idea of first aid (after my mother’s high hopes of me becoming a doctor one day) is neosporine and band-aids. so i brought some to Living Stones, so i could take care of minor boo-boos. The first casualty came quickly–Anderson’s thumb. so out came the band-aids and out came all the eyeballs. aparently, none of the kids had ever seen band-aids before.

  “What is that? What does it do?” and the big question for the neosporine: “does it sting?” the crowd around ohhhed and ahhhed and asked for their own band-aid as well. i told them i had to see blood first. bad choice of words. i was worried they would get hurt just to get a band-aid.

  It hits you in the little things. it makes you ask what kind of life they must live–a life without band-aids. without beds. dressures. toilet paper (the program uses 8 rolls of toilet paper a week…for 100 kids. which means most of the kids are NOT using toilet paper). showers. food.

  Patricia wonders why i am alway surprised at these things “Didn’t you know about pobreza before?” i did. i thought i did. i’ve been working in the inner city since i was…14? i’ve read books and studied about poverty since i was little. but it is different being here…and realizing that many of these kids have never eaten pizza. Three years ago, Patrica and Cacau did a special program and made pizza for all the kids. They looked at it, not wanting to cut it because it looked so pretty round.

  I’ve been asking the kids to write their name, tell me their favorite color, animal, and food, and their birthday. about 20% can’t write their names, and about 65% don’t know when their birthday is. and i think i am the first one to ask them their favorite color, animal and food. because they sit and contemplate it like they’ve never thought about it before. pink? no…green. Most every likes dogs. they’ve seen dogs. and food? they shrug and i asked “imagine you went to Recife and could pick any food you wanted–what would it be?” one girl said rice. RICE? imagine a life where the best food you’d ever had was rice. and she meant it too. Most of the kids said lasanga. when i asked Cacau, she said that most of them had never had lasagna, they’d just seen pictures and been told it was good.

  of course these kids could never have afforded a luxury like band aids. i just had never followed the thought through that far. you don’t normally travel that far down until you are there. with them. day to day. and today…this is what hit me hard. band-aids.

  • 10:03 am
  • 2 Comments