Inside the downtown Marble Street Brewery, adults pursue spirits, music, networking, barbecue ribs, chips and salsa, self promotion, smoozing, passionate political arguments, soothing ruffled feathers, looking for sex, patching up business deals.
Outside the brewery, kids, watched by their Mom’s, build castles with lego’s on the sidewalk.
When little, we played baseball at dusk in the street,rode simple bicycles down to the local five and ten, dug tunnels in arroyos. In evening baseball we could barely see the white tennis ball coming at us as we stood in the batter’s box. Home plate was a street manhole and first, second and third bases were chalked in at the curbs. We were still playing when the night streetlights came on.
Adults were nowhere to be seen, leaving us to our own devices, waiting for us to grow up and get out on our own.
This evening reminds me of the 1950’s.
These kid’s skyscrapers are already teetering from the weight of the next block.
Their screams, as their skyscraper falls and blocks spread over the sidewalk like a witch doctor’s bones, are happy.
Happy screams are the best ones to hear.
The washer and dryer at Ms. Sue’s starts early in the morning and ends late at night.
With forty two kids, clothes get dirty and, even with throw away diapers, there is hardly time to wash, dry,fold, and hang. Some of the clothes are hand washed in buckets in the front yard and the girls are most often saddled with this task, though Peter was scrubbing his white sneakers yesterday morning in a sink in the laundry room..
Ms. Sue wants the outside laundry location changed, because, near the house, the soil gets wet and makes mud that gets tracked into the house by almost a hundred little feet..
The new outside laundry area is in the shade, pebbles bordered by a square perimeter of heavy rocks borrowed from a collapsed retaining wall next to the guest house where I bivouac during my volunteer visit.
The girls are washing in the new place today, but, mostly, they laugh, talk, learn.
Clean clothes are a treasure, especially when you have no treasure chest to put them in.
Making do doesn’t mean you can’t have fun doing,and kids, even in rough times, always find ways to have fun.
One of the kid’s lifts the slow running hose and sprays the others till the hose is wrestled away and staff gets them all quiet again.
Having to do your laundry is a lifetime chore and having a little fun, when you do it, makes you like it more than you should.
In a hallway to the tv room, on a wall in front of the boy’s dorm, is a tree with kid’s photos hanging like fruit.
These photo’s were taken some years back and the children have long since outgrown their photos, each day becoming something new, their emotions taking them on minute by minute roller coasters.
For businessman, kids are future buying customers or part of their future labor force.
For schools, kids are society’s future mom’s and dad’s and bring money from the state.
For politicians, kids are future voters who will have to pay for current policy mistakes.
For Jesus, children are to be nurtured.
At Ms. Sue’s, children give this home its life. They run down halls, swing on swings on the playground, sharpen pencils at school, recite devotionals, watch Disney movies before bedtime, do their chores with only a little complaining.
It takes a long time for human fruit to ripen.
Yesterday’s photo’s don’t do justice to today’s faces.
It is, I’m observing, time for some new portraits.
The kid meter is shaped like a stop signal with green,yellow, and red lights.
When the green light is on there are bursts of positive energy. Kids seek like minded playmates and act out dramas the length of the dining room. They stay out of each others way and, like water, seek paths of least resistance. There are yells of pleasure, shouts, rising and falling voices harmonizing like a well tuned college choir.
With the yellow light there are the beginnings of malfunction. Small groups disintegrate, individuals grab for the same toy, sharing is a foreign concept. Someone is pushed down by someone bigger or someone is reprimanded by staff for doing a behavior out of bounds even by a child care workers loosest standards.
At the red light, there is loud and persistent crying, by one, several, or many.
At this breakfast, there are 42 children and staff being served, getting books ready for school, visiting, doing dishes, wiping down tables, sweeping the floor and finishing chores. It is not a well oiled machine, but there are good things happening that are reinforced each day over time.
This morning the light is solid green.
The crack in this wall began after a contractor built a security grate of ironwork on top of the storage unit so thieves couldn’t slip in at night and help themselves to someone else’s food. The crack has dangerously expanded and weakened the wall, and, in extension, the entire storage room.
This morning Mich poses next to a Haitian broom that looks like it wouldn’t work but does nicely on concrete, tile, even on stones in the yard. The broom’s fibers are flexible and strong enough to push mango leaves and paper into a pile to be picked up and thrown into an old oil drum to be burned or hauled off later.
The broom’s bristles are held together by rope twisted around them and the long thin wood branch handle. The broom is light to carry and easy to shake out and leans against the wall like a ;professional loafer.
Mich smiles.
He is happy even if this crack looks like a lizard ready to swallow him up and smack its lips after it’s snack.
Lucky has had two litters.
Her first litter was given away and taken at night when no one was paying attention.
This second litter of seven is housed in a suitcase under the front porch of the guest house. Besides the banging of mango’s falling on the roof, Scott is serenaded by puppies at one in the morning every night. Their four part harmony is mediocre but they are great at crescendos.
Lucky, diligently, stays up all night barking at threats to her brood but sleeps all day on the tiled front porch floor, in the shade.
This morning, Ms. Sue’s girls are coaxing Lucky back to her puppies by laying down a string of dog treats. They lay one down and Lucky walks to sniff it, then gingerly eats it. They lay another bite, just a little further, and Lucky follows them. No smart dog is going to turn down a snack.
Back at her suitcase, she is reunited with her kids, each one named by Ms. Sue’s children.
Their names, as chosen by committee, are Lacy, Lucy, Larry, Lalo, Lily, Lewenski, Lemenski.
No one is sure where the last two names come from but they are on a handwritten note given to Ms. Sue. The note has a big heart drawn on it and all seven names are printed neatly in a little girl’s hand.
How anyone will put the right name with the right puppy is yet another miracle?
There are volunteers this week, from Indianapolis, who lend fifty hands.
On our work menu is covering up a newly installed septic tank, filling in a washed out area around the clothesline, spreading gravel in areas that get muddy and cause kids to track mud into the home, sanding and refinishing kid’s beds, making new friends.
Work goes quickly when spread among many, and, by the end of two days, much has been accomplished The septic tank is buried, the washout is gone, beds, with a fresh coat of stain and polyurethane, match up with their mattresses.
Most of us work our own pace and some of the kids help, curious, wanting to try their hand.
Volunteers come and go, but kids, and staff, are here long term.
Nobody here thinks they can do everything by themselves.
The desire to help is a common Christian directive, and helping others, I am told frequently, by church folks, is something “we don’t have to do, but we get to do.”
On this day, Gwen graduates from kindergarten at a local community center.
It takes some urging to go on stage with her aunt April, but she walks on and is recognized.There are recitations by some of the kids, comments by teacher’s and invited guests, a small lunch afterwards.
We have no crystal balls to know the future.
We hope Gwen has many graduation ceremonies, has dreams and achieves them, takes advantage of her abilities, compensates for her shortcomings, finds the people she needs to find.
By the end of the ceremony, balloons are broken or fly up and away into the coconut trees.
Proud parents and relatives walk home with one hand on a paper certificate, the other holding the hand of their future.
Today, Gwen wants blue toenails. She is four years old but has a mind of her own, like all of us.
Today, Alma sits on the floor in a doorway and carefully puts a new more beautiful blue on previously red toenails.
Every little girl needs these moments.
Alma knows this better than anyone.
Gwen will remember this, forever.
This old man farms seven days a week.
He comes out early in the morning wearing flip flops, shorts, a long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap with a big brim.He has a machete in a sleeve on his belt and when he sees something that needs trimmed he pulls his machete’s long blade out and fixes his problem with decision and precision.
With a stubble of beard because shaving is a nuisance, he walks his property checking his rows of squash, cucumbers, casava, string beans – all produce that he sells in the market. Bamboo posts and fences make shade and structures for climbing plants and keeping trespassers out.. A smoldering fire of green leaves makes smoke that keeps mosquitoes down and there are always mosquitoes this time of year.
This old man’s most pressing problem is keeping kids from crossing his land to get to the closest road to town, trampling new sprouts and breaking his bamboo fences.
He looks happy when I wave at him this morning.
He waves back, squats down, and pokes his fire with his machete.
Someday he will not be able to farm, but, for now, he is a content, lean, productive senior.
He holds to his land like a man overboard clings to a life preserver.
I wouldn’t want to be one of those kids if he catches you.
His grip would squeeze the air right out of you and his machete doesn’t take prisoners.
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