A little broken heart

It was an early afternoon when we approached the campsite.  A small compound really, at the ends of the earth.  Not much more than plastic covered boxes overlaid with masking tape to keep the rains from invading the in dwellers, to keep them protected, protected from the weather.  Our approach was slow and bumpy.  Like riding upon the back of an animal, the motion of our truck reminded me of travels to South America.  Those were days of heat and sweat, days when dust and dirt filled our mouth with every breath of awe; a swooshing and slumping over the back of gray assess as we took in unknown worlds.  Here at what seemed to be the edges of the earth, I could hear the “pop-pop-pop”, and “crack-crack-crack” of our wheels as rubber struck the jagged edges of potholes smashing tidbits of mud, spitting them outward at anything in our path.  Puddles filled potholes from recent rains and bellow us I could follow the wet track markings of previous visitors far out to a distant and unmet horizon.   We made our way to some hut like homes, not knowing who or what to expect on this hot southern trip.   A friend had dragged me here, to experience and to see, to see a little girl whose lollipop like fingers were said to leave impressions on ones hand.   1

Our truck was packed with goodies, canned and boxed and sacks of edibles.  Behind my seat, black bags filled to their brims with little red pinto pellets.  They would feed many little stomachs for many days. We had packed them carefully, counting every single red one, knowing that somewhere down here in the entrails of Baja, little ones ran about, dirty, uncombed, and hungry. These were the children of farmers, workers, and laborers.  Men, women and children caught in a life style whose story was the twisting and backbreaking of fathers and mothers, going about their work to meet the needs of their children; their bodies feeble and weary from the heat and the strain of the picking and the tugging at roots.  They lived to feed their young ones, and to serve their taskmasters.  Masters, driving the sweat out from scared wrinkled foreheads like blood drops from pricked fingers.  Like abandoned creatures they worked endless fields, picking and pulling, tugging and scraping, their children by their side.  2

We rode hard, kicking rocks and stilt onto the sides of the road.  Dust clouds whirled about us, lifting us, engulfing us.  It was everywhere.  Dust, behind me, in front of me, dust in my mouth and in my ears.  I searched for my water bottle but could not find it.  I finally caught site of it, there, behind the rice bags, but I could not reach it.  The clues were everywhere; we had reached the poorest outskirts of town and we had approached the edge of civilization.  I could now see numerous boxes, littered across the hillside. They were scattered dens, inhabited by thin bodies.  Big and small, dark and round, the likes of which reminded me of my own childhood days.  We reached the grounds of El Ejido, exhausted but glad to have ended our long four-hour drive.  As we stepped out of our truck, I caught snapshots of little crystal marbles of every color imaginable, staring at me from every corner.  Sparkling spheres peering from every nook, smiling faces here and giggling little mouths there, wide and wondering whom these strangers might be.  A white old dog crossed my path, and I saw on his skin a most dangerous skin rash.  His tongue, it hung from a wet mouth, and had eyes that drooped with a stare of malice.  Several children approached us, their clothes unwashed and dirty.  Little bodies crawled out of nowhere.  Little arms waived at us from everywhere.  Little voices shouting to us in the distance from somewhere.  They welcomed the funny looking visitors, welcomed us into their lair.  I towered over them, and I could see little tiny bare feet; they took me aback. Their toes, fried pork skin and cracked, like my grandma used to make for me when I was a child.  They were curled and crunchy, dark and muddy.  I wanted to look away, but I could not peel my eyes from them.  Little brown heads bobbed everywhere, speckled with white dots at the roots.   The shiny round red cheeks of another smeared with dried mucus and cracked like the surface of a dying river shun with the light of the afternoon sun.  The belly of another, and another, and another, seemed bloated, round, and ballooned.  Belly buttons protruded like cotton from a stuffed pillow and beckoned my touch.  Dust must have entered my eyes.  I squeezed them hard, but the images were still there.  They penetrated me.  Something seemed not right.  I wondered why I had come on this trip.  I could have stayed home with my wife, and my son.  Their faces escaped me, my mind swamped by the images before me.  3

We walked through the camp, took some pictures, and greeted strangers.  We then went back to unload the goods from the truck.  Desperate little hands tugged at the sacks of rice in my hands.  One boy wrapped himself around my left knee. Another leaped up and down my right, he seem to want to be carried.  I took hold of his tiny waist.  On this one I could feel bone against my thumb. Surely I would adopt his lice.  He did not fake his smile and his innocence disturbed me.  There was so much need here, yet so much love.  The children seemed oblivious to their condition.  Their parents were in the fields. They had probably gone out to work in the wee hours of the morning, not knowing what time they would return.  Sometimes they would return in hours, and other times in days.  Older children held onto tiny tots; each one giving the other comfort.   I lifted a sack onto my shoulder.  Somehow I was able to walk with the children on my body.  I did not matter.  They were having fun.  Soon we corralled the boys and girls into one of the homes.  As I entered the dwelling, my breathing became difficult and my throat tightened.  The stale air carried the scent of sewage and burned rubber. It was not uncommon for dwellers here to dispose of their trash behind their homes.  Sometimes they would burry it, and very often burn it.  When food was lacking, many would rummage through the town’s trash in search for morsels of meat, or anything that had not perished.  This was their life, and the life of their parents, and the life of their grandparents.   I made my way through the doorway.  Many of the children had arrived.  The promise of candy drew them in large numbers and I could count thirty, no, maybe forty tiny heads, all bouncing around within our tiny confine. They seemed so friendly, as if they had known us forever.  My friend Mike had visited them for years.  Each time a group had come they bring clothes, shoes, and a little grain.  Nothing here was wasted, and somehow they survived.  Amazingly, the farmers came home with little of what they picked in the fields.  4

We offered a story to the children.  It was a story of a giant and a boy.  The menacing creature was someone they could identify with.   The creature was one who always sought after the life of the boy.  But a friend of the boy named Jesus would always be there to defend him, to strengthen him and to give him courage.  The children loved this story.  This was their story.  Poverty was their giant, and we knew that for most of these babes that beast would seek them out for most of their lives.  Our gift to them was more than the candy; it was an assurance that despite the presence of their powerful enemy, there existed for them a friend to defend them.  These funny visitors had brought to them the assurance that in a forgetful world, they had not been forgotten.5

Our photographer decided to walk about the room asking the giggly faces to introduce themselves.  One by one each child spoke his name to us, and like the music of little birds in our ears, they voices pierced our hearts.  Little Arturo, the shy one, wobbled before us embarrassed and playful spoke in tiny cries.   Chubby Ester in her little white dirty wrinkled dress, cut me like a knife with her tiny voice and empty gums.   Her shoes wore out long ago and were torn at the toes.  Dirt was smeared across her forehead and face, telling a tale of hardship and abandonment.  Her parents were probably tilling the dirt miles from here, unable to care for her; unable to hold here and to love her.  Young Elizabeth on her right, held an infant in her arms. Here was a young mother no older than fourteen and starting her race in this world with a monumental load in her hands.  Little baby Ruth had no idea as she laid in her mama’s arms that one day shortly, she too would be left behind like all the other children in the compound.  Her mother would have to place her at the care of the other children to go off and farm the land.  Baby children here, and adult children there, it was a remarkable spectacle of deprivation and survival.  A camera snapped and a picture of their faces was captured forever on film; imprinted forever in our minds.  6

We then came to Carla.  She was a beautiful Indian girl of the Triki tribe.  Her hair dropped from the center of her round head like dried grass shoots blackened by the summer fires.  Something about her did not seem quite right.  She was a funny one, and with a giant lollipop in hand spoke to us with wide smiles.  Her lips appeared unusually large and dark for her head, and her face was unusually swollen.  Her tongue lapped at the candy feverishly with voracious enjoyment.  Looking down at her feet, I could see that she wore no shoes.  The oddly shaped toes on her feet protruded from her sandals like worms out of wet mud.  I picked her up and sat her on my lap.  Dark brown glazed eyes shot back at me with crystal tears.  She held my left hand as I stared at the fingers of her hand.  They seemed to match the lollipop that she thoroughly enjoyed.  She smiled and laughed with me.  Her fingers were slender and ended in round lobed nails.  I leaned over to my friend standing beside me and questioned him about her condition.  He told me that she was lucky to be alive; that she lived with a ruptured heart.  Her heart often pumped erratically and abnormally.  The rush of her blood to her extremities produced a swelling about her fingertips that made her fingers look like lollipops on a stick.  Her lips would often swell to larger than her fingers, and at times impede her speech.  Clara the child and the beautiful girl of El Ehido was the little broken heart I had been drawn to seek.  She was a beautiful girl living in a desperate world.  In the words of a child she told me that she often felt pain.  The swelling of her hands tortured her little mind.  Her eyes were but slits in a cascade of tears.   Here was a child, symbolic of the agony of many.  Here was the home of my childhood in the reminiscing of my mind.  Here my life had begun.7