If you listen, close your eyes and really listen, a gentle hush falls over a country. As the sun begins to barely break dawn small bundles of stripped palm leaves are held and swept over the land. Today it is outside my window. Today it is my turn; my turn to do the best I can at stepping into a life that has played itself over way before I came and will continue to do so after I leave. Emerging from the doorway I step out with an outreached hand enclosing my fingers over the gentle grooves of a handmade broom. My feet make their way step by step in calculated patterns sweeping at twigs, fallen leaves and torn remnants of a balloon that received one puff of oxygen too many. As the sun hits me with its gentle warmth now raised just above eye level all I am left with are small piles at my feet. Piles collected into a bucket with a twig broom and scrap of metal, and then walked to a dugout in the neighboring yard for rubbish. Sweat trickles down my spine as I then collect a bucket to fetch water for bathing. A cement block houses two taps, one large basin, a bucket and a crowd of people. Five Pesewas (five cents) later I walk away with a brimming bucket into the cement walls of the bath. Standing at armpit height once inside the bath is like a maze that decided it did not want to be after all. Three quick steps in, a turn to the left and the mazes center presents itself in an open square. Setting down my bucket on a centered cement block I reveal myself to what became the favorite part of my day; the favorite part of each day morning and night. Holding a small pail I scoop at the rippling water. The water hits my heated skin making its way through till it is a metal fist clamping my lungs. With quick breaths like someone hiding in a closet waiting to be found in a game of hide n' seek my body adjusts to the icy cool and I smile to myself. As I bath I am surrounded by the movement of the village; Men and women carrying machetes along with assortments of buckets and basins heading off to farm, heads bobbing past with buckets of water, schoolchildren passing into the courtyard to buy rice on their way to school and the general milling of conversation. It is the lives of these very people that I have been blessed to learn from. To provoke change in my life I am taking part in lives of the majority of a world, the greater part of a planet, as ironic as that seems. Although I am not sure I could ever express exactly what I have learned I have been taught to feel. Behind thoughts that I had and thoughts I have been given is new feeling. A physical presence in my heart that will forever affect how I think and the decisions I make. As the last droplets of water escape down my face the first of two favorite parts to my day comes to a close. A warm glow rises and spreads out in another smile as I stand and watch the people who stirred me to feel. A country that wakes up in a hush of sweeping has swept through and cleared some cobwebs from my heart instilling a bit more understanding.
