BLESSING
Uploaded by kayzee on Jan 28, 2004
I heard the cry: plaintive, pitiable wail of a lost and frightened child.
It was one of those usual days, when the sun flared like a fiery blaze of a gem in the water filled sky.
Feeling not for the first time- the immense weight of duty settling upon me.
This would have been daunting if I had not sensed an equally great strength and a will to survive helping to burden.
I was an aid worker yet the aid they needed – I had none.
Like vermins crawling from the cracks and crevices they emerged, hesitantly at first, but with increasing boldness. Hobbling, scuttling dragging deformed limbs, they scrambled in to the square.
My mouth went dry and I fought to swallow the clot of sand that suddenly clogged my throat. One could sense that they were famished by hunger and aflame by thirst but a hidden more mysterious side to these simple people became clear in the sunny blaze, a side that had experienced the soul destroying effects of poverty yet some how survived, living and breathing the hope that is now burdened upon my shoulders.
Peering at me was easily the ugliest man I had ever seen: small-faces, gross in every feature, his long nose ending in a fleshy hook, and his mouth , the wide thick-lipped cleft of a frog, and cracks at all sight.
Ears like jug handles protruded from under a thick pelt of white wispy hair…like handy floss which floated over his head rather than resting there, and large wide spaced eyes bulged balefully from beneath a single ridge of wispy brow. He held my gaze for the tiniest of fractions yet enough for me to subconsciously sense that he saw me.
He slowly stepped forward…
‘Water’ he uttered the word cautiously as if it might hurt his tongue.
My pulse beat in my temples like the sound of an African dance that persisted at a steady yet uneasy tempo, which unnerved me, and filled me with dull alarm, while my heart palpited , lumping awkwardly in my chest as though it was a rock. I felt his blood warming in the furious scorch of the sun.
The skin on the back of neck sizzled and burnt, and I wondered “Why had god brought such pain and fury” thinking aloud he replied….
“Son we are the lucky ones…we have you to thank.” His words touched a guilty nerve in my conscience and I squirmed.
I paused…..
The silence...