Sunday, January 21, 2018

The Yellow Jug

She takes my hand and leads me up the hill. In her other arm she carries the proverbial yellow jerry can. The bright hues of yellow smudged with iron laden dirt are gripped and carried by nearly every child in rural East Africa as they haul their family’s water supply back from the community well. This one, she takes my hand and leads me back to the home where she stays. They walk here three times a day, climb down the wide mouthed well and fill their buckets with water that will give them typhoid, and start the journey home. Somehow in the exhaustion of simply living in a place that is foreign, I find myself losing sight. The scene in front of me seemingly normal. I remind myself that this, it is not fair and yet, it is her reality. I don’t want to become blind to the heartbreaking realities that so often surround me and yet sometimes I am. Sometimes it is all too much and I don’t even realize I am walking along with my eyes closed to what is around me.

And yet, even still I remind myself that somehow in some small way I am part of her story. I know her name, and hopefully someday soon she won’t have to deal with water that gives her typhoid, or the risk of falling down the well. I type words on my screen, the reality of this life she lives made real in the body of a report, and I prepare for a conference call to discuss the technical findings. And yet beyond the mineral content and the bacteria counts, I remind myself that there is a girl with a name behind the words I type and the water chemistry I analyze. Behind every drawing that is drafted, behind every report that is crafted is a person who has a name.  Let’s just be honest here. I am not changing the world. They are. These people, they teach me, inspire me, and remind me to remember what is really important. They are generous, humble, and I have much to learn and remember.

Perhaps the notion of living in an African nation seems exciting. Romantic. Inspiring. In all there is to love here, perhaps there are moments in time that embody all of these lofty adjectives. But it is also so very ordinary. I get up and drive to the office still half asleep. Drink tea and eat snacks as I work. Go home, make dinner, sleep and do it all over again. And yet in the middle of all those ordinary moments there is somehow something extraordinary if I will remind myself to see it. There is a young girl with a name I know, who carries a yellow jug of water. People like her are written right in the middle of my story and somehow make it extraordinary. They are all around me, overcoming adversity, inspiring me, and reminding me the meaning of contentment. Of what it means to be still in the middle of this crazy world. These moments written right into the middle of all that is ordinary are what I hold onto. In the middle of all these hard and holy things, I must remind myself of this. There was this one time I stumbled my way up a mountain at 5,500 m. I thought I wouldn’t make it, and the girl behind me told me I needed to keep on going because difficult is not impossible. Somehow I made it to the top. I can do hard things. I can keep on running, because there is a girl with a yellow jug leading me onwards, reminding me to keep on going.




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