Sharpie. Stat.

As a child I enjoyed scouring the pages of National Geographic for foreign stories and exotic photographs of plants and natives.  My mother kept the latter in check, beating me to the magazines with a Sharpie marker.  Dutifully, she drew clothes atop every nude tribal person.  (Sometimes the outfits were delightfully intricate, leading me to wonder how much of the act was ever about me, and how much was about some needed artistic outlet of hers.)  At the time I was a bit miffed but looking back I appreciate the gesture and have since learned that mine was not the only Sharpie-wielding momma.

This weekend I realized how accustomed I had become to those Sharpie outfits.

My boss allowed me to accompany him to a village near our neighborhood.  He visits on Sunday afternoons, giving candy to children and taking pictures of families.  It’s a ministry of his.  The following weekend he returns with printed pictures to distribute.  The families love it!  Those who recognize him come running into the street when they see him approaching.  Girls don their best dresses, boys grab their toys, and mothers thrust their youngsters out for us to hold…

naked.

And we’re not talking infants.  I hadn’t thought of my mother’s Sharpie patrol in a good while, but when suddenly face to face with naked strangers, it was all I could think about.  I wanted a Sharpie, and I wanted it bad.  Quickly I realized that such a notion was out of the question.

I can’t cover anything up out here.  There’s no sugar coating the toddler tied to an iron fence a block from my office,

 no wishing away the putrid trash through which stray animals dig for scraps,

 

and most certainly no covering up the naked children in village streets.  Some of the sights are unpalatable only to a Western taste.  Others, though, are simply inhumane.  Either way I am realizing how much joy the poorest of the poor here take in simple things:

toy telephones,

clean clothes,

level roads,

makeshift capes,

baths,

foreign men with big cameras and even bigger hearts, 

or an opportunity to shake hands and practice a bit of English over a piece of toffee.

 (These children were so diplomatic!)

Here's to them.