little fingers

I bent over to look at the little white worm that was being pulled from the root of a peanut plant. It was killing the crop. I could barely see it, the size of my pinky fingernail. It is hard to believe such a little thing can do so much damage.

The hot midday African sun beat down on my already lobster-red neck and shoulders, I swatted fly after fly, brushing off fuzzy little inchworms that continually wanted to crawl up my pant legs. Little boys in ragged shorts with big bellies and protruding belly buttons and huge grins with missing front teeth stared at me; their bare feet covered in the rich soil as they nervously tried to stand still. I was among our field staff and visiting farmers who are actively involved in WVs agricultural projects. It was the fifth site we’d seen this day.

Straining to understand the Portuguese and focus on the conversation being had around the uprooted plant, I felt a tiny little brush upon my elbow. I figured it was a dragonfly. I continued to try and focus. A few moments later, I again felt a light brush up against my skin, a tickle almost. I turned around to see what it was. My eyes met those of a small child, a baby, whose eyes got really big and then quickly gave me the most beautiful sheepish smile. Her pudgy little fingers grabbed my arm. The mother met my gaze and grinned.

The child’s touch, the slightest most honest touch, grabbed at my heart today. Today I saw more poverty, more real life, than I want to tell about; I wasn’t humbled, I didn’t feel guilt or pity. I came home and cried. Mozambique is a country on the recovery of a deep and debilitating war. It is a country in extreme poverty. The term “rural” is an understatement; this county is made of bush land. High, thick, African bush land. The animals are gone; they were hunted and poached during the war. The crops are scarce and struggling. The farmers, the women, and the children all work very hard back breaking labor for very little profit. (Have you ever seen a peanut plant and how many of them you need to harvest a handful of peanuts? Many.) They struggle to have food to eat. Water is scarce; clean water is hard to find. Bellies are protruded and many lie ill on straw mats sick and dying of horrible disease. This land is beautiful from the outside - lush green bush, rock formations popping up throughout the landscape between fields of maize and cotton and peanut fields. Fluffy white clouds above in a bright blue sky. However, inside this country, where the people are, is a different reality.

This face of poverty is not necessarily new to me. But to walk within the thick of the bush and find myself meeting the faces of families catching shade beneath their mud and straw hut homes, to crouch down in the soil of their fields and point out the worms that are eating their crops, stripping them of any small amount of income to buy food, to feel the soft little fingers of a curious baby reaching out to touch me from behind – it broke my heart today. We all live with a different perspective, a choice to decide how we interpret the things that we see, what we do with our feelings, our thoughts, our beliefs, the things we share with each other and the things we keep to ourselves. I wish I could forget this feeling I had today. Leave it here in the thick African bush up in the middle of an isolated province in poverty stricken Mozambique. I really wish I could. My life would be easier to live if I could walk away. But those little fingers that reached out to me in what most likely was curiosity of my white skin, those little fingers touched me today. They brought me into the world I would right now so desperately like to leave behind and not be responsible to know of. It was the little fingers that turned me from my meeting and examining practical ways to meet the families’ needs to the eyes of the individuals I stood amongst. My attention was turned away from the problem and focused for a few moments on the people. Not on their needs and what it would take to feed them, to provide clean water, to teach them ways in which they could progress beyond the low yielding peanut crops and mud huts; but focus on the individuals I was standing next to, who had touched me and brought me into their world. I was at a loss of what to say, of how to react, so I didn’t. I smiled and turned my attention back to the meeting. And then I came home and cried.

I don’t need to wonder how such a tiny little worm can infect an entire crop; it only took a few tiny little fingers to touch me.