Bethany couldn’t help but think that maybe someday Jesus would thank this woman for providing him with a towel.
A small stool, a basin of water, and a bristle brush were placed at the entrance to each shower room.
“I need someone who is willing to wash feet!” Sarah called out.
A couple of the girls gave each other curious looks and then raised their hands. Several guys followed suit.
“After the kids change into a towel and put their dirty clothes in a bag, they will come here for a foot washing,” Sarah instructed. “Make sure to use the scrubber. Some of these kids have feet that are thick with dirt.”
The girls nodded.
“When their feet are clean, you can have them get in line for a shower. One of Eddie’s staff will handle the rest.”
The shower consisted of a large metal wash tub with a curtain on a circular plastic pipe base. The shower water came from a generator-powered pump placed in a five-gallon container of warm water.
The shower device was a simple sprayer, like one would find on a kitchen sink, controlled by a staff member who was experienced at rationing just enough water for each child.
Bethany couldn’t help thinking that the five-minute showers they were allowed at the dorm would be a luxury here. And the long hot showers taken at home would be like going to heaven.
“See if you can sort these clothes out into piles of large, medium, and small,” Sarah said, leading Bethany to the clothing table. “When a little girl comes to the table, let her pick out clothes that she thinks will fit and take her to the changing room. She will have her old clothes in a bag so make sure she goes home with them too.”
Bethany blinked, trying to take in all that Sarah had quickly rattled off.
“And don’t worry. We’ll get you some help as soon as everything settles down a little. We have lots and lots of kids who need baths!”
As soon as the crew finished loading supplies into the makeshift bathhouses, kids started moving through the process as if it were a well-oiled machine.
Malia, who had pulled uku duty, carefully inspected the head of each girl for the small white eggs clinging to hair follicles that are the telltale sign of head lice. (She had pulled her own long hair up into a twist on top of her head…just to be safe.)
Children who had lice were pulled out of line and taken to a table where their hair was washed with a powerful anti-lice shampoo. They were told to sit on a bench for fifteen minutes before being allowed back in line.
Inside the bathhouse, the foot-scrubbing girls were astonished at the amount of thick grime that worked its way into the feet of the children from standing in the refuse. None had socks, they told Bethany, and their shoes had been reduced to scraps.
Soon, the kids were coming through the line so quickly that Bethany did not have much chance to even try to talk to them. Occasionally she would ask a name, and every once in a while a small child would innocently point to the knotted sleeve of Bethany’s arm and say something in Spanish. Bethany guessed it was a question about her arm.
Bethany would point to her missing arm and say “Tiburon” while watching the little eyes open in surprise.
Sometimes a child would come with a message from a worker printed in black felt pen on her hand. It might read: Needs shoes, which was a signal for Bethany that this particular girl’s shoes were so bad that replacements needed to be found.
A large box of used children’s shoes under the clothing table served as the shoe store.
“We have no socks!” Bethany called out when trying to find some to go with shoes she was giving to a little girl.
“We run out of socks quickly. People just don’t donate them much,” one of Eddie and Maggie’s staff members called back to her. Bethany felt like crying.
“Okay, I guess you go sockless, young lady,” she said softly to a pretty but uncomprehending girl of around seven.
“Your relief is here! Go take a break,” Jenna announced as the little girl took off out the door with her new shoes.
Bethany went over the routine with Jenna and then stepped outside for a breath of fresh air—as fresh as it could be at a dump, she thought.
Just past the bathhouse, several girls from her group had set up an impromptu beauty salon and were busy painting the nails of giggling, happy little girls and combing out their thick black hair, which they decorated with ribbon and clips.
The roar of the trash trucks in the distance mixed with the squawking seagulls and the laughter and babbling of children. These sounds enveloped Bethany as she walked along, and she found herself smiling. She had done a lot of things in her fifteen years. Many of them seemed thrilling or important, but as she breathed in the tainted air and surveyed the makeshift bathhouse and the damp, happy children, she thought that just maybe what she had been a part of today was far more important then anything she had ever accomplished.
It felt right and good. And for the little child that no longer slept in filthy clothes, ate with blackened hands, or itched from ukus, she knew it made a difference—a real difference.
She just wished—
“Wanna see the ‘town’ Bethany?” Eddie asked, startling her from her thoughts.
Bethany bit her lip and looked behind her at the beehive of activity at the bathhouse.
“Don’t worry,” Eddie said with a smile. “There are plenty of workers today! A lot of the time we give baths with just our own workers. Come on, I’ll show you around. Sarah said she wanted to come too.”
Eddie signaled Sarah, and she joined the pair as they walked over the hard-packed road imbedded with trash.
Crowded together on the edge of the landfill were dozens of small shacks. Some had tin roofs; some had a mixture of tar paper and blue tarp.
A modest amount of electricity had been illicitly rigged from a nearby power line by a dangerous but ingenious system of extension cords.
“These people make their living by digging through the trash for aluminum cans, bottles, or anything they can sell,” Eddie explained as they walked. “They follow the dump around. When this one fills up, they will all move to the new dump site.”
“Why do the children work? Shouldn’t they be in school?”
“Well, they should be in school, but it’s complicated here. Going to school in Mexico involves some expenses, and these people can’t afford much. In addition, the children are needed to help with the scavenging. Going to school would mean not enough money coming in to survive. It’s a tough, cruel world here.”
Eyes followed the trio as they slowly walked through the maze of shanties. Many times Eddie, who was loved and known in this slum, stopped to talk to someone along the way. Each time he stopped, Bethany had the strangest feeling someone was watching her.
“It seems news travels fast, Bethany. I’ve had to tell the short version of the shark attack three or four times now,” Eddie laughed.
A small boy of about five darted between two homes and into their path, kicking the sad ragged remains of a soccer ball.
Bethany, who had played soccer seriously as a young girl, immediately jumped into action, deftly stealing the ball away from the little boy.
The boy laughed delightedly as he went after his ball. And it wasn’t until he turned around that Bethany realized who he was.
“Eduardo!” she said happily, and he smiled and kicked the ball around her with the precision of a surgeon.
Bethany’s soccer skills were somewhat rusty, and she did all she could to get and keep control of the ball. But every time she came in contact with the ball, the little scrapper joyously attacked as if he were in a national tournament.
Eddie watched the pair laughing and sparing along the dusty trash-strewn road.
“This kid is pretty good!” Bethany exclaimed with a shout to Eddie and Sarah.
Finally Eduardo stole the ball from Bethany and dribbled it to a hole in a pallet fence that served as his makeshift goal.
He grinned broadly as he kicked the ball
in for a point.
“Little rascal,” Bethany laughed.
Eddie waved the boy over and acted as interpreter for Bethany.
“He says he is five, and he lives here with his mother, four brothers, and a sister. He usually has to work in the dump, but his mother said he could have the day off—to stay clean. He likes to play football (which means soccer in Mexico) and wants to be on the national team someday,” Eddie translated.
“Wow! Such ambition from such a young kid!” Sarah said, smiling down at the boy warmly.
“If he keeps playing like he did with me, he might make it,” Bethany grinned.
Eduardo said something that caused Eddie to croak out, “Como?”
Eddie listened to Eduardo repeat what he said. Then Eddie translated for Bethany. “He says he heard you speak about God at the orphanage,” Eddie said with a shake of his head. “He believes you will help him see the face of God.”
“But I never said anything like—“ Bethany felt Eduardo grab on to the edge of her sweatshirt.
“I think you have a fan,” Sarah observed.
“I think I’m Eduardo’s fan,” Bethany replied, trying her best to blink back the tears that had formed in her eyes.
For the rest of the day, Bethany and Eduardo were inseparable. They played games of tag, played hopscotch in a course scratched out in the dirt, and ate snacks together from Bethany’s backpack.
By mid-afternoon the last child had been bathed, and the team was busy dismantling the portable bathhouse and loading empty water containers into vehicles. Bethany strolled back to the slum with Eduardo and a few other children who had gathered around the tall blonde girl who was having so much fun with their friend.
As they walked, Eduardo grabbed Bethany’s sleeve and pulled her toward one of the small houses with a blue tarp roof held in place by bricks and flat rocks.
“Mi casa,” Eduardo said with a grin as he started pulling her toward the doorway.
Bethany wanted to stay outside the home, but Eduardo was having none of it.
As she stepped inside, she realized the home was even smaller than she had first imagined. It had only one window. Three sagging cots were pressed against the corner, and a small table with an old TV set was against the wall. Bethany noticed that the wires from the TV were connected to a car battery. A couple of beat-up chairs were wedged against the table, and next to it was a kerosene camp stove on a small stand with a few pots and pans underneath. The floor was merely layer upon layer of mismatched carpet laid on the bare ground.
A small, thick-waisted young woman, who Bethany took to be Eduardo’s mother, was sitting on the edge of a cot when the pair entered, and she flushed with embarrassment. She ran to meet Bethany while saying something that sounded like a scold to the young boy.
Bethany, for her part, felt out of place standing there. She quickly introduced herself and then edged back toward the door.
She slipped outside and took a deep breath. It had only been a glimpse, but what she had seen shocked her more than anything she had witnessed in all of her travels.
Then the shock quickly melted into compassion as Eduardo appeared again with his pathetic-looking soccer ball in hand. He flashed a grin that persuaded Bethany to play another round with him.
They played on the plain of the dusty, seagullinfested landfill until Sarah called that they were getting ready to leave the site.
Bethany ran toward the caravan with Eduardo close at her heels. As the rest of her team wearily climbed into the vans, Bethany bent down and gave the boy a hug, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks as she told him good-bye.
Eduardo smiled, patted her cheek, and said something to her in Spanish.
“He says he knows he will see you again,” Eddie translated with a sad smile that said that it wasn’t likely to happen.
She glanced back at Eduardo, waved, and hurried into the van before the little boy could notice how upset she was—or see the lone tear that had escaped down her cheek. She would’ve given anything to stay a little longer—to feel like she had helped him more.
Bethany sniffed loudly as she plopped onto the seat next to Kai. “I think I’m getting a cold or something,” she said, not looking at him.
“Must be catching,” Kai whispered as he motioned to the seats behind them.
Bethany glanced back.
Holly, Malia, Jenna, and Monica were all sniffling as they looked out their windows at the mob of kids that congregated around the van. It was like the whole Hanalei girl’s surf team had suddenly developed allergies…to other’s suffering.
An hour later, the grime of tramping around the dump with Eduardo had been scrubbed away, but the shower had done nothing about easing her troubled heart. Bethany sighed and sank down on one of the couches in the meeting room and waited for the other girls to finish their showers.
“Ready for another feast at the taco stand?” Eddie asked, rubbing his hands together as he entered the room.
Bethany shrugged. “I guess I don’t have much of an appetite tonight.” She sighed again. “Isn’t there some way we can help those people out—I mean help them more?”
“You did more today than you realize,” Maggie said with an understanding smile as she entered the room.
“Yeah, well it didn’t feel like enough,” Bethany said as Maggie sat down beside her.
“We are not going to end poverty,” Eddie said soberly. “Even Jesus pointed out that ‘the poor you will have with you always.’ But we can make a difference—one person at a time.”
“Have you ever heard the story of the starfish?” Maggie asked.
Bethany shook her head no.
Maggie smiled. “Imagine a huge tide coming in, washing up thousands of starfish all along the beach. When the tide goes out, thousands of starfish are left stranded. We all know what will happen once the sun comes up, right?”
“They’ll dry up and die,” Bethany replied slowly, trying to figure out where Maggie was going with the story.
“So, this man decides to take a stroll on the beach and is startled to find thousands of starfish lying about everywhere. Then he notices a young boy picking them up one by one and hurling them with all his might back into the ocean.
“The man watches the boy for a short time before he finally decides to approach him, saying, ‘Son, you might as well give up. It’s no use. There are just too many starfish. What you are trying to do makes no difference.’
“The young boy, holding a starfish in his hand, looks up at the man and then flings the starfish out into the water and says, ‘Well, it made a difference to that one!’ “
Bethany grinned for the first time in hours.
“We can’t change the problems of the whole world,” Eddie said gently, “but we can help change someone’s world. If tonight a child goes to bed without hunger, without the itch of bugs, or with clean clothes, we have done something worthwhile.”
“Can I see Eduardo again?” Bethany asked suddenly.
Eddie frowned. “We aren’t scheduled to go back to the homes at the dump again for another month.”
“My heart is telling me to buy Eduardo a new soccer ball—just something to let him know I believe in him,” Bethany said shyly. When she looked up, she saw Eddie and Maggie looking at each other.
“Well…, “ Eddie said with a slow smile spreading across his face. “Maybe we could swing by for a minute or two tomorrow.”
“Really? Thank you so much!” Bethany said excitedly. Then she thought for a moment and added, “Uh, can you tell me where I can buy a soccer ball around here?”
Eddie and Maggie smiled and hugged Bethany.
“How about this: after dinner, Maggie and I will take all of you to downtown Tijuana. You can buy a soccer ball at Woolworth’s…and watch everyone get suckered by the guys selling tourist stuff.”
“Cool!” Bethany laughed.
After a hearty meal at the taco stand, the caravan wove through the packed str
eets of the tourist zone. As soon as they were parked, Sarah called them together.
“Listen up, guys, Eddie has some ground rules before you take off!”
“You have two hours to shop around. Remember, in this zone the first price is never the real price—unless you are a sucker.” Everyone laughed and Eddie grinned. “Bargaining is part of the game here.
“Also, it’s going to be impossible to keep track of all of you in the maze of shops and alleyways, so here is the deal: be back here in two hours. I will give you five minutes of grace time, and then we’re leaving. If you’re late, you’ll just have to take a taxi back to the dorm.” He then gave each student a business card with the address in Spanish.
“That’s hard-core,” Holly whispered to Bethany. “Do you think he would actually leave us here?”
“Aw, I don’t think so…, “ Bethany said, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. “But we better watch the time just in case.”
The teens swarmed into the dens of the vendors selling everything from sombreros to Mexican jumping beans, while Bethany dragged Holly, Malia, Jenna, and Monica with her to buy Eduardo’s soccer ball.
“They won’t bargain for things in a department store,” Monica lamented.
“Has that ever stopped you before?” Jenna asked, and Monica stuck her tongue out at her.
“Don’t worry, Monica, you’ll have your chance,” Bethany laughed. And true to her word they were back outside in a flash, plunging into the neighboring small shops and kiosks with all of the wide-eyed wonder of tourists.
“Hey, pretty girls, come on inside. I got what you need; take a look!” shouted one of the vendors as they walked by.
“Cheaper than Kmart!” shouted another.
“What about Wal-Mart?” Bethany whispered, and Holly laughed.
Most shops had similar wares: blankets, T-shirts, black velvet paintings, piñatas, jewelry, and colorful serapes.
The girls quickly got into “buy mode,” and each gave bargaining a try. It soon became apparent that Holly was the hardened deal-maker of the bunch, so each girl—when she saw something she thought she might be interested in—went to Holly and asked her to do the honors of bargaining for it.
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