Dusty South African Road

Standing alongside that dusty South African road, I couldn’t get the children out of my mind. I was overwhelmed by a desire to do something. I was halfway done building my imaginary school before reality set in. If only it were that easy! All I could think to do was to give them something useful. Suddenly five little boys came charging out of a dense patch of vegetation; I recognized them as the same kids I’d bought jewelry from the day before. Bursting into smiles as they sprinted over, they were ragged and smelled like a couple days’ worth of playing in the sun. They were also some of the most polite children I’d ever seen. There was no pushing or shoving, and not one of the boys scarfed down what I handed to him. The littlest one with the runny nose hovered at the back, so shy he could barely look at me. But God, when I put that shiny wrapped chocolate in his cupped hands his brown eyes bulged with wild excitement as though he could hardly believe his luck. I thought of a beautiful letter my grandfather had written home while he was in the Navy and visited a Chinese orphanage, in which he described the delight of the children seeing soap bubbles for the first time. At Christmas, we sat in my grandmother’s living room and listened to my darling aunt reading that letter aloud. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when she finished. Now I had to swallow hard, again, months later and on the other side of the world. My gesture was insignificant and has already been long digested, but as I walked home I couldn’t help feeling as though what transpired that afternoon was holier than every hour I’d spent in church on countless other Sundays. What I did will have no effect whatever on the lives of those children. The ones who will contract HIV and die young will do so anyway. The ones who will make it to school, find good jobs and live to be old and happy (I pray that it is all of them) will also do so anyway. I only hope that I made their afternoon a little brighter.