the sound of me singin' with you...

What I have seen today, what I have been through, lived, connected with….you cannot understand. It doesn’t matter how many years I’ve studied English to hone the way in which I can wield my words, it doesn’t matter how fancy a camera I own to capture the moment. I cannot express this in any way that will come near what it is like.

I visited the slums I will be documenting today. I am only allowed two days in them (one today and one tomorrow) and I am completely unimpressed with that, because they are amazing and captivating. If I could, I would go everyday to sit with them and listen and be a part of their community. And the strangest thing is that though I don’t speak the language AT ALL and though I had the project managers along to ‘translate’, when the people would introduce themselves and tell me their jobs in the groups they’re in, I could understand…not in a ‘God gave me the gift of tongues’ kind of understand…but in a way deeper than language. It could be that I’m picking up more Bangla, or perhaps I’m learning more and more that the need to speak it is insignificant.

The kids trailed me all down the alleys and grabbed at my hands and clothes and camera bag, not as though they wanted to steal it, but in a way that felt welcoming. You often hear of these swarms of kids touching you and overwhelming you as a foreigner and its often explained away by the fact that you are different and they want to touch white skin or blonde hair, etc. But after today, I disagree…and when I think of it, it wasn’t this way in Honduras either…rather than them wanting to take something from me when they touch me, I feel as though when the kids touched my hands and arms it was as though they were giving a piece of themselves to me, a deeper kind of welcoming to the only community they have ever known.

I could tell the details of the ‘houses’ and living areas in these slums, but such descriptions will fall embarrassingly short, so instead I will simply say that the warmest welcome I have received yet in this country was from the people who live in these places. Strangely enough, to them I did not feel like an elite, but rather a member – even for the briefiest period of time – a member of their community, their struggles, their passion and hope.

I’ve been reading a bit of D.H. Lawrence out here and the first lines of Lady Chatterly’s Lover came to me today as I met these people full of hope and pain and energy:

“Our is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataciysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.” – D.H. Lawrence from Lady Chatterly’s Lover