Faces
It's definitely been a fat minute since I've written something. Burnout is a real problem during a student missionary year, and lately, the effects of being surrounded by so many kids for so long have taken their toll on me. However, I'm going home next week, so I'm trying to make the best of the time I have left here and spend as much time with the kids as possible! Although this environment can be very challenging, I've made some great relationships with the kids, and I really am going to miss them so much when I leave.
Anyways, here's a little glimpse into what's been going on here lately :)
I was sitting on one of the ledges outside the dorm rooms today. Right in front of me, kids were playing a game that was essentially "kick the soccer ball as hard as you can and try to hit someone with it." To my left, two girls were physically fighting, each grabbing fistfuls of the other's hair. A kid zoomed by with only one roller skate…using his barefooted foot to propel him forwards and the other foot to skate with. He was absolutely booking it because he was being chased by another kid trying to chuck a ball at him. In the distance, two little boys were almost violently swinging a baby by his arms…back and forth, not letting his feet touch the ground. I was trying to have a conversation with the girl on my left, but the girl on my right felt like it was her turn to have a conversation, so she was physically grabbing my chin and yanking my face in her direction. My feet were numb, and my legs hurt because of the girl that had been sitting in my lap for so long. I took a mental picture of my surroundings and then laughed a little because it hit me…I was immune to the chaos.
The scene above is a typical day here at Bangla Hope. When I first got here seven months ago, I was blown away by how crazy this place is. Staff members have little to no involvement with the kids, so imagine a campus with over 100 energetic kids running around unsupervised… that's Bangla Hope. The staff relies on the missionaries to babysit, break up fights, put on band-aids, and entertain…which is impractical considering how many kids there are. I clung tightly to my American lifestyle the first few weeks, even months I was here, and was so uptight about everything. I couldn't believe the things I had to tell these kids. "Mud belongs on the ground, not my face." "Wait, no, let's not paint half of my fingers with lime green and then the other half with neon pink." "Put the cake icing in your mouth, not my face please."
It would make sense if these kids were kindergartners…but many of the ones we were dealing with were high school teenagers. Then a miraculous thing happened…somewhere along the way; I just learned to let it go. You can't survive in this place unless, to a certain extent, you just let it go and go with the flow. If you fight the chaos, you will get mowed over and destroyed. The solution: organized chaos. Of course, there needs to be a line drawn in the sand and disciplinary actions used if necessary…but despite this, you can't completely stop the chaos. Often you just gotta say goodbye to your maturity and party it up with the crazy kids.
One of the kids' favorite activities is "put anything you can on the missionary's face." And by this, I mean paint, drawings, mud, food, and anything they can get their hands on. They think it's great. Even if you try your best to avoid your face getting smothered by something gross…eventually, it will happen. Below are some stories of recent facial designs that I've had the honor of displaying
COLORED POWDER: Recently we celebrated the Bangladesh Near Year, which falls on April 14. Unknown to me, one of the traditions here at Bangla Hope on their New Year is to throw colored powder at your friends' faces. This tradition finally became clear to me when one of the girls handed me pink powder on a piece of paper and whispered, "You're gonna need this." No sooner had she said that than a kid ran up to me and, without warning, wiped a huge smear of blue powder across my cheek. "RUN" another kid yelled, and then the war was on. I ran for my life as kids started chasing me across the field with different colors of powder in their hands. Finally, they caught me, and suddenly, there were tons of hands smearing powder all over my face, neck, and ears. I emerged looking like a colored alien. It was quite an impressive transformation honestly. Thankfully more of the kids shared their colors with me, so I had more ammo to use and was able to throw some powder at the kids. However, the missionaries were the prime targets, and by the end, our faces were absolutely covered with color. It was a lot of fun…until I tried to take the color off. As I walked back to my apartment with some of the kids, I asked if the color was washable. "Of course!" they all said. Haha, wrong. After scrubbing with a makeup remover wipe and washing my face, I still looked tragic. For some reason, it was just the pink color that wouldn't wash off, and now I looked like a pink alien instead of a rainbow one. I saw my whole future flash before me and pictured myself having to return to the US to live life with a pink face. Thankfully after a lot of scrubbing, the pink slowly came out, and I'm back to normal now :)
CAT FACE: The cat face look is a classic around here. For some reason, the kids are really into drawing cat faces on themselves and others, and it's very common to see a kid walking around with ears and whiskers on their faces. Surprisingly I think I've only had the cat look drawn on me once, but it was a 10/10 experience. And the artist who drew it drew one on herself, too, so we walked around like twins for the rest of the day.
NAIL POLISH GONE WRONG: The kids love nail polish. And it's not a gender-specific activity here, so both the girls and boys paint their nails. When my mom came, she brought lots of nail polish with her, so we had frequent nail painting parties. One night we were painting our nails with the older guys. I honestly don't know what happened, but we went from painting nails to painting faces (shocker). The kids had the three missionaries lined up (me, Katherine, and Joby), and each was taking turns painting designs on our faces. When they were finished, our faces were basically masterpieces. One of the guys decided that nail polish on their face wasn't enough, so he painted his teeth. Probably not the brightest decision, but his teeth were definitely colorful afterward.
CAKE ICING: I think I mentioned this in a previous blog post…but the kids really enjoy putting cake icing on each other's faces. Whenever there is an occasion that involves cake, you can count on icing being smothered all over your face. It's basically a weird tradition here. Sometimes when they serve cake, I make a run for it to my apartment before anyone can get icing on my face, but often I don't make it.
MUD: Katherine and I took some girls on a walk through the village last Sabbath. I came back from the walk covered in mud. This is not the first time I've come back to campus from a walk covered in mud though, and so the security guard was unphased by my appearance as he let me in the gate. Here's the backstory. It all started when, upon the girl's request, we diverted our walk from the road's path into the rice fields. When walking through the rice fields with any of the kids, there's about a 50% success rate for coming out unscathed. Raised mound paths through the fields allow individuals to walk through the different fields; however, these raised mound paths are narrow. And on both sides of the raised path, there are rice stalks soaking in water. It's always a balance game trying to navigate them. The paths are bumpy and have gaps, so occasionally, one will stop, and you'll have to jump to the next. This seems like an easy enough task, except that sometimes if I'm walking with particular kids, they make it their goal to make me trip and lose my balance. This is done by them "friendly" pushing me or, without warning, grabbing one of my hands, causing me to stumble. Usually, I'm aware of which kids are by me and watching their every movement in case they decide to spontaneously make me fall. However, on this particular walk, I was with the teenage girls, and I assumed they wouldn't dare try to push me in. Wrong. Everything was going well until I felt a little push from my back. I looked to see who it was and realized that one of the more rowdy teenage girls was behind me. Her name is Vonna. I inwardly sighed and told her I wasn't interested in falling in the mud, especially since I was wearing my Birkenstocks and didn't want them to get destroyed. We walked on for a bit with no problems, and then suddenly, she lost her self-control and, for no reason, just shoved me off the path. I caught myself, so I only got my shoes wet…, yet I was still angry since I had asked her not to. She was laughing, thinking this was hilarious. You see, the mature "take the higher ground" thing to do would have been to walk away. Unfortunately, I didn't go with this option and "jokingly" shoved her off the path as well. This caught her off guard, and she ended up face-planting into the water. She obviously wasn't too happy as she came up out of the muddy field. I knew there was no escaping her revenge, and the mostly friendly mud fight commenced. Before you know it, we were both balanced on the raised path, trying to knock each other into the rice fields. We both emerged from the fields laughing, absolutely covered in mud. We got lots of stares of astonishment from the villagers as we walked back to campus.
My many experiences with "stuff" on my face have gotten me thinking a lot about beauty lately. The longer I've been here, the more I've stopped caring about my appearance. I wake up each morning, put on one of my five outfits, brush my teeth, put my hair in either a ponytail or bun (sometimes not brushing it oopsies), and then that's it. It's a less than 10-minute experience. I was looking through pictures on my phone from my life back in the US and laughed at the drastic change in appearances between Sarah in the US and Sarah in Bangladesh. This whole time I've thought that once I get back to the US, then I can be my true self. I can have time to do my makeup, wear normal clothes, and do my hair. I think if only these kids could see the REAL me. But the other night, it hit me…I have the equation backwards. I've already been the real me, but it hasn't been in the States. I have been the rawest form of myself at this orphanage, surrounded by all these kids, forgetting about what I look like, walking around with cat drawings, marker, and paint on my face. There's nothing to hide behind…my mask has been taken down, and I'm left with my insecurities out in the open.
The word "beauty" holds a different meaning here in Bangladesh than in the United States. I watch all these teenage girls run around barefoot with unbrushed hair, hairy legs, and no makeup, and I think, wow, they are beautiful. They are strong. They are raw. That's beauty. Beauty in its simplest form is what's remaining when every artificial addition to your appearance is stripped away, and you are left with just you. And for me, it's taken being across the world hanging out with kids every day to realize this.
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