Clouds

Today is a Friday. Fridays are normally good days. Today feels different. It feels sad. A bit gloomy. A bit like anything could happen at any second that could just make me break down and cry. But it’s more than that. It isn’t really tears that need to be shed. It is more that some thought and reflection needs attention. Some prayers need to be whispered.

A close friend’s grandmother is in the hospital. What feels worse somehow is the suffering of her children and grandchildren…the pain in their voice and in their eyes. and yet the love expressed through their grief is encouraging and real.
Another close friend…her mother is sick. Not doing too well.
It’s more the confusion, the complete inability to understand, to comprehend…than a plaguing sadness.
Or is it?
And then it is hot. So hot outside. Not hot like laying on the beach and needing an ice cold refreshment and a soft breeze blowing through the palm trees hot. Hot as in trapped. Hot as in you feel so insignificant, so small; and it is difficult to take a deep breath. It isn’t the humidity. There is none. It has not yet rained. Those who rely on farming here—most of the population—are waiting. Waiting for God to provide rain for their fields. Waiting for a guarantee that they will be able to feed their children next year. Christmas. Yeah. It is a day on the calendar. A day of celebration within the church building. And that is it. Simple.
Walking down through town, I feel like I am in a daze. The same path I have walked 2-3 times a day for over 4 months…but today is different. Today I could only think of all the sadness and stillness around me. The boys asleep in the shade under a tree. Not because they are lazy, or even particularly sleepy, but because there is no job. Nothing to do. A man with no fingers and no toes begs for money in the palms—what is left—of his hands. Meanwhile he sits in the sun, leaning against a street sign with his eyes closed due to the bright sun. Mothers carrying their babies on their backs and 12 pineapples on their head, just hoping that they can sell at least 3. The thirty-something year old man with 4 pairs of shoes for sale. He hopes to earn enough money to pay for his bus fare to return to his home village to visit his family. The young boy skipping to school hasn’t eaten in two days. But today is the last day of school for summer break so he is happy. I think. One wonders what he will do when he doesn’t go to school. Who knows if he will return to school in January. Maybe his family will need his help on the farm, or selling nuts, or begging.
Music is playing from some taxi down below. A café across the street plays a different radio station. The music is happy, cheerful, but it feels fake; staged somehow. Distant.
Another child. HIV+. 12 years old. Both parents already dead.
It is Friday. Huge numbers of men and women walk towards the mosque. Time for prayers. What will be prayed for today? What personal prayers will be spoken silently under the sound of the familiar recitations and repeated words?

It seems that the sky is overcast now. Perhaps there is some hope for rain.
Or maybe it’s just a cloud that has come to shade us for awhile. To block out the intense heat for a few short moments. To give us a breath of cool air.
But soon it will move on to another town, another place. And we will be enveloped in hot air again. With a feeling of emptiness…just waiting to be filled.