He really just came by to pick
up a pair of shoes for his wife, it should have only been a two minuet trip to
our house, but hours later as we all walked out he was hopefully filled with
much more.
9 am
Saturday morning a knock came at our door; I opened it cautiously to find a
strange man standing in the hallway.
“I’ve come to pick stuff up,” he said.
I looked at him rather blankly and holding the door only slightly
ajar. “Your friend Hannah has stuff for
my wife,” he tried again. I still didn’t
budge or open the door any wider. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I
said apologetically as I did a very uncultured thing and closed the door on his
face.
An hour
later while I was out at the store buying milk the same guy came up to me “have
you heard from Hannah yet? I really need
to get that stuff before I leave this afternoon.”
“Hannah is
at school taking her final exam. You
need to talk to her first,” I said firmly.
“What’s
your home phone number?”
“I don’t
know” I shrugged as I marched past him.
Before I
made it back home he had once again accosted me on the street, entreating me
with basically the same plea to get stuff from my house. Before leaving for school in the morning my
roommate had not mentioned that a man might come by to pick something up. I wasn’t about to just let him go through her
stuff and take whatever he wanted. He
tried once or twice more that afternoon to come by and knock on our door. After a while we just started to ignore his
knocking.
In the
evening my roommate Hannah returned. I
asked her if she knew who this guy was or what he was looking for. “Oh yeah” she said almost as an afterthought
“I left some stuff here for his wife… You know the women I introduced you to
the other day whose baby was in the hospital.”
The sentence was barely out of her mouth when once again the now
familiar knock sounded on the door.
“That’s likely him,” I said getting up from the chair and this time
going to open the door wide.
“Hannah is
home” I said ushering him into our living room and encouraging him to sit
down. “She just told me to expect you,
sorry about the confusion earlier”. I started
to rush about and get tea on the table for our guests. Before he had time to drink half of his first
bowel of tea my roommate had returned with our ‘take-out’ food (sounds fancier
than what the plastic bag filled with a big plate of chicken really is). “Please stay for dinner, there is enough for
everyone” we encouraged him.
We asked
politely after his wife and how their son’s doctor’s appointment had gone. We learned that the doctor had given them
very little hope that their son would ever be able to function normally… the
baby is already a year old but can’t really support his own head. You could hear the sadness and hopelessness
in this father’s voice. He and his wife
had made the more than twenty four hour journey
from their small farming village up to the big city so that their son
could get some of the best medical care this province has to offer. They had pinned all their hopes on the fact
that the medical university hospital would have some treatment… and now they
were heading back deflated. They were
heading back having spend a lot of the families money on tickets to get here,
hotel and food for two week while they were here and of course hospital bills. He felt like he had nothing to show for it,
their baby was equally sick as when they arrived.
We didn’t
have much to offer, but tried to encourage him as best as we could. Men in this culture don’t often sit and
patiently listen to unmarried women like myself. But his heart was so empty, so broken and he
so needed to hear someone cheer him up that he sat there eating and listening
for a long time. After a while he said
“please let’s all go out and get something to drink”. We were unsure if he just wanted an excuse to
leave or if he really did want us all to go with him. Before leaving he picked up a pair of shoes
from Hannah for his wife and we all headed out the door. He kept thanking us for our encouragement and
even told us that if we were ever in his small town we had to come to their
house for dinner. We exchanged numbers
and promised to call if we were ever in his area. As we walked by a convenient store he asked us
all to wait just a second as he ran inside.
Five minutes later he came out proudly carrying an armful of supper
sweet “Redbull” energy knock off drinks.
“This is a very good beverage” he says graciously as he handed each one
of us a bottle.
As he
extended it towards me I had two simultaneous reaction; the first being “Oh, I
hate this stuff,” followed quickly by “This stuff is pretty expensive, a guy
from a poor farming village like his doesn’t have enough money to be wasting it
all on buying us drinks.” I tried to
refuse, but he pushes it back in our hand and used the traditional “It might be
small, but this gift is from my heart” line.
Those words have become so common place here that sometimes they start
to sound empty to me… but I could tell this man really meant it. He had nothing to give, his family’s home was
far away, they were leaving the next day, but he wanted to say thank you. I thought about telling him to keep the energy
drink and enjoy it on the bus ride home. I realized had a choice, I could continue to refuse his offer, knowing
it was more than he could really afford to give, or I could humbly accept that
this man was just trying to find a way to say “thank you”. Sometimes it is hard to be humble enough to
let someone else show you love and care.
1 comment:
Thank you for sharing this sweet story.
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