Space

When Rachel mentioned that we’d be camping at the youth retreat, I thought, “Simple… I got this down.” 

So, after arriving at the “camp,” we found ourselves standing with 55 other youth kids in front of a one room church a mile from the ocean, with two showers – one of which was outside next to the chicken coup. The bathroom shower floor had a sprinkling of dead roaches and lots of mosquitoes all waiting to eat me alive.  There’s no land phone.

I had to laugh at myself.

After spraying myself with four layers of Offskintastic bug spray, I attempted to fall asleep to the giggles and squeals of high school girls all the while afraid to move for fear that I’d wake up Christina sleeping on the pad next to me.  At 6 a.m. multiple roosters crowed and I awoke with mosquito bites all over my body – one of which has become so swollen that it is almost the size of my palm (so much for 1^st world bug spray in a 3^rd world country).

I don’t know why it never occurred to me that in the Third World, people don’t go camping and rent cabins or tents.  In fact, you can’t rent cabins in a Third World country.  Very poor people live in them and they’re called shacks. 

In fact, their idea of “camping” pushes my 1^st world boundaries of comfort, cleanliness but more so of space.  I like space. I need    s    p    a   c    e.  As an introvert, I need the emotional space to process.  It also gives me silence, as I deal with culture shock.  And, this has been hard to come by at a youth camp and especially in a country where everything including space is shared.

So, my prayer for Team Cuba, at this moment is for rest.  Christina has somehow managed to crash and is currently asleep on the bunk in back of me.  But, the rest of us are struggling.  A chicken has just run over Rachel, waking her up as she tries to nap.  Seth is at the moment attempting to write a sermon in a very noisy room filled with kids playing board games.  May we find the silence and space to reflect on the past few days … during the next much needed hours.


-Esther