Twister

“Mano derecha…rojo.” (“Right hand…red.”) “Pie izquierda…verde.” (“Left foot…green.”) This is the sound of my girls calling out the directions for the game Twister. A rubber mat with four colors is spread out on on the floor and a designated spinner calls out which body limb needs to touch which color on the mat, twisting players in knots. Quality entertainment, especially after I call for bedtime.

Twisting

“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not break.”

Whether it’s the fun of Valentine’s Day, planning and prepping for a whole wedding, moving between three different houses in a week, becoming a house parent at the drop of a hat, or having all the water go out on campus, nobody could be a student missionary without flexibility. And nobody can play Twister without flexibility (or color vision).

Rojo ❤️

Red is the color of love. The day of love was the perfect excuse to go all out in celebration for these girls. They went crazy over the food-colored baked oats and floral tea for breakfast, oohed and ahhed over banners, name cards, and paper chain decór, practically lost it when I introduced glitter glue to the cards they made for someone whose name they drew, went crazy baking our very own ornaments solely for fun, and got wholesomely excited to pull pink sticky notes off the walls with verses about how much God loves them. They need to be loved big sometimes.

Red is the color of the motos that the guys drove between campus and their new home down the road a few kilometers. Speaking of twisting the flexible, the guys were informed a couple weeks ago that they would be moving off campus to live in Melissa’s dad’s house to make room for a family to move in here. Packing up everything from the musty mattress we’d use on the floor for movie nights to the American flag hung proudly from their window, they left. Five days later, they moved back in a jolt, pronounced house parents of Los Guerreros! How is it that we went from one SM house parent to six in a matter of weeks?? Regardless of the wild story behind why the former Guerrero parents left, seeing and hearing our Gringos in guerrero boot camp is the best!

Red is also the color of blood, which is never ideal to see as a mom. Nicol, curious yet oblivious as ever, was standing in front of my tall metal fan as I folded my laundry in my room. Suddenly th-th-th-th-thunk. Spinning around to look at me, she looked down at the bright red droplet forming on her middle finger and started to sob with eyes full of sheer terror. We walked semi-calmly to the bathroom sink and rinsed a fountain of blood down the drain before holding pressure on it with toilet paper. She was more scared than hurt and laid down on Nirza’s bed dramatically. “Breathe in deep and let it out,” I said, which started the funniest series of deeeeep exhalations and forceful exhalations, eyes squinted closed against tears. “My finger is going boom boom boom,” she said, convinced it was about to fall clean off. “Oh, that’s your heart; it’s working to make it better!” I may have stretched the truth, but she was in awe that somehow her heart migrated to her wound. Casi así. The best part of the entire incident is that now she will come into my room, stare down my fan, and say, “¡MALA!” (“BAD!”) And when Nirza was touching the stand once, “Don’t touch the fan! We don’t touch the fan, right, Teacher?”

Red is the color of one of the stripes of the Micrurus lemniscatus, the South American coral snake. Until two weeks ago, I kinda blew off the idea that life here could be dangerous, that I could, I don’t know, step on a snake and die?! But the night the guys moved to Dave’s, the girl SMs had to go for a night walk to visit and observe. And in so doing, said species of snake slithered across the road in our path. Oh shoot, those exist. Here. And we have zero anti-venom. And town is too far away if we didn’t have a car immediately. My conclusion is that I’m not invincibly immortal. And that I will be using a flashlight at night.

Red is also the color of a flashing low-battery light on my poor over-used and under-charged speaker, the color of the 100 boliviano bill that somehow can be spent too fast, the color of my finger after I painted food coloring hearts on Valentines cookies, the color of the blood-filled mosquito so fat that it popped all over my hammock when I poked it, the color between the toes of all my girls with athlete’s foot, the color of all the new plates and utensils of Los Guerreros, the color of Sarita’s bite-covered face when she slept one night without a mosquitero, the most common color of Toritos in town, the color of the first stripe of the Bolivian flag (representing the blood shed for independence), the color of everyone’s pinkeye recently, and the flame as my oily arepa pan lit on fire one morning.

Mano derecha…rojo.

Azul 💙

Calm, cool, and collected cannot be used as Familia Feliz adjectives very often. While it may not be too calm even yet, the weather recently had been shockingly, refreshingly, soul-healingly cool. “Tonight is gloriously cold,” I journaled, “as in I am finally using the fuzzy blanket that usually sits rolled up and miserably shoved in the far corner of my mosquito net, taunting me with the idea that cool nights may actually exist.”

And calm and collected. Well, the words are relative, but Las Lilas have settled into a rhythm with all the new girls and with Esmeralda. And another thing that has changed is that Jhaslin, my little girl with Down’s, was taken home by her parents because of the havoc she was wreaking: fighting by day and touching girls in their sleep by night. I wish I could say I had success with her, that I was enough for her. But I can’t. I console myself saying we couldn’t sacrifice the other eleven for the care of one.

Zeinet is simultaneously the most chill and the least chill child I have in Las Lilas. For being a three-year-old who can self-entertain better than any other girl here, she suddenly becomes the most dependent person on campus when her sister returns from school, sticking to her like a shadow. The amount of tantrums (that include me holding her in one arm, screaming, kicking, and slapping my face, while doing something else like flipping pancakes with the other hand) is astounding. She has yet to grasp the concepts that A) crying over nothing means I’m going to hold you till you’re chill enough to go back with your sister B) you’re safe now and won’t ever be abandoned again. For every decibel increase while being held four inches from my face, I often send up a prayer that God heal her little broken heart. And please do it fast, amen.

Blue is also related to a feeling. Usually something like sadness. Like laying in a blue hammock after taking the kids to school and crying because you feel like a terrible parent who shouldn’t be representing your Jesus. It’s what happens when you disconnect from your Jesus and dwell on your impatience, relive your failures, recognize your fragility. Blue, after all, is the color of half the vessels in your heart; a heart pumps both oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, just like life will hand you the richest joys alongside the hardest moments. The sad moments will soon be refilled with joy while the other’s joy is used up, a continual, vital cycle of life.

But blue is the color of pure happiness for T. María (who I taught with last semester). Blue was the color of her wedding decor! Yes, led by Sierra’s incredible planning, the SMs made and arranged decorations, crafted bouquets, baked twelve pans of brownies, printed programs, and then sang for, prayed in, and photographed the program itself. Emilianne, Maddy and I took Sierra’s charcuterie board and set up a salon off campus to do the hair of the bride and her little bridesmaids. As Emilianne threaded María’s eyebrows and Maddy did her nails and makeup, I blow-dried her crazy long hair and watched her face in the mirror we hung. She looked so happy, so pampered, so feminine. Lacing up the back of her white gown, I could not have been happier for her. And I almost popped with joy for her and her family as they all marched out after sealing their vows with the kiss the pastor forgot to prompt (and Josemy got to announce). A happily ever after for five precious kids and a proud husband.

Blue is also the color of the new curtain door Maribel and I sewed for her bedroom, the color of my hammock that kids can’t stay out of, the sky when the blissful rain clouds blow away, the color of all plates and utensils at Los Leones, the color of the school uniform polos embroidered with our misspelled names, the painted inside of Los Guerreros, the color of the containers of hairbands I bought as rewards for completing behavior sticker charts, and the color of the kids’ lips when the temperature drops below 80 degrees.

Pie derecha…azul.

Amarillo 💛

Yellow is the color of a lot of the food in our diet here. It’s the color of the eight bunches of bananas hanging from hooks in my patio, which somehow disappear too fast while simultaneously never seeming to be ready to use. It’s cookies for supper and eggs for breakfast and rice for lunch. On special occasions, it’s empanadas.

Twisting empanadas closed is an art form that somehow just downloaded into my system after T. Abi left. Standing at my cooking table, Yamilé and Sarita asked to learn, and I proudly showed how to pinch and tuck around the edges of a potato-stuffed delicacy and then plop it in boiling oil. While the empanadas turned golden brown in the pan, Soledad and Yami asked, “How did you make the masa [dough]? ¡It’s excelente!” “Better than a store!” they proclaimed, which was a high compliment, since little Bolivian doñas make those.

Yellow was the color of my pumpkin pancakes Sunday. Pumpkin because I finally broke out my can of calabaza from my SM box. Pumpkin because it’s a great egg-replacer. Eggs needed to be replaced because there are none and have been none and seemed as if there would be none on campus indefinitely. There was an egg shortage here because there are no eggs for sale in town. Allegedly. Or maybe we just don’t have money for groceries. Probably.

Yellow was the color of every toilet on campus from Sunday evening to Monday afternoon. Yellow because we couldn’t flush. We couldn’t flush because there was no water, and not just in the toilets but in the sinks and the showers, too. There was no water anywhere on campus because of the fact that someone fried our only well pump with an electric shock and then it simply didn’t work. The sole source of water within Familia Feliz that night was one singular sink at the school bathroom, and that sink only provided drop at a time. Drip, drip, drip till an hour and half later I had 3/4 of a bucket of water. Then the sink went dry.

Yellow was also the color of the gutter water we showered in when it rained on Monday. My girls looked on incredulously as I soaped up under the runoff from my thatch house siding. Never have I been so glad for leaky gutters in my patio or a morning torrential downpour! We put out enough buckets, bowls, pots, and trash cans to have flooded a river with collected water. Or maybe just enough to bathe, do dishes, and flush toilets with. Regardless, God sent water to a place where a hundred people can’t live without it.

It was a miracle of God that Max could find a part in town to fix the pump! Genuinely, I was steeling myself to wait weeks for a new pump to be shipped from the States. But somehow there was a part in little Rurre to fix said Canadian import. So the yellow toilets and gutter showers were over the following afternoon. Praise God!

Yellow is also the color of the sand that has recently been coming out of the pipes with our water and settling into the bottom of my laundry bin as I’m washing. It’s built-in shower exfoliant, meal texture, and an excuse to continue filtering my drinking water.

Yellow is the color of friendship, like when Nicol and I twirled around my room belting out, “Más que una princesa, soy una estrella! Dios me llamó para brillar!” my favorite kids song we sing here in Las Lilas. I plopped her in my hammock and she shouted cosquillas as I tickle-warred her.

Yellow is the color of the outside of Las Lilas, the color of my hair (according to Nicol), the color of the ear drops I put in two girls’ ears for their infections, the color of arepas that I make weekly, the color of plantains and eight bunches of bananas in my kitchen, the blazing sun finally drying our laundry, bleach stains on said laundry, the favorite ají colorante for rice, the color of the flowering tree in front of Los Guerreros, the color of all of the flowers that my girls collected for sprinkling in the wedding, the firefly caught in my mosquito net tonight, the color of the middle stripe of the Bolivian flag (representing mineral resources), the chipping paint of my bedroom walls, the color of Patito bags — the all-powerful, scarily versatile powdered soap — and the color of my favorite copoazú fruit drink.

Mano izquierda…amarillo.

Verde 💚

Green is my favorite color, especially when it’s on mountains. I also love trees. And I love the green of our yard when it’s mixed with an ungodly amount of mud. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday last week was Carnaval, a party just to party before Lent. A “national free-for-all,” as Treson aptly described it. An excuse for bands of kids to carry around backpacks full of water balloons to throw at innocent passersby, for grown men to spray shaving cream in people’s faces, and for paint wars to break out in the middle of the day. And on campus, it’s the best excuse for a water war that you’ll ever see!

Green is the color of WhatsApp. Green messages with blue checkmarks is one of life’s little satisfactions, of being “read.” WhatsApp is the only messaging I use with my Bolivian phone number, so commonly used that businesses don’t have real numbers and have the WhatsApp symbol painted on their signs. WhatsApp is the dwelling place of the Familia Feliz groupchat, the SM groupchat, family chats and friend chats. It’s the source of messages from Hermano Juan calling for trash to be brought outside the houses, school and worship schedules from Zoe, and any news from home. It’s a guaranteed time I hear from half the SMs I live literal yards from but rarely see. WhatsApp: what an app!

Green is the color of literally everything belonging to the rainforest. From our Familia Feliz sign outside the gate, one can look up and down the carretera to see lush vegetation, from palm trees, vines, and flowering trees to tall grass, the skinniest of tall trees, and fruit trees. The amount of green is one of my very favorite things. And the best green thing: limes. Growing on trees just meters from my stove, I can walk over to pick the little things, perfectly sized for a salad dressing, limonada, or to add to baked goods.

Green is also the color I’ll go home to find in the States. I honestly hadn’t thought about American greenery, about being home, about my fifteen months of summer, or about much of anything besides my life here for a long time. But this week I had a slap in my obliviously-bliss face: my grandma went to the hospital with COVID complications. Something happening to my grandparents was the biggest fear I had coming here, and that fear was reawakened abruptly. Suddenly 3,640 miles seemed like the distance that it is. Suddenly I felt trapped, made to helplessly rely on messages to watch what was happening. Suddenly I was ready to be home. To see the green of my own grass, my own trees, and my own mountains.

Green is also the color of the new campus-shared bicycles that zoom around day in and day out, the color of the underbelly of a two-meter-long snake Zoe found in the school office, the color of one of two new trash bins at the school (miracle!), the color of Marianely’s T-shirt I gave her when she had none, the plates and utensils of La Casa de Arriba (volunteer girls living upstairs in the Hardings), the color of the mold growing on my laundry sink, the color of my bottle of tea tree oil I haven’t used for lice in a long while, the color of paint on our Lilas t-shirts that we so enthusiastically created multiple afternoons recently, the color of massive iguanas and leaf bugs, the only color of construction paper I have left, the inconvenient color of bananas whenever I think we should make muffins, the paint color of one wall per school classroom, the third color of the third stripe of the Bolivian flag (symbolizing the fertility of the land), the color of the too-tall grass Zoro weed-wacks, the color of the carnation stem water I considered conserving for cooking, the color of Soledad’s envy when someone else has the mayonnaise, and what I feel like standing next to any Bolivian: the Jolly Green Giant.

Pie izquierdo…verde.

Two Left Feet

Anyone who knows me knows I can’t dance. Anything more than twirling Eli around in her party dress or bouncing and swaying with Nicol and Abi on my hips and it’s over. I’ve learned that life is sometimes like a game of Twister — ordered here and there, bent and stretched in impossible ways — and other times like what I know of dancing The Twist (moving your hips and your other limbs follow) — letting your core mission lead where the rest of your life goes. Even if it’s all done with two left feet.

Love from the twisting,

Katie-Jane

🤍 Share the love