Ballad

Our last day of surgery. On the ride in to the hospital, I stare out the window taking in the view. I will never have a commute like this again.



The operations today are largely minor as we will be leaving tomorrow. It is a day for taking time to remember the sights and the patients and the people I am working with.



A woman who earlier in the week was here helping a family member, has returned to help volunteer with us. She has a wonderful way with people, and tells me she would like to be a nurse, but cannot afford to go to school. I think if I had the money I would pay for her education. I hope she will met a benefactor or that someone will take her under their wing and guide her along. I give her my blood pressure cuff and trauma shears at the end of the day.

I go out and buy a cold pepsi from the vendor across the street. We talk in Spanish. I talk with some children outside the gate and take their picture and show it to them in the viewer. They laugh.



On one hand I am anxious to go home, to return to my work, to see how my world is changed. On the other I want to savour this world I am in now.

At the end of the day, we hand out bags of presents for the children.



I wish the best for these people, particuarly for the children.



I hope their lives are rich with love and they are always blessed by someone.




***

We return to the bar at night, and I talk for a long time with the bartender, and hear about her life. She would like to one day see America. It is pouring rain outside so we stay longer, any excuse for another Presidente. We learn the bartender's seventeen year old son has a crush on one of the young women in our group, who came to the bar a few nights ago, and he has bought her a teddy bear, and when it stops raining he is going out to find a guitar player and a singer to serenade her. We tell him to wait for us before going. When he returns, the bartender closes up the bar and we all walk back to our camp on the dark road.

The girl is reluctant to come out and meet him. She is in her twenties and he is seventeen, but I convince her it will be safe. He is after all just a boy with a crush, and she can give him a gift that will last his whole life, just by coming out and accepting his gift, and hearing the music he has arranged. We meet halfway down the driveway. I hold a flashlight up high and shine it down on the guitar player's fingers as he plays. The music, a slow bachatta is wonderful. The singer has a rich mournful romantic voice. The music carries out over the countryside.

When it is over he presents her with the bear, they hug briefly, then we all hug around and say our good nights.

The next morning the people who had been sleeping talk of the wonderful music they heard in the night. I tell the girl that years from now she will a hear a ballad on the radio of the love the boy had for her, and of the smile she gave him, and how it helped make him a man.