I guess I was too tired earlier to pay attention to the lovely little boy, maybe 8-years-old, who buzzed about me all morning, but now he was touching my face with such pore that I couldn’t notice anything else.
It was the end of our second day of English Camp Olympics, and I had already played more hours of soccer with the children in Chiang Rai than I have in the last 10 years. I was sunburned from the intermittent sunbreaks and stickysweaty from the 105° rain weather. My body flubbed over a plastic chair, and I couldn’t remember a time when I was more physically exhausted.
I was sitting under a gazebo of sorts and watching the final Olympic event play out between spells of dropping my chin to my chest to rest. The kids were having a sponge race and were taking large sponges, dipping them in buckets full of water and then racing to another bucket to wring out the the water. The team that transferred the most water before the time expired would win.
The children were euphoric, and I bowed my head again to rest and listen to the laughter. I would love a cold shower, I thought. Then, almost as if programmed, I chastised myself and felt shame for wanting something so trivial. How could I be so foolish? I heard a voice say. And why would God care about that? It was at this moment that the little boy started touching my face.
I opened my eyes and there he was was. He spoke in Thai, and I was too tired to pretend I understood, so I just looked at him and smiled. He smiled back, as if receiving approval, then he dipped his finger in glitter on the table next to me and lightly poked my cheek. It felt like a cold kitten’s nose, and it sent chills down my spine. He giggled when he realized I wasn’t going to stop him from doing it again. Soon, several other children noticed and began to collect around me, all of them dipping their tiny fingers in multi-colored glitter and decorating my face. The children carried on this way for twenty minutes, gently covering my face with fingertip circles of glitter.
Then, the little boy tapped my shoulder, I opened my eyes, smiled and the children erupted with laughter and applause. The principal of the school and a few others came over and took pictures of the children’s masterpiece. They asked the children what my Thai name was. The children pontificated between each other and one precious little girl softly spoke in that lovely tonal language. “Nohk yuung,” she said. The translators told me that means peacock. All the children clapped and began to say it in unison.
As they cheered, the little boy began to lift my leg, then my arm, and then my entire body. I was confused, and assumed he wanted to parade me around to the other adults – a thought which exhausted and, quite frankly, annoyed me. But he didn’t parade me around, rather, he held my arm around his neck like someone carrying a wounded friend, and he led me to sit down on a concrete fountain next to the school building.
Then the children took sponges (I think they stole them from the Sponge Race event which was still taking place), and for ten minutes, these wonderful little children who are in grave danger of being trafficked and sold into sexual slavery dipped their sponges in cold water and meticulously washed every sparkle of glitter off my body. It was almost too much to bear. I closed my eyes and began to cry.
“Here is your shower, my love,” I felt the voice of God say. “I adore you.”