And also that I have finished White Teeth (thank you, afternoon heat and ceiling fan for giving me the chance to do so).]
is what class 10b called to me as I left for lunch today. See you yesterday. Future present, past imperfect. The way it definitely is.
Look!
I have received my first note from the students! The group of boys most okay with hanging out around us and most excited to introduce us to everyone and their peers and practice speaking and revel in it and debate in quick Nepali what the right word is for what and speak anyways and try and teach us so many Nepali words all together helped in our last brick-brigade line and then gave me that note. Said "when you are leaving for your country we will very much remember you".
*takes deep breath and looks at all the feels*
Today we technically finished what we came here to do on the construction agenda, brick walls all laid and communication between us and the two workers finally at a hilarious and decent level. Highlights from our last days on the scaffolding: our older Dhai ( brother, because he always called us "sister") dancing to some Hindi music we were playing, several times, and the way he smiles fully with all his teeth, our younger Dhai telling us "no problem" while fixing potentially fatal bamboo and twine set ups...also telling us "no dancing" as we perched precariously on the edge, making younger Deepa laugh when concrete dripped on my head, holding older Deepa's hand, shaking the brick dust from my eyes, going down to the river for buckets of pani, water, (...there's a river, standing between...), the way our Dhais flip flops squish on the concrete mix, how they tap-break the bricks just right, the way the string contraption works for leveling the walls, ska-wulching the cement on a new layer, looking at the walls and thinking, my hands touched those bricks. I laid some of that foundation, I took part in creating that space. Perhaps a little less efficiently then our Dhais, perhaps not ably to carry as many bricks on my head as our Didis and Ammas (sisters and mothers)who helped out, but still. That is something.
...
When the boys came to help, they swirled around in a whirlwind of energy and fast talking youth-ness. They asked me what religion I have and I stopped fully for a moment, looking at the patterns of brick stack in front of me, trying not to fidget. Am I a god(s)less creature? Am I some heathen foreign woman with no divine direction, no moral code, no religious institution behind me? So I answered "I don't have any", but I don't know how to translate it, if it does. How many times have I tried to put words to whatever truth it is I live by, and how many times have I never been able to. How I have not found a name that suits, one that fits more than Kelly Grace. And what else is grace? But how I do not know. In our cold white north, our massive country of leaves and stays and fresh water and misplaced senses of belonging, how I've looked and kept an eyebrow raised and still not found a way to say how it is I believe (if). And how it has not mattered in the way of who you are as you where and how and if you have a religion too. I will stop to let whatever time of day it is cross the street and let it be. I just don't know for me, and not like an agnostic not know, not a denial, but also not some confession of truth, either.
....bet that was least expected after a picture of my feet.
Though here now I am willing to write (willing myself? Or just wanting to?) that I believe in my groove, in the real eyes I've told my skin to never forget and who was with me when that happened, in all the stages of its happening, and how I will change with it when I need to and how this is okay too, and ending words with whys and ys, that made me want to write us, because y and u is so close together and I believe in these things meaning something if they do, do because fundamentally they are, if you let this life get to you and the sweat to bead for you and hearts to leak for you and with and around and there for you and here. For you.
These are the things, at least some, that sunsets like last night remind me of and make me feel, the way you can put the stars on a map and think you know the way home but identity does not happen like that. This I promise you, of all the promises I may have made before, we are not like clay pots intent on shattering, more like mud roofs, where when we slide, you can make castles and mud pies. This is
how it makes me feel
to be doing what I am currently doing.
So bug bites, scratch on and remind me of my human in me, this skin and these feet and these blister thumb hands.
-k
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