You realize I don’t have goat feet, right?!

Oh, we have to go straight down the mountain? You realize I don’t have goat feet right?

The past few Sundays I have noticed a little girl in church wearing her school uniform. I had never noticed her before but then again there are a lot of kids and I am usually focused on giving looks of “Stop doing that right now.” to my kids. Then while the mission team was here recently we visited the school to take pictures of our scholarship kids, the teachers, the newly painted rooms, etc. When the scholarship kids lined up for their photo there was the uniform-in-church girl standing in front. She looked to be about 5 years old and was wearing her uniform, of course, and sneakers with no laces. No socks. No white undershirt. I asked one of the teachers her name. He said Dina and added that she is one of the poorest students at school. At this point it all came together. She wore her uniform to church because she didn’t have any other nice clothes. I had never seen her in church before because without the uniform she had nothing appropriate to wear.

Here comes the hard part. Now you would think it would be easy to decide to give this girl an outfit or two for her to wear to church so she could save her uniform for school. That decision was easy to come by but figuring out how I should go about it or if I even should do it at all was stressful. First of all, there are 14 other scholarship kids. If parents found out I helped one student will they get upset that they were left out? Will I be putting the little girl in danger of others’ jealousy? Then there is the question of expectations. If I do this once, will the family expect handouts from me all the time? Will they come to me asking for this or that? I didn’t want to create a feeling of dependency with this girl’s family.

In the end, I essentially said “Screw it.” and decided to take the chance of putting myself in a position that would lead to me having to turn people down in the future. I just couldn’t get this little girl’s face out of my head.

I asked the kids if they knew where she lived. They said yes, just below Godet. There is a road that branches of the main Godet road that descends a bit so I thought that was it. Not too far. Not too difficult to walk. Let’s go. I put a couple white t-shirts, some socks, some underwear, a little blue skirt, and a pair of pink pants in my drawstring bag and headed down the road with Jolike and Jean Fiderse. It was late afternoon but the sun was still hot so I bought some juices for us as we passed through the village. We turned down the road I was expecting. A little steep at first but it leveled off eventually. Then the boys veered left and started down a foot path that led to the ravine. Um…down there? You are sure her house is down there? The boys nodded and kept moving. I glanced down the length of the entire path. It was cut into the side of a mountain…a very steep mountain. It was as close to going straight down as you can get. But I was in it now so down I went.

The path was dirt with a few big rocks to help your footing. Thankfully it hadn’t rained in a couple days otherwise it would have been a slip and slide. My eyes never left the ground. One wrong foot placement and this was going to turn into a Jack and Jill disaster. About three quarters of the way down the boys stopped to talk to a man. Turns out he was the little girl’s father. I asked if I could visit his daughter at his house which was further down. He agreed and we kept trekking.

We finally made it to the bottom and I was greeted by the little girl and her sister, both wearing oversized shirts and no pants and big smiles. I can say for sure I am the first white girl to visit this part of town. They led me to their house: tin roof, tin siding, dirt floor. A skinny, tiny boy stood to the side, staring at me suspiciously. He also sported an oversized shirt (pants are clearly an optional clothing accessory at the bottom of the mountain) and bright orange hair. My heart sank. This little guy clearly wasn’t getting enough nutritious food. As I approached with his sisters he began crying. My blinding whiteness has that effect on some children. His father scooped him up and sat on a large rock near the house. He had another child, an older brother, fetch a chair for me. I greeted his wife and other children. This is where it got difficult again. I had so many questions: the kids names, if the other kids attended school or church, how many times a day they were eating, if the father had a job…but I couldn’t ask a single one. I feared that asking questions would give the impression that I was able to give more help than I could. I didn’t want my questions to sound like future helping points. So I was brief. I simply stated I had seen the little girl in church in her uniform, that I was happy to see her in church, but that I wanted her to save her uniform for school. Then I presented them with the clothes I had brought, saying they were extras from our kids. I explained that if I can help again I will but I didn’t know how or when. I thanked them for having me to their home, shook hands, gave the little orange haired boy my juice, and was out of there within a few minutes. I think subconsciously I felt that the less time I spent there the less chance there was of being asked for help with more serious struggles. It is the worst feeling in the world to see needs and not being able to help. But the smiles on the little girl’s face and her father’s face after I gave them something as simple as a couple shirts and underwear counteracted my feelings of helplessness at least a little bit.

As we walked away I looked up and remembered that we now had to basically scale a mountain. Awesome. Again as close to straight up as possible. A quick prayer that my heart wouldn’t explode and off we went. About half way up we stopped to rest in a shady spot. A couple of village boys nearby were talking to my boys and I overheard them ask, “Is your white girl going to make it?” Through my strained breaths I turned to them and said “I got this.”, not that they understood but it made me feel better. When we finally got to the top again I was beyond sweaty. I knew my cheeks were bright red and my hair was all over the place. I had the boys buy us some more juice, hoping it would help cool me down before we arrived back at the center. As we walked down the center steps, all the women looked at me and said, “Oh you are tired!” Not untrue. I replied, “Yes I am tired but I didn’t fall!” We laughed and I went to my room to collapse for a couple minutes before getting to work with the kids.

So now I wait for the consequences of my actions. Hopefully nothing. But the family might come asking for more. Other families might hear about it and come to me with their needs. I really hope nothing because I would love to help this little girl and her family more than just this one time. No matter how this turns out, I am grateful that God gave me the opportunity to bless this little girl and that as funny as it might have been to watch this white girl bounce down the mountain, He gave me sure footing during my little journey.