Playing With Dangerous Words

This summer I went on a mission’s trip to Mexico and while I was there, I made a new friend. His name was Tim and before the trip we had only been acquaintances. It was fun goofing around with him, but once we messed around a little too much.

On the missions trip we were building three houses for families in Juarez, Mexico. The first day of work we needed to lay the foundation. The process was easy compared to stories I’ve heard from past trips where the group finds a boulder in the middle of where they were going to lay the cement. Fortunately for us though, the ground was level and we discovered no large obstructions, such as a boulder.

There was a problem, however, when we began to lay the cement. These problems were not inanimate objects, as one might suspect, but little dark skinned curious kids playing in our material piles. The sand pile especially attracted the most attention from the neighborhood kids. It was surprising to us as they played in the sand, because as we looked around the building site we figured they had plenty of sand, which with they could play. Some way some how, our sand was more fun to play with, and it was a bonus because they didn’t need to pile it up before playing in it.

We tried to playfully discourage them, by chasing them away, pretending to be a monster. Occasionally, we would quickly run over there before they noticed and picked them up and carried them far away from the pile. Eventually discovering this plan was as ineffective as eating soup with a knife, we debated on what to do considering those of us at that time were not very good Spanish speakers. We were still joking around when we, Tim and I, remembered the word to kill (matar) in Spanish. In the command form of the verb we ordered someone to kill the children playing in the pile (mátalos), of course jokingly, we then realized of our mistake. We forgot that they could understand, quickly we turned to them to say “Chiste, chiste, chiste,” which is the word for joke. My hope is that they didn’t think that we meant it and forever have this fear of Americans for what we said.

A Sure Strike

Today, the youth of America have countless places where they can go to entertain themselves. Almost all the children of today’s society know of all their opportunities to go out and have fun as children. Going to Chuck e Cheese, Play Station, the movies, playing video games etc… Once children have experienced a little of any of these things, they start to express their urgent need for them. I was that child and luckily for me, my parents were strong willed and only occasionally allowed us to influence them. An occasional Chuck e Cheese and Play Station made the experience that much better when we did get to go. I am especially grateful for their resistance to our consistent begging for a N64 or Playstation. When I went down to Mexico for my youth group’s mission’s trip, I was able to witness the conditions that these people faced in a city where it’s government is slacking and the people mostly living in severe poverty. The holes in the roof of their make shift house shout out how much they need help. Like, I’ve heard many people say before, kids are resilient.

After working each day some of us had the chance to play with the neighborhood kids. The kids would cry “hombros” (shoulders) for some of us to lift them up and take off running while they would screech and clench on to our heads.

I’ll admit sometimes we lost focus of working and played with them too soon, before we had finished up for the day. The third day of work, during one of our breaks we went with the neighborhood kids, ages probably ranging from about 5 to 8, to a nearby field. This was not a field as you would probably think of one, the ground not made of dirt but of sand, the ground was littered with pieces of garbage trapped by the scattered knee-high leafless bushes. We went there to try and catch some lizards, which unknown to me were very small and even quicker than they were small. Fortunately, these kids were pros when it came to catching lizards. They spotted them at the roots of bushes yards away and surrounded it while one of them moved closer with a stick in hand in order to get it out of the shelter of the bush. The lizard would dart across the sand from one bush to the next and the kids kept on repeating the process. Until one time when the lizard darted across the sand and one of the kids, probably around 10 feet away, throws a small rock at it and nails it.

Impressively the lizard ends up dead after the kids checked it and the high fives are exchanged. They can have fun better than most of us can, while creating memories to boast about for years and years to come.