Di Lio- Take Two (written 8-15-10)

The community sink has not worked for the past two days. With the dry season approaching, we are trying to conserve the water in our durotanks when possible. So...off to the river we went to wash clothes and dishes. My adorable little neighbor girl asked me if she could come and I said sure. Her name is Leufeni and she is three years old. She lives next door with what I am assuming are her grandparents. When we first moved in she mostly just stared at us from a distance with huge eyes and was fairly afraid of us. Over time my smiles, waves and greetings wore her down and I got her to wave back at me. Pretty soon every time she saw me, she would wave energetically, even if we had just waved about 3 minutes before. She then progressed to returning my greetings, then started prancing (she loves to prance) and singing around our house stories about us, narrating what we were doing at that point in time. Now, the girl loves to know exactly what we're doing and where we are at all times and spends a good amount of time perched in our front window, singing and chatting away, all the while watching us with those big innocent eyes.

This is a picture of her carrying firewood back from the jungle with her grandma. Yep, she's three. And adorable. And probably tougher than me.

Cut to: Leufeni coming to the river with us. I soon realized that our dirty clothes and dishes wouldn't fit in our two biggest buckets, so I'd have to use a third. One for my head, one for Ryan's shoulder and one for Leufeni's head. Hey, you've seen her skills above. I asked her several times if the bucket was too heavy and she responded every time that it was not heavy. Off we go in a little line, all the way to the river. After the local women wash their dishes and clothes and whatever else, they wash themselves and then the clothes that they came wearing. Well, Leufeni decided she would wash, too, so she stripped down and jumped in. After that, she comes up right next to Ryan and lays her little tattered shirt on the cement step, grabs our soap, lathers it up and goes to town with our brush, working out the dirt. I watch her go to work, turn to Ryan and simply state, “She's three.” I went back to washing after a minute but Ryan told me later that she lathered and brushed her shirt about 4 times before he took the soap away and helped her rinse and wring it. We loaded up our buckets and headed back, three ducks in a row. Here I am with my cute little helper, back at our house.

Growing up here is no joke. In many ways, the children are far more independent and capable than most kids in the states, which I admire. However, too many are lacking guidance, encouragement, opportunity and supervision. And there is something to letting a child just be a child for a time.