Coconut Lime, How You Haunt Me

I can't stand the smell of B & BW's coconut lime scent. I'll catch someone else wearing it once in awhile and I find myself overtaken by feelings of euphoria and disgust. I want to cry and laugh and vomit, all at the same time. It's funny how scents trigger memories so quickly and clearly.



Once upon a time, five years ago almost to the day, my college roommate Angela and I set out for a grand adventure in a little place called Imbochi, Bolivia. Oh we fell in love with South America instantly and found no end of laughs upon encountering wonderful cultural oddities. We also shed more tears than I ever imagined possible. Our summer was to be spent among the 62 children at a severely understaffed orphanage overlooking a river, the name of which we never learned. Nor did we ask.

We lived in a large room with two dressers, two twin beds, and two wardrobes that appeared to have been from the 1950s. In my wardrobe, under my clothes, I stashed peanut butter and crackers to eat between meals because many of them largely consisted of what we affectionately referred to as "pig head soup" (which was mostly broth). I'm not being cute. It was made by boiling these over and over until all the flavor had been extracted into hundreds of bowls of soup over the course of several...weeks? (who was keeping track anyway):



Over the course of the next several months, we became intimately familiar with many of the children's' stories. Zenaida was rescued from child prostitution. Reina - who refused to share her real name - was sold by her uncle to an older man to be his "wife." He called her Reina, which means "queen." Abran had parents. They just couldn't manage to keep him and his brother, so they sent them to the home. With a hollow expression, he recounted times when he went hungry at home. Lorena, the youngest of four sisters in the home (other older siblings were already on their own), her parents died from alcohol poisoning. So the stories went. Sixty-two stories like these.

(Lorena with a "langosta," as they called them)

Angela and I taught, tutored, did laundry side-by-side with the children, played never ending games, and gave thousands of hugs. I missed my boyfriend. We clipped nails and cut hair. We helped to butcher a cow and then we ate it. We called home. We peeled yucca, and planned Bible lessons. We splashed coconut lime scented body spray on our clothes because sometimes we just needed to smell fresh. We laughed and we wept. We witnessed extremely harsh treatment and were informed it was merely a cultural difference. We prayed, we laughed, we wept. We survived their winter with no heat and cold showers. We became angry in learning that in most areas our hands were tied. We prayed more. And most of all, we loved.

Then May turned into August and we left as quickly as we had come. Tears abounded and parting words haunted me more than my newly acquired lice. We left the children just as it seems everyone had always left them. Though almost all of the children were believers, they had a hard time comprehending that God does not leave them. I can't say that I blamed them, given their histories.

We both experienced reverse culture shock once back in the U.S. We still wept. A week passed. I got engaged! (Shock added to shock. :-)) Months passed. I hated that I finally felt almost "normal." A year passed. I got married to my love. S everal more years later and that brings me to about four weeks ago...

Enjoying coffee with a friend, Bella reached down and grabbed a cigarette off the ground. GROSS! My friend passed me her hand sanitizer and I quickly slathered a liberal amount onto both of our hands. Then the scent drifted upward and suddenly jerked me into a past life. The whole drive home, the coconut lime overwhelmed my sensitive nose, memories flooding back in a wonderful, terrible torrent. Though I was able to quickly wash the smell off of our hands, the memories still followed me around the rest of the day, lingering like a lovely dream, haunting like an gruesome nightmare.

Three months is really just a brief flash, but that was a time in my life from which I cannot seem to recover. After all, I don't think a person is supposed to recover from heartbreak caused by taking on the burdens of the abandoned. It leaves you raw and vulnerable if you let it, and out of its wake, beautiful things will come.

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I didn't have a purpose in mind when I sat down to write this post, but I think it is appropriate at this point to direct you to a friend's blog. She and her husband are in the beginning stages of adopting a little orphan girl from Eastern Europe with Down's Syndrome named Anastasia, which stragely is also the name of my 5-year-old sister who also has Down's (weird!). You can read about the adoption here. Please join me in praying for this sweet little girl and her soon-to-be family!