The inclinato

I duck into the playhouse at the jungle, and see the same group of children who were there when we opened. I wonder how it captures the children's attention for so long. Suddenly, I remember where i picked them up and I see the contrast. The playhouse is brightly lit, painted bright colors, there are curtains at the windows, a table with a tablecloth and 4 chairs around it, cupboards full of imaginary food, a sink and a stove. The children here are some of the 10 that we picked up this morning at the inclinato.

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We have a contact at the inclinato, and the 3 of us who have never been there before go looking for her. "Go ahead, she's just down the hall" prompts the lady who is out washing her clothes. We walk through the open area, down a step to an area that's currently flooding, I think from the draining shower that I hear running behind the wall. As we turn the corner and are now in the hallway, we go from the brightly lit day to an almost pitch dark hallway. The second doorway is what we're looking for.

At the back of the room, the head of her bed touches one wall, the foot touches the other. What's left of the room is probably the size of the bed. On one wall there's a refrigerator and next to that a shelf with a an electric burner with a pot of rice on it. On the other side of the room is a cradle. The twins sit naked in the cradle, the newborn lies tiny and precious on the bed. The big sister plays in the hall. This family of 5 lives in this room, smaller than a walk in closet. The bathroom down the hall is communal, as is the one washing machine for the families living on all 4 floors of the building, and the outdoor patio spaces, one where women hand wash clothes, the other where they hang to dry. It's a modern day tenement house.

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I live close enough to walk there now. My neighborhood has so many good things- a bakery, an internet cafe, a corner store, 3 or 4 places to get lunch, a hardware store, and a great cafe all within a block or two. If I need a window to be replaced, a locksmith, paint mixed (or I want to buy a grave stone) I know where to go and can walk there in a few minutes. But there's also a lot of pain here. Walking to the bakery in the morning, I pass a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk. Just a few blocks east of me, prostitutes stand on street corners 24 hours a day. And then, there are the inclinatos. Tenement houses where rooms are divided by plastic, cardboard, anything to make a division and whole families live in each division.

I'm excited to be living here. I'm not really sure how I will reach out into this neighborhood. But I want to, and living here gives me the opportunity to get to know people, to see needs, to make friends.