The sweltering, stagnant air inside the tent seemed to seep into the pores of your skin and slowly strangle the life out of your heart as you lay silently on the ground next to your family. Trying to keep still as what felt like a million thoughts assaulted your mind, knowing that even the slightest movement could awaken your exhausted child who'd just spent an hour crying himself to sleep. Tired wasn't the right word to describe your current state. Tired was bypassed months ago. No, soul crushing weariness had taken over your being as you attempted the impossible task of simply keeping your family alive in the various refugee camps you'd been rotated through. Hours filled with the merciless sun beating down, days filled with endless growling stomachs, weeks filled with unknown illnesses due to improper nutrition and hygiene, and months filled with no answers, movement forward, or even a slight glimmer of hope. Despair floated from your being in the form of a long sigh as you closed your eyes against the blackness surrounding your tent and life.
The 4:00AM dawning of the day came all too soon as light boldly crept into all corners of the tent. Soon various needs were expressed from all the children, mostly unvoiced, as they'd learned there was nothing you possessed to help. Tears, unconscious scratching, hacking coughs, and rumbly stomach noises filled the quiet. A short distance away, in another privacy-less dwelling place another family began their day with fighting and strong words. Surveying your comparatively peaceful family, a small amount of gratitude flickered in you. Suddenly the indescribable ache rose up once again inside, almost suffocating you this time: "They are good kids! They have amazing potential. They deserve better! What hope do they have? How can I rescue them from this? I've failed them..." Jerking your eyes closed in an effort to silence those thoughts before they rendered you paralyzed to be what they were needing you to be today, you tiredly ran a hand through your hair and remembered what was on the agenda for today. The only thing on the agenda for today: finding a way to wash everyone's hair. In what felt like a lifetime ago, this would've been a simple evening chore that was quickly finished. Now, with no running water access nearby and mobs of people always surrounding the water truck, it was nearly impossible to clean anything more than your hands. You'd always prided yourself in being a kind, good person, but now, in order to help your family survive, you had to push and fight for merely the right to be human. If it was just you, it wouldn't be worth it, but one look at the state of your children, and your heart mustered enough strength to get dressed.
Once you arrived back at the tent, trying to block out the person you just had to be to simply get this small bucket of water, you began the long process of creating a wall of privacy for everyone. This meant blocking the small amount of wind circulating, which felt tortuous, but what else could be done? One by one everyone sponged off and dipped their hair into the small bucket that was slowly looking less and less like water and more and more like mud. Your oldest child unfairly had to go last, for fear of spreading the horrific, unknown, never-going-away rash to another. Though a far cry from being sanitary, it did feel good to be cleaner than you all were before. Quickly the rigged up privacy barrier was removed and life returned back to the incessant project of trying to capture the most air movement inside the tent. With nothing to do but sit and stare at one another, even silly things like this became all-day-consuming undertakings. In between moving one flap and shifting everyone around, your mind flashed back to when life had more meaning. Your existence had more meaning. There was work, there was school, there was cooking, there were holidays and family, there was travel, and there was even paying the bills. Things that seemed to validate your humanity. Now there was this: absolute nothingness. It was what filled your day yesterday, it was filling up today, and you could count on it being there to meet you tomorrow. The only consistent thing to be done was sending someone to go meet the food truck that came sometime every morning, afternoon, and evening. It was called food, but honestly you'd never seen or tasted stuff such as these items in all your years. Nonetheless, it was all you had, so what choice was there but to consume it and hope it kept you all alive until you could leave this life-sucking place.
Part Three shall be coming soon :)
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