The Bean Scrubber

On Wednesday afternoon, I marched over to the Castillo´s abode with Jolie, Jordan, and Jill. Another afternoon would be spent with underwearless children in a house that was becoming more and more my own. Every day after lunch, we go to visit Dina, Oscar, Marisol, and their grandma, if she wasn´t in La Herradura buying tasty iguanas for dinner. Usually, after sweeping the floor which never seems to stay clean for more than a few hours, I sit with Jill or Jolie as they help the girls with their homework. However, today would be different.

¿Puedo ayudar? has gotten me into a lot of strange situations at the Castillo´s house, including washing four-day-old dishes with rice and beans encrusted onto the sides of the bowls. Today I found Marisol in the kitchen, she was finishing washing the forks when I asked to help. I noticed she or her grandma had begun a new system of washing dishes in the sink instead of using the green mildew basin outside of the house. Senora Castillo was in a cleaning mood, and it was then that I noticed that the house overall was a lot tidier than the previous day - less flies too and maybe a tiny bit less smelly.

Marisol began her next project of wringing out rags of ripped up clothing and wiping down the white cinderblock walls of the kitchen. The walls needed more than just a wiping down. They were splattered with beans, and aside from the beans, the walls were grimy and spotted with roach and gecko poop. I grabbed a pink bristle sponge and began a project that would last the next two hours. I dismissed Marisol so she could do her homework with Jill and laughed to myself in disbelief, thinking that this was definitely the grossest house I could ever imagine. I thought if there was anyone who should volunteer to do a job this disgusting, it might as well be me. I have to thank my mom for training me so well as a kid. When I was no older than ten, she taught me so well how to clean toilets, tubs, bathroom, and how to wash and rinse dishes. Scrubbing down these filthy walls would surely be no problem for me . . . I was wrong.

The beans were caked on and it took intense scrubbing many times to get all the splatter stains off the wall. I thought I would be done after the bean splatters, but something or someone told me to finish cleaning the rest of the cinder blocks. I moving down the wall until I was nearly on my knees scrubbing the dirtiest part of the lower wall, squatting down in the corner with piles of black droppings, dried tortilla pieces, and a huge dead bug. I cringed to be so close to filthiness. But with every move closer to the grime, the cleaner the walls became and the more okay I was with becoming dirty and sweaty. I was so determined to get those dang walls white again. The slightly-insane grandma crackled her high-pitched, witch-like laugh and ask if I was hot. I told her I was fine. As I continued working, she cocked her head. Out of the corner of my eye, I knew she was looking at me curiously, probably wondering who the heck this Asian kid was washing her dishes, wiping down her stove, and now rearranging everything in order to get to scrubbing her walls. The heat and humidity seemed intensified in those two hours, but there was this queer satisfaction in knowing that I was doing something that not even one of the family members had been willing to do. The walls were finally clean after more than a few half hours of labor. Clean enough that I could see that they really were white afterall.

God was teaching me a lot that afternoon. While I´ve been really frustrated with my inability to communicate well in Spanish and thus haven´t been unable to help the children with their homework, I´m learning that love is a language in itself. Even though I may not be helping Dina learn her phonics, maybe washing her dishes more thoroughly will prevent her from getting any more infectious sores and balding spots on her head. Maybe I can´t help Oscar with his speech impediment or Marisol with her reading, but I can scrub their window and mop their floors. God is showing me how capable I am when I think myself least capable of doing anything useful. In the process of cleaning those walls, I realized that I´m becoming more and more okay when he asks me to do the grunge work, work that´s humbling and maybe a first humiliating. That afternoon, God showed me that real servanthood is taking the rag and getting on my knees. Serving like this, I am most disturbed and most uncomfortable, but in this I have the opportunity to find the most joy. Even if I came all the way to El Salvador just to scrub beans off a wall, I would be glad to have done so.