Nits

This is a story I wrote after my travels into the hills and the country side. Enjoy!

I'm strolling along the side of the road, trying not to have a heart attack whenever the local bus rounds a corner, blaring it's circus like horn. The water buffalo slowly splash around in the water, horns and nostrils above water, the rest of their massive bodies submerged with the lake plants. A shack by the side of the road comes into view, especially shanty like and broken down. Decrepide. Four or five people sit inside, chatting. As I come closer I see Bishnu, the brother of Prem, the man who I am staying with. Bishnu is 28, married for 4 months, seems "neutral" about his marriage, and more interested in taking me for a ride on his motor bike than on his wife. He spots me and motions me over. I stroll up to the hut and sit down on a woven wicker stool that one of the wrinkley, but beautiful, women give up for me. I accept, feeling guilt for having taken her seat. I say hello to everyone. The man who lives in the shack/vegetable stand is from Lumbini, near the Indian border. He is very thin, probably in his early 30's. The skin on his shins is peeling off. His face and neck are covered with pustules, murky white benearth the tiny blisters. The middle finger on his right hand is gone and the other 4 fingers are either half missing or bent and twisted grotesquely. He stares at me intently, interested, curious. I chat with Bishnu about what I have been doing today and the man stares and doesn't join in, mainly because of his lack of English skills. Three other women sit around the circle, their saris bright red, their faces worn, the oldest is smoking the butt of a self rolled cigarette. Calmly puffing away. They don't join the conversation either. The walls of the shack are either ratty tarps or corrugated tin, tied on with twine. Bishnu offers me tea and the men from Lumbini gets to work heating up the milk and spices over his stove on the dirt floor. He crouches in a corner with the work and dirty cooking ware, boiling and stirring on his haunches. after a few minutes the tea is ready and he hands us dented tin cups full. Milky with chestnut colored unknown chunks floating around in it. Delicious. In the corner where the cooking ware lays on the ground in dirty heaps there is a pile of sticks and logs. Not in a neat bundle, just tossed in the corner. Inside the pile of sticks there is a rustle. I glance overjust in time to see a scaly pink tail disappear into the pile. Rat. The man from Lumbini descreetly glances over too. He noticed the tail. He tries to make it seem like he is looking at a chunk of something yellow on the blue wall tarp. I pretend I didn't notice the rat and continue sipping my tea, chatting about America, travel, experiences, and school. A few minutes later three obese looking rats emerge, very slyly and go over to a dirty plate near by to munch on yesterday's dal bhatt. I don't make any fuss, observe them, and continue talking. To me they are a welcome addition to our circle by the side of the road. They look at me, eyes red and shinning. The man notices and makes a noise to scare them off. They scutter back to their sticks. The man's wife has had it with being descreet about the rats. She doesn't care that I am here. She is not trying to impress me, a foreigner in her house. She gets up and pushes her skeletal husband aside and crouches down in the corner and grabs a massive, rusted butcher knife in one hand and a chunk of brown metal pipe in the other. Ready to attack. The rats sense danger and stay in hiding, but we can still hear their scratching.
Soon the kids come home from school. They wear torn school uniforms. Two girls and one younger boy. The girls have massive brown eyes and gold hoops through their left nostril and braids in their hair. The boy must be about six. The sleeve of his white (well, at some point long ago it was white) collared shirt is holding on to the rest of the shirt by a few threads. The kids stand in a circle around me for 5 minutes. All less then a foot from my face. Starring at me, my skin, my crazy watch, and my shiny sun glasses. They become disinterested. By this time the mother has given up her stake doing rat patrol and tosses the butcher knife and pipe on the ground. She sits next to me and her son sits on her lap. His eys have already hardened from the struggle that is his life. His eyes are not bright and shiny and full of youth like a six year old's eyes should by. They are dull, crusted, intense. His face is smeared with dirt and sores fest on his body. Out of his notrils stream rivers of murky white snot. His snot rivers are the same milky white color as my tea, I think to myself, maybe his mucus is a bit more green. These two rivers merge at the top of his lips and flow into his mouth. Everytime he breathes more comes out. He doesn't bother wiping his nose. Why bother? It will only come back again. Why bother with a few seconds of cleanliness of the nose? It would probably take a few hours to fully clean and sanitize this boy. His mother holds him, then begins slowly going through his hair. SFhe uses her finger nails to rip out the lice that burrow in his head. She uproots the nits from their comfortable home in her son's hair, flicking them aside when she finds a burrowing bug. He coughs. It rattles and resonates. He contines coughing, a deep cough that is rooted at the very bottom of his infected lungs. Whenever he coughs a spray of spit and phlegm coats everything with in 3 feet of him. I am sitting 2 feet from him. Finally the coughing subsides. Nits fly the other direction quickly as his mother must have found a small village of lice around hte nape of his neck. With in a few minutes he has dozed off to sleep. His breathing in sleep rattles like his horrid cough. His sullen mother uncoversmore and more nits which are flicked away like yesterday's garbage while her son gets a few moments of peace, a few moments away from his hardships that exist every waking minute for him, a few moments away from the reality that is his.