I was sitting at breakfast drinking the last of my chai when one of the older boys came and sat across from me. I'd seen this guy before, but he'd never talked to me. I don't know what he was waiting for, but I got the sense that he'd been hanging back for some reason and now he didn't want to do that any longer. I can't really explain this one, other than it being a complete and total God thing. I looked up at this kid and suddenly we just clicked. I just knew this kid with his huge bright smile and I were going to be really close friends. This doesn't happen to me real often, and when it does, it throws me off. I don't think he said anything, he just sat there and watched me figure this out for a minute. If there's such a thing as kindred spirits, we share one. Like I said, I don't know how this happened, but it must have been a God thing. He did eventually start a conversation with me about how I liked Ashagram, but my head was still trying to figure out what and why this had just happened. Halfway through this conversation, I realized that I didn't even know his name. He asked for mine when he got up to leave, but when I asked for his he wouldn't give it to me, playfully acting shocked that I didn't know who he was. He told me to guess his name and I, of course, guessed the wrong one. He laughed it off . . . and still didn't tell me. Later, one of the guys called him from across the room and I caught it: this was Sunil.
The other guys started whining to me that I never played soccer with them. I had told them that I would play with them, but I was kind of thinking they'd forget about it. They hadn't. So, at 4:00 that afternoon, I put on some clothes that I could get really muddy and headed down to the soccer field/lake.
When I got there, I realized that this was going to be an adventure. I'd played mud football. I'd played mud volleyball. I was now going to play mud soccer. It was my duty as a youth leader to get out there and get myself and everyone else as dirty as possible. If I failed in this endeavor, I would be remiss in my duties as a youth leader.
Mud was now a requirement.
When the guys on one side of the field picked me to be on their team, they stuck me on as a defender. They told me to be careful and not to fall. I told them, "No, I'm going to fall, and I'm going to get very dirty." They all laughed. They didn't know I was serious. I was determined to get muddy, whether I fell or rolled through the mud.
I started to demonstrate the fact that I wasn't going to just stand around on the field, and tried to kick the ball around some. These boys were really good. I mean, really good. They were serious about this game. They bounced the ball off their heads and shoulders, getting ball prints all over themselves. The ran and skidded through the mud like they were skating. But they still cheered when I'd kick the ball, saying "nice play". It wasn't long before I hit dirt. I slid and got mud on my arm.
The boys were like, "Now you're dirty!" I said, "Not dirty enough!" It was about this time that I realized that Kunal on the sidelines had just picked up my camera and was snapping pictures of me sliding around all over the place.
We switched sides on the field and suddenly I was in a swamp. I was in a massive mud puddle. Sure enough, the second I went for the ball, I slid. But I didn't just fall into a puddle. I slid through it and completely hosed myself. The boys all stopped playing and yelled to see if I was ok. I was still sitting in this puddle, cracking up. I got up and took a bow. I could hear them gasp, but then laughter broke out across the field.
Suddenly, the focus of the game shifted. It was no longer just about soccer. I was throwing mud at anybody that came near me, while the guys dodged it and yelled, "No sister, please!" Alok ran over and tried to kick mud on me. I threw mud at him, yelling "You don't know what you're messing with! You are not going to like how this ends!" Balaji picked up two huge fistfuls of mud and grinned at me. "Do it!" I yelled, "I dare you!" He came over to me and rubbed the mud all over my arms. I took the mud off my arms and slathered it on my face. He was not expecting that one. The guys were cracking up.
At this point, I was trying to get dirty. I danced through the puddles. The guys asked me if I knew how to dance, so I demonstrated the goofiest dance moves I could come up with. Attempted moonwalk and all. The guys tried to teach me how to slide through the mud, and I ended up falling backwards directly into a huge mud puddle on my inglorious first attempt.
I looked up from my puddle and there was Sunil. I think he came over to try to help me up, but he didn't get that far. He was laughing at me. But this was not an ordinary laugh. This kid had one of those laughs you never forget. He was doubled over and pointing at my capris dripping mud, my shirt that was no longer blue, my arms that were still completely covered from Balaji, and something on my head. I think it was my mud-coated braids. He was laughing so hard he was downright squealing. I have never heard anybody laugh so hard, at me at least. I pulled myself out of the mud and he just pointed at my feet, still immersed in the puddle. I attempted to wipe my face, but my hands were muddy. I tried to wipe my hands off on my clothes, but my hands got muddier the more I tried because my clothes were completely hosed. This did not help him in the slightest. I held up my muddy and dripping arms in bewilderment and he only laughed harder. He was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. He just stood there: doubled over, shoulders shaking and pointing at me, occasionally squeaking to catch his breath.
He wasn't the only one laughing. I looked around and realized that the ball was just sitting in the middle of the field. I had just stopped the game. The other guys were staring at me with shocked and amused faces. I threw my arms in the air and cheered. Comedians only wish they could get a laugh like the one I got.
My team rotated off the field for a round. Kunal showed me some of the pictures he had gotten on my camera. It was a visual story of progressive layers of mud. At that moment, the monsoon season made itself known. It was raining buckets. I stood out in the warm, refreshing rain and let it wash some of the mud off of me. The field was now a river, and getting deeper.
When my team rotated back in, I don't think the boys expected me to make it back on. They cracked up again as I took my position in the swamp. The game started up again, but there was a problem: We were all swimming. One guy would fall and take out 3 more. I tripped over the small boys and they all tripped over me. The ball would keep rolling untouched while half a dozen guys slipped and fell all around it. We ended up in a huge pile on the swampy end. I think it was at about this point when I realized that there was laughter from the dining hall. My mission team was sitting in the dining hall and watching the game, and had just seen me trip over some small boy and take out the guys that were skating to try to kick the ball. I lost track of just how many guys got hosed in the pile-up, but it was a dozen at least.
This was epic. I was getting mud thrown and kicked at me while I thrashed around and tried to get anyone in a 10 foot radius. The game did eventually end, but not before I had sufficiently muddied up at least a dozen guys. When I emerged from the pile-up, Balaji gave me a high five and dubbed me the "Mud Sweetheart".
I walked over to the side and saw that Kunal still had my camera. They boys tossed me the ball and I posed with it.
I pulled in some of the guys and got some of the most amazing pictures ever: white me, covered in mud, standing in the middle of a bunch of Indian guys with their arms in the air, standing in the field/river. (Sunil's right next to me in the red, Balaji's next to him in the green hat, Inder is in the Virginia shirt.)
This is why I do youth ministry. I was able to give these guys a wonderful gift: A soccer game they'll never forget.
Later that night, the girls had a party for all the birthdays in July. They made a special for all the girls and we ate in the girls' housing. Now, up until this point, we hadn't been eating the food the kids were eating. (We also had been using silverware.) We had been lucky enough to have special food made that I knew wasn't as spicy. I didn't know how much less spicy it was.
They had been treating us with kid gloves.
When I was served the daal, it smelled spicy. That was a tip off. The girls served it to me on the typical metal plate the kids use in the dining hall, no silverware. I knew there was a problem when I picked up the rice and daal and it actually stung the cut I had on my hand. I glanced around the room. Everyone was staring at the team, waiting to see us take our first bites. Some had bemused smiles. They knew something we didn't. The last thing I wanted was to seem rude or ungrateful, so I shoveled it in my mouth.
This stuff burned! Oh my gosh did it burn! It was this or nothing, so I decided that I was just going to tough it out. I managed to shovel in a few mouthfuls before I realized that I had a larger problem than the initial spiciness: I had stumbled into a slowly building inferno. It only got worse. I felt like I could feel my taste buds scarring.
Only then did I realize that we had another problem: We had no water! In the dining hall, we were usually served 3 or 4 liters of cold water with our meals and some amazing chai tea. Here, we had nothing to drink! One of the girls saw our plight and took pity on us. She brought us a water bottle, which we shared. Eventually, my mouth went numb. I quickly found that my lips did not. They continued to burn so much that I kept checking to see if they were chapping or bleeding or something.
The girls were laughing at us and asking, "Spicy?" from across the room. I didn't need to respond. My eyes were watering as I tried not to hyperventilate while breathing through my nose.
A few minutes later, pieces of cake appeared for us. I gratefully ate mine, knowing it would cut the fire. They didn't actually serve the cake to everyone else for another half an hour.
All in all, a day I'll never forget.
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