Even as I sit here typing on my computer the wisdom of my new house father Don Juan wafts into my nose. He warned me his hands were stronger than mine and I shouldn't touch the cement. But, working with him was too important to me. While it is the room I will live in that we are improving, it is his house too. We will both benefit from today's work. I was tired of following this compact little man around the fields all morning watching him take the cows to water, watching him dam the canal; I had to get my hands dirty.
Elbows deep in cement returning the wheelbarrow to the community church hours later, I could not have been happier. Even with my grandmother's amethist ring caked in wet cement, and my skin drying rapidly under the coating of cement I regretted nothing. My hands will just feel dry for a few days and peel, I will treat them with vasoline and gloves. I will clean the ring tonight with much lamentatio. While I want to protect what had been so cared for and delivered to me upon my 21st birthday, I almost feel like all of my ancestors live through this ring, with me, every day. For now, this ring is my ancestry, and letting it wear the cement, like a scar, I feel proud. Many have recommended that I not wear it around this impoverished part of the world, and their worry is valid, but I can not bring myself to take it off. There is no logical reason, only the fact that this is the only piece of jewelry I have ever put on upon receipt and not removed from my body since. It is as if decades of love and wisdom can be diffused through my hands via this lovely little bijoux. And now, even after washing my hands at least 15 times, I can still smell the cement reacting with my skin. The wisdom of this country's elder, my host father, brings worlds of knowledge together through my hands today.
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