Yesterday Luci,the thirty year old Bora woman who looks after the four homeless girls who live in my house, advised me that Erika was ready for her own bed. She had been sleeping in the same bed with Juanita since her mother died of t.b. two months ago, and some neighbors had asked me to take the girl in. The loss of her mother had devastated her, and she had refused to discuss it whenever we thought it would be therapeutic to get her feelings out in the open. She and her mother had been living in a dilapidated house with a thatched roof and dirt floor in the town’s poorest neighborhood. As it is the case in most communities, several families live in the same house and none of the eight children had his or her own bed. Juanita, Iveli and Keli were loving to Erika and tried as best they could to make her feel welcome. So when Erika told us she was ready for her own bed, all of us went to a small store nearby that sold beds. We let Erika pick out the bed she wanted. Back home, as Luci and I put the bed together, something happened that had not happened since we invited Erika into our house two months ago. She smiled. Some things just take time — and lots of love.
