Make a Wish, Fiji

The Make-a-Wish Foundation had sent us to Fiji because that had been my son’s wish. He had survived bone cancer, limb salvage and a year of chemo. The whole trip had been surreal. I have memories of him playing in the light surf of the cove, afraid that his manufactured left leg might break, his mother and I para-sailing over azure water, bone colored reef, our fears and doubts cast upon the wind for at least these few moments.

 We were on a flat-bottomed speedboat trip inland, skippered by a young East Indian man called, “Captain Jack”, with a small group. Clear sky, the smell of sugar cane pervading the wind blasted senses as the metal boat surfed shallow water with it’s sand and pebble laden bottom. We’d watched a young male sprint his dun colored stallion along the bank in deep sand, his shirt billowing behind and then glided bootleg up to a rickety wooden pier.

 They told us the village lay on the other side of the cliff. A small group huddled in wait. As we exited the boat, a rail thin waif of adolescent female in a wrinkled cotton dress reached out her hand. Captain Jack told us her name was Katina. She was African in appearance but covered in pink mottles like a pink and coal colored map. When I grasped her hand, it was rough as tree bark and then I noticed her eyes. They were the milky white of the blind as she smiled a wide and big-toothed greeting. My fear of communicable disease rose then settled.

We were told she had been blind since birth and was “touched” somehow. They said if she bothered us to let them know. She insisted on walking between my wife and I, eager to hold our hands as she led us up the precarious, hand crafted walkway that climbed the precipitous sandstone face. When we came to the community hall and church she held back then disappeared. Had someone called to her?

I can’t remember what she said. I was transfixed by the environment and profound feelings. I only know that in that innocent child I saw the face of God. Poverty, sugar cane, pebble-bottomed river of wild wind and an afflicted child, vessel of grace and love that seemed to reach in and hold my beating heart in her disease scarred hands.

  We met the village chief, received the wooden bowl of muddy water kava in consecration of spirit and community. We sat cross-legged in one of the cinderblock buildings where they had laid a feast upon cloths on the floor. They played a battered guitar and sang to us then encouraged us to join in. The native women in their colorful costumes sat apart from the men, their furtive glances questioning yet receiving the pale foreigners. Late afternoon we returned down the path to the speedboat waiting at the rickety dock.

 I wondered, “ Where is Katina? Surely she’ll come.” She did not and I found myself saddened by the lack. As we pulled away, engines rumbling that guttural growl, I gazed back and she stood there in the bright day, hand raised in farewell, her shabby dress catching in the balmy breeze at her spindly legs and my heart flew into the sky like a bird released.

  Thank you Father for the dignity of life. Thank you for the profound grief that allows me to see the heart of a blind and wanting child on the other side of your earth and know we will meet again. The truth is … I meet her now, my young friend, in each moment, each tear, and each hint of light that illumines the rough yet loving hand of God.