The Rhythm of a Life

In the heart of a Guatemalan town, hidden behind the façade of a building and out of view, live three women and two little girls. The men in their lives have either passed away or abandoned them. They share one cramped room, hidden from the view of passersby on the street. The floor of their home is stone and dirt. They have no electricity and no running water. Their restroom is outdoors, hidden by a tattered and torn blanket. Their home barely stands atop a tiny piece of land. It is upon this land, their one solid possession, that they hope to one day have a home with real walls and real windows. A home with a roof that need not be held down with large stones and wood. They dream, day in and day out, for that which we rarely consider, the very things we take for granted and so often without thanks.

The three women work hard for the very little they have. Their days are a rhythm of struggle and work. Cramped in a tiny, stifling kitchen, they work on the floor making the one thing they can sell – tortillas. In Guatemala, small tortillas are served with every meal. The demand is high, so these women work hard. The rhythm of their lives is something that lies beyond my ability to comprehend. I cannot put my feet in their shoes for even a day, because I cannot fathom the lives they live. I don’t have the strength it would take to even imagine it.

I stood in the presence of these women for mere minutes. I watched them work and I felt the heat of their kitchen. Within these women hides a strength and a conviction I can only dream of possessing. Upon their faces I saw the smiles that defy reason, smiles that come from a place I have never been. So I did nothing but stand still and watch. I lifted a camera to my eye, wanting only to capture the moment, to somehow prove that I had been in the presence of these heroic women.

There is an actual rhythm to their work. To form the dough, these women slap their hands together like the beat of a drum. It is a kind of music, the sound of hard work and undying hope.

Next to them, and staring up at me, was one of their beautiful little girls. I snapped my photograph and forever captured her image. Her eyes are like that of every child, filled with hope and curiosity. What the photograph could not capture, the very thing that struck me so deeply, was the rhythm she kept with the clapping of her own hands. There was no dough for her to form, no work for her small hands. And yet, she joined her mother, her aunt, and her grandmother, by adding the sound of her own rhythm to their work.



I listened to the sound of their work, and I pondered the life of this little girl. Will she get the education she so desperately needs and deserves? Can she rise up against the odds that are stacked so solidly against her? One in one hundred Guatemalan children will go to school. Will this little girl, I wondered, be the one?

We should pray for her and for the millions like her. We should pray that the cycle of poverty and oppression will be broken. While our pity will make no difference, our compassion most certainly will. We can make a difference, and forever turn the rhythm of poverty into a rhythm of hope. If we only help one little girl or one little boy to find hope, we have changed the world. It may only be the world of one, but it's the world nonetheless.