Slowly the wheel kept turning, almost churning the small rocks, while cracking the small dried brushery on the dirt road...sitting were the 5 niños. With an expression of bewilderment, excitment and joy, their eyes glimmered as the sun above them bathed their bodies.
Off they went down the dirt road heading into town, composed of the one church without a steeple that was in the center of this almost square zone, the abandoned "mansion" that served as a temporary school, and the nun's house next to the grand mango tree in her front yard. There were small living quaters for the farmers who woke before the roosters would sing and would carry their heavy tools to the farmland. On the other corner was a well, the community well where everyone took their "CANTAROS" and filled their jars. As was this small Almacen - mini warehouse or as one could say a grocery store, where anyone could buy the essentials. Next to the church were warehouses used to store the corn, sesame seed, and rice saks and beans.
The small hands held tight, not that the Carreta would move fast, but from the bouncy road everyone swayed back and forth and side to side. The Carreta was pulled by two bulls, Papa Chico's fierce beasts, that was the extent of their speed. The kids were happy, you could hear it from their joyeous laughter, their glittery smiles and glassy almost tearful eyes. They all talked at once, they high fived each other and as the trees became lower and the braches brushed down on them they ducked laughing every time or jumping to grap a branch or leaf. It was not a long trip, however, they enjoyed riding through the dirt road almost as delicately paved by the many cows and horses who would pass over it. Although on occassions you could smell the brutal smell or cow & horse feces. If you have an explorer's mind you can imagine that the kids would look down on the feces because in it would be the black beatles faithfully working...building a perfectly round ball that they would scoop up and take to their "home" for the winter hivernation.. such a laborious insect, a perfect crafter of poop.
If you haven't heard, cow feces, when dried would be the perfect method used to get rid of mosquitoes. The kids could be seen walking in the LLANOS collecting the dried feces, then at night they used it as incense for the ferocious beasts of the night - the blood sucking mosquitos that attacked unmerciful.
Going into town, using the one resource everyone treasured was one experience no one would pass. Although, if you walked across the neighbors field's you would reach the town faster on foot. However, that took away the purest of joys, the pride of riding with your Papa Chico and all together laughing at life's moment of simplicity. A life of innocence...where you lived one day at a time without the rush of a motor's contamination...where the worldly materials meant nothing, however nature was their treassure, their life, and the reason to wake up excitedly and rush out the house.
They knew not the meaning of stress, nor the rush of getting through with "life's expectations," nor did they know the meaning of completing the expectation of life's society...it was their world, their life. It was happyness at it's best. Sure, there were necesities, yet they were satisfied.
Slowly the CARRETA reached the clearing, the road opened up into a "Y" and they turned...reaching yet another road. This one much wider and transited by the cargo trucks that traveled longer and carried the people into the city and the markets. The CARRETA was going to LAS BRIZAS, the kid's town, where their friends lived--such friendship where they all treassured each other...they were so close as if they were family members, such was the love for each other.
And there it went, the Carreta, carrying the precious cargo of the 5 niños, their grandpa Papa Chico, all in perfect harmony, unaware of the exterior world of temptations, of a fast paced society lurking at them. As if staring at them like the God's in the Odyssey looking through the bowl filled with water...watching the kid's movements, taking note of their highly priced moments...just viciously lurking...like a raptor waiting for the pefect moment to pull them out and misplace them in a world of perdition...a sinful world of dos and don'ts, struggles, and constat fight for equality...they were taken like ants from their perfect environment and placed under the looking glass of society's menacing ways....
They reached town, and as if a ghostly presence took over them...they were no more. Their faces, ears, feet, were blisttered by the new world...their life begun over again some 5000k miles from their hearts...
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| a pictured borrowed from Google images. |
"And their dirt stained faces reflected the brightness of the sun...their bare feets tickled with the wind's mysterious touch, their laughs were carried in the form of an echo slowly disappearing in the LLANOS(bushery lands) alerting nature they were present.."
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