21

She is about twenty one years old but when I asked her how old she is she wasn’t exactly sure. Because of her buzzed hair, baggy clothes, somewhat gruff voice, and dirty face, she could pass for a guy. I don’t know her name, but I see her all over town, usually at church and she tends to make a weekly appearance at World Vision. We call her “Soko’s sister” because she bears a faint resemblance to Soko, one of the WV staff.
This girl is to some degree, suffering from mental disability, and yet I see a strong element in her that is in all of us. In her simplicity she is unguarded, probably much more honest and real than most of us. She walks with a limp and her right hand is curled and stiff. She isn’t slowed by this, a simple left-handed handshake is proffered with a smile and a “Sain uu?” which is a friendly greeting. I can’t help but smile to myself at the way she makes it a mission to greet everyone, and yet I’m saddened at the responses she receives. She doesn’t take notice of or care much about what else is going on the way the rest of us do. In the middle of the church service she will go about her mission, going from bench to bench proffering her left hand while people are trying to listen to the sermon. When her greeting is reciprocated I see her face light up with such simple, real joy. Yet, all too often, because we are caught up in trying to maintain order and pay attention, I see that we tend to scold her and tell her to be quiet. This is a slap in the face to her.
Last week I saw this and how hard she took it when her kindness was rejected. She was so upset, her loud crying disrupting the service even more. Generally people are tolerant and nice to her, don’t get me wrong. My point is not to condemn people. Rather, through this I saw that her sense of value and self-worth, her sense of belonging, was centered on whether or not people notice her. The reason it is so important for her to shake everyone’s hand is because we aren’t sure how to deal with her—it’s awkward—and so we ignore her rather than pouring into her the love that she longs for deeply. It is so sad to see her base her value on whether or not people return a handshake.
I think that a lot of us really aren’t much different from this girl. Yet because we are sophisticated, educated, and going through life all organized and tidy it is manifest in different ways, often disguised and hidden. All of us want to belong, so we do things for other people to make them happy, hoping that they will accept us. We are broken people, our hands dirty from falling in the ungraces of the world. We have our disabilities, our weaknesses, that we hope to hide and yet are afraid that no one can see past them to who we are. We are so insecure in who we are that we fear our missteps become our ascribed identity, so we toil and slave to belong. So we sell ourselves short, resorting to anything, a handshake, that tells us that we are okay in spite of our faults.
We were playing volleyball one night at the local zaal. Our friend made an appearance and of course went on about her business as usual. A game of volleyball did not stop her in the search for identity in hopes that we would give her that smile that would comfort just long enough to sustain her. I remember the ball being in play and her coming over to me, even my rushed “Sain uu?” made her happy. This simplicity makes people uncomfortable, disrupting their order because it resonates with something inside of them.
There is something about being loved by others that makes it worth it, leaves you longing for more--as many times as she has been rejected, she still continues in her search.