Many years ago someone very important to me gave me a pair of pearl earrings. Each little white pearl hung from an oval silver setting that kept three tiny diamond specks safe. Having sold off two diamond rings a few months ago, set in silver, these small diamonds represented the last of the diamond jewelry I owned.
This afternoon, as usual, I went to the orphanage, but I was not my typical energetic self. Run down, feverish, and battling a finger infection, today I kept the camera stowed in the bottom of a floral tote, opting instead of photographing to hang out with the children. While my child photographers busily snapped away down on the football field, I stayed with Rosaline, 11, and Francois 9. For hours the three of us sat, backs straight against metal containers, hands intertwined, occasionally Francois rested her head against my chest. Around us the other children played cards, washed lunch bowls, and hung laundry, and the entire tableau warmed me as I was extra receptive to the tenderness palpable on this late grey Sunday afternoon. Colds have a way of stripping us of our guard; the two girls on either side of me were attentive, examining me as trained nurses would. The head warm, the nose red, the eyes a bit puffy, no symptom went ignored.
I’m not sure what prompted her, but after some time, Rosaline began inspecting my earrings. Tsk tsking she noticed the dirt that had collected from months of wear and no wash. Soon she pulled my left earring out of its bruised hole and began cleaning it. She must have spent half an hour scrubbing and polishing, and when her own saliva didn’t get that tired earring gleaming, she got up, walked over to the water pump, and filled a plastic porridge cup with some icy water, the better to clean the jewelry and its jewels. Next to her, Francois and I watched Rosaline work, meticulously loosening the crusted skin from the earring. The pearl was at last brilliant, the little diamonds shards coruscating in their silver casing.
This had turned out to be a perfect afternoon, the flu symptoms eased by the girls’ doting.
But what happened next sealed this feeling that life is nothing but the people in it, regardless of the fluctuations of body, mind, and circumstance. “Oh King, sorry…” Rosaline murmured regretfully. The day suddenly darkening with her words I saw what had happened. Gone was the polished pearl—Rosaline had dropped it down a little crack in the cement step. Though we all tried furiously to float the earring to the top, pouring cup after cup of water into the narrow hole, nothing surfaced. Rosaline felt horrible, and I was about to get mad when I realized the importance of this loss. I decided then and there to get rid of all the diamonds in my life. Looking up at one of the boys who was towering over this crisis, the water run-off, the whispered “sorry’s”, the desperate jabs of a stick down the bottomless hole, I slipped off my right earring, gently replaced the backing, and smiling, dropped it down the hole.
Quietly Rosaline wrote in red ink on the palm of her left hand, “I Sorry King.” A few minutes later she added the hearts.
The true diamonds are the gestures of our lives that assuage haunting misgivings, replacing them with the immaterial and priceless jewels of hope, love, and yes, laughter.
Imagine, one day Gisimba Memorial Center excavated. Diamonds! Pearls!
Today, before The Tale of The Lost Earring, my friend Kevin, himself an orphan of the genocide, told me that both Rosaline and Francois have AIDS. Ah, earrings that once meant so much still mean so much, but for different reasons. Diamonds. Pearls. What use are these coveted artifacts of vanity in the face of two girls who face a shortened future?
Happy to finally be free of diamonds, on my own left hand I wrote with the same red marker “Okay Rosaline” and immediately surrounded it with hearts.
Kresta King Cutcher
Gisimba Memorial Center
An orphanage on the outskirts of Kigali in Nyamirambo.
Kigali, Rwanda. Afrika.
August 13, 2006.
Late Sunday afternoon.
Posted by camera_rwanda on 2006-08-14 06:33:56
Tagged: , Gisimba Memorial Center , Diamonds , Child , Earring , Hope , Love , Laughter , Rosaline , Francois , Joy , Life Lessons , Hand , Portrait , Children , AIDS , Orphanage , Orphan , Genocide , Story , Red , Ink , Palm , Art , Heart , Nurse , Daily Life , Lost Earring , Pearl , Pearls , Community , Africa , Afrika , East Africa , People , Poverty , Economics , Abstract , Gesture , Forgiveness , 100 Days , Surprises , Fate , Destiny , Hardship , It’s all relative , Gratitude , Angel , Malaika , Spirit , Soul , Humanity , Inspiring , Inspiration , http://www.krestakingphotography.com/ , Kresta King Photography , Kresta KC Venning , Rwanda
