The simple life

On Meredith's final day with Yuritza, the remote community outreach nurse, we rode the bus a half or so outside El Sauce and then walked about an hour down a dirt path to a cluster of homes. We found Burnia at home, a young mother with a son and daughter. It took an hour for word to spread that we were in town and soon her family room was full of new mothers and their babies and some older children who needed a check-up, who had infections and needed antibiotics, had hernias from lugging wood ...

We all gathered in Burnia's room. As they waited for their turn, I contemplated how much "stuff" I have cluttering my apartment and how they made use of so little.

The contents of Burnia's home:

• 2 hammocks strung across the family room with rope
• 3 plastic buckets
• 1 bed
• 1 cracked mirror

• 5 stickers over the bedroom door, peeling off
• 4 plastic chairs you may have on your patio
• 40 planks of wood stacked and doubling as a chair
• 1 handmade wooden bench
• 1 table
• 2 election posters
• 1 plastic pitcher that has seen better days
• 1 pot, charred black
• 4 plastic cups
• 1 car battery that looks like it powers a TV
• 1 teddy bear table cloth
• 5 pairs of shoes
• 3 shirts, all with tiny holes
• 1 yellowed baby blanket, the design worn off
• 2 barrettes
• 1 jar of nail polish
• 1 stick deodarant, which tiny Marco is using as a drum on the dirt floor