Call of A Coward by Marcia Moston

Call of A Coward by Marcia Moston

Author:Marcia Moston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-06-29T16:00:00+00:00


10

Real Men Don’t Do Dishes

It’s a noble thing to say you would lay down your life

for a loved one. It’s quite another if you are called upon

unexpectedly to share your last bit of chocolate. Thank God

there is no condemnation as we slowly shed our selfish selves

and grow in grace.

The ubiquitous firecracker shattered the silence and sent the darkness scattering into splinters of light as the new year found its way to the village. I kept my eye on Bob to see if he was going to suffer any ill effects from his outing. He and José had attended a lively church service in a neighboring village. Before he left, I reminded him not to drink anything because the villagers usually didn’t boil their water. But when he saw how pleased the people were to have him as a guest, he couldn’t refuse the gracious pastor who dumped the contents out of an available cup, refilled it with lukewarm coffee, and pressed it into Bob’s hands.

Although we’d been very careful not to drink anything but bottled water and not eat lettuce or unpeeled fruit, we still suffered minor but frequent intestinal disorders. On one of our monthly trips to the city, we all got tested for parasites. The doctor suggested I might have amoebas and gave me a prescription. Before I bought the drug he had prescribed, I looked it up in a book I depended on, Where There Is No Doctor. The description was enough to send me scurrying back to the doctor.

“I don’t think I’m going to take this drug,” I said. “It’s banned in the United States. My book lists the possible side effects as blindness, paralysis, and death.”

Still defending his prescription, he replied, “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Being up on my Bible knowledge, I knew I had one shot at dying. I decided to take my chances on the possible amoebas (which, according to tests I had in the States months later, I did not have).

Lily and I had celebrated the New Year together at home, frothing up with RID, a treatment for head lice. Neither of us had caught any of those pesky lice that were the bane of her ability to relax; nevertheless, we felt like taking precautionary measures, and so we celebrated the passing of the year with the assurance we were nit-free.

Now I was ready to tackle that same issue that had been bugging me at the project. The kids were bemused when I pushed their heads away from mine and said I didn’t want any of their piojos. Lice were simply an ongoing nuisance with which they lived, so they didn’t understand my aversion.

Armed with my boxes of RID and little combs, I gathered everyone around the big concrete sink in the yard. I wasn’t sure how they would react to my insistence on the head washings. The project had an enclosed outdoor shower, but I noticed the twins kept their clothes on when they used it for a quick rinse. I



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