When I was was a kid, my siblings and neighbors used to play outside for hours. We'd run barefoot all over creation climbing trees, swimming, playing soccer and when night came, we played the amazing "travel hide and seek". I must confess this is still my favorite pastime. Running around barefoot in a shorts and T-shirt playing some kind of sport or doing gymnastics feels so free. I love it.
Making the transition to a huge city where grass is a rare sighting and women are usually expected to be in the kitchen has forced me to dream of the days when I can get out and run again. Needless to say, when a few of the volunteers told me they had a football and frisbee, I was all over it.
Last Saturday night, we went out to throw the football before dinner. We threw for about 30 minutes and then decided we needed to head in. It was getting dark and we were beginning to get hungry. As we were walking in to go eat, one of the guys lobbed the frisbee my way for one last past. Welp, the wind got it and went sailing over this 10-ft tall wall.
My first thought--"I'll climb the wall!!" No problem. It was a concrete wall about 6 feet high, and then on top of that, there was a fence-like railing of about 4 ft or so. Once you got on top of the concrete part, it was about a foot wide, so it was easy to stand and climb over the railing on top of it. And there was a small ladder like structure on the outside making it pretty simple to just hop on up there.
Well, my first attempt, I found a water spicket. I stepped my foot on it and was going to pull myself up, but I immediately got a jolt--- I got electrocuted!! I stepped back and noticed some open wires. I was kinda surprised, but just decided to move to another place to try.
The guys and I walked around a little bit and found a place where we all began to climb up. The guys were being very gentlemanly saying how they should do this because they are guys, but I was just too excited to get to climb a wall! I thought-- "hey, we can all do it?!" So, I began to climb and a few seconds later, I'm over the wall. I guess the guys decided to just let me do it.
I told them I could see the frisbee and that I'd be just one minute. I'd have to jump down a little bit and walk over and go get it. It was not one second after I let go of the wall to jump down that I felt the ground beneath me give way. Yes, friends-- the surface I was willingly jumping into was liquid. You see, it had a nice little film of green (muck + lilly pads) on the top and it was dark outside, so it appeared to be grass. Oh but no. It was a huge pool of water!!
My first thoughts as my feet hit were-- "SEWAGE. I AM FALLING INTO SEWAGE!!!!" But the good Lord spared me. As I became completely engulfed-- I think it was about 5 or 6 feet deep-- I realized it to be nothing more that just a big pool of dirty rain water. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. And that's what it tasted like, too. I would know because I inhaled some of it as I went under.
Immediately after falling in, I pushed up off the bottom and, as quick as I could, hopped up on another concrete ledge. The boys were on the other side and said it sounded like I had fallen into leaves or something, but knew something was wrong seeing that I came up soaking wet and yelling for a towel. We all just laughed. When I realized I could just walk along the ledge and grab the frisbee, that's what I did.
One guy ran to grab me a towel and the other two let me hide behind them as we walked back into the complex. When the security guard saw me, I just said... "I fell into a puddle.", and kept on walking like it was completely normal. Who knows what they think of me!?
I think I said in an earlier blog post that you never know what kind of adventures await you in India. That proved to be true Saturday night. Who knows what else I'll get into before I leave here.
