Out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of faces I see every day, it's interesting which ones stick with me. Today I've been thinking a lot about an old man we encountered at Malecon, a park near the ruins of the old cathedral in Managua. He sported a beat-up old cowboy hat and button down shirt, with a face wrinkled and leathery from years spent under the sun. He was barely five feet tall, hunched under a bag of water he was selling. You don't see much bottled water here, mostly just little bags that people bite off the corners and then drink. He approached us and asked us if we wanted to buy some bags of water. We said no, but he followed us and asked us again. This time he was practically begging, pleading with us to buy some of his water. It broke my heart to see someone like him, probably around my grandpa's age, who should be relaxing and enjoying his latter years of life. Instead, he was out in the heat, working so hard to try to sell water for about a dime a piece. I don't know exactly why I didn't buy any from him - maybe because I wasn't that thirsty then, or because I didn't have any small change. Whatever my excuse was at the time, I now wish I had bought some water from him. This happened about two weeks ago, but I still can picture his face in my mind. When I told Liz I had been thinking a lot about the old water vendor lately, she said, "That's interesting, because I was just thinking about him earlier today." I don't know what profound conclusions to draw from this - if anything, maybe it is to be more aware of those around us, and try to help and support them in little ways if possible - even if it's only buying a bag of water.
