An Evening of Contradictions

Freddy, one of my favorites, has a new shoe shining job!  This is his kit.

Tonight at the stadium, where we expect things to be fairly calm, things were NUTS! It was just Darwin and I tonight.  As soon as we walked up, here comes Hector looking pale and strange.  Come to find out he had a really deep, but thankfully not bleeding, knife wound IN HIS NECK!  He asked me to clean it up for him, well, one look at it and I sent Darwin with him off to the hospital.  It definitely needed stitches and a look to see that there was no more damage down below.  As soon as Darwin left Armando stepped up and really helped me tonight.  He is always really calm and sober and quickly becoming one of my favorites.  It took me a while to decide if he was so normal it was creepy or if he is really just a regular guy trying to make a go of it under really hard circumstances.  I think it's the latter. So we continue on, everyone was just on edge tonight, mad because I wouldn't give them seconds and more people than normal.  Several people ended up either getting told off by me or telling me off.  Darwin and I were both very frustrated when we left the stadium.  Some nights are just like this.

Jenny handing out water

Then we headed down to La Chimbomba, where we expect things to be a little crazy, and things were great.  We had a whole lot more people there than normal which led to supply issues but everyone was really sweet and understanding about it.  Jenny, Dulce's mom, decided she really wanted to help so I let her take my job and I was able to spend the time just chatting with people and handing out hugs and advice.  At some point a bag of mantequilla (sour cream) walked off and there was outrage.  Because I'm a big believer in consequences I told them that we wouldn't be bringing mantequilla for a while if it was going to be stolen.  There is no way of knowing who took it but I can almost guarantee it won't happen again.  When we left Jennifer came up and came me a huge hug.  She's probably 16 years old and usually pretty stand offish.  I don't think I have a picture of her but I'll try and get one in the future.  It was really sweet.  Evidently at some point they got the idea that we weren't going to come back because of the mantequilla issue and it took some reassurances for them to believe we would be back tomorrow.  I think they will be relieved when they see us pull up. 

I LOVE this picture. 

These two guys were taking care of Dulce while Jenny helped us hand out water.

 So precious.