missing head lice

I was having a conversation with some friends yesterday and the somehow the topic turned to lice. I began to recount stories about some of the many heads I've seen that were absolutely teeming with the little devils. I remembered the "dias de los piojos" (days of the lice), when we would form an assembly line of head washing in order to treat as many kids as possible in one day. I would show up in my swimsuit and flipflops, with my head recently shaved to avoid any unwanted inhabitants of my own, and shampoo, rinse, and comb out the dead and the eggs for hours. I told them about heads with thousands of lice, among other crawling creatures, in which 5 washings still wouldn't completely eliminate the infestation and about shaving boys' tangled messes of dirty, living hair in the same anti-louse technique that I employ myself. I explained the joy I've experienced that few can understand when a deloused, freshly sheared 6-year-old boy comes the next day to school with a huge smile on his face and more bounce in his step because for the first time in months, he slept the entire night without waking up once to scratch his itchy head. But also the experience of despair in knowing that in most cases, the heads of these children would be re-infested within a few weeks of sleeping on the same sheets with their 4 siblings that we weren't able to treat and that their parents would do nothing about it.

This conversation reminded me that I miss head lice. I miss seeing a need as easily treatable as this and being able to meet it, to at least offer a few days of better rest for a tired, hungry, dirty, neglected child. I realized more than ever that I miss poverty and miss playing my part to help alleviate it. There is nothing I can do to make the gov't of Sudan give me a visa, so I wait impatiently to get back to work, back to the life I am called to live. Having spent over 3 months surrounded by relative luxury, I've been forgetting what it's like, poverty. I don't want to forget. I'm thankful that this innocent conversation served as a reminder, brought me back to the reality of endless bouts with headlice that is life for so many.