To the person on my street

I see naked people sometimes; about once every two or three months there will be a naked person walking down the street or standing in the road. Once I saw two in one week. A few naked people I've never seen a second time, but there is one man who I see fairly consistently. He usually walks a road about ten minutes away from where I live. Today on my way home from a jungle walk, I passed him on my street and was surprised he had ventured so far. I've never seen him off of what I consider to be his street.

An hour later when I was getting ready to leave my compound again, my guards were outside the gate instead of inside. And then instead of letting me drive out, one of them motioned that he wanted to talk to me.

I tried to understand what his concern was with me leaving, and I thought I heard “feu.” (This wouldn’t be too far fetched; there was a pretty bombastic car fire in front of my compound a few months ago.) I finally figured out he was not saying fire in French but “fou.” In French, I tried to say, “you mean the man with no clothes?” And that’s what he had meant, but I said it was fine. I’ve driven past him many times.

So I pulled through my gate prepared to see the naked man walking my street. But he was not wandering down the road. He was not walking but standing, partially blocking a lane of traffic. Standing there and just looking at me.

A completely naked, possibly mentally handicapped man was just standing in the street staring at me as I was trying to leave my house to make it on time to a meeting at school.

I didn’t know whether to feel fear or compassion; his eyes conveyed no emotion I could recognize.

So

I just

drove away.

There have been a number of occasions in my life where I have seen people, and my mind can’t decide whether to feel fear or compassion, or should there be some third emotion?

Sometimes I never decide, and the memory of that person haunts me.

As I continued driving to school, I thought of a boy at a previous post. He showed up at church a few times, wearing beat-up shoes, shirts that were too small, and pants that were too big with no underwear underneath. I felt compassion for him.

But what if he had been five years older? Would I have felt the same way?

Or would it have been fear? Same person, but added years would have made him bigger and stronger and other.

It doesn’t really seem fair,

and I don’t always know

what to feel

and what to do.

So I try to do what I can,

and I feel guilty about all I cannot.

And today I wanted to write down how I felt when my eyes locked with a person on my street.