Three Square Meals

Most of the day's hours were spent with in those four walls, stepping out when it was time for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To get upstairs I had to walk two flights of stairs. The wall to the right following the stairs was white in color with holes in it, a design I assumed. You can peek through the holes and see the outside. I could see a street, well more like an alley there was no concrete road just dirt and houses on each side of the alley like a neighborhood. At the very top of the stairs was a white door. The borders were wooden painted in white also and the center screened with a net. I stepped inside and noticed a bathroom and a kitchen next to each other on the far left, a dining table on the left as well. The living room and two other rooms were all connected no doors separating them except for one. The living room had a long sofa to the  right, two sofa chairs with a side table between them and a rectangular center table all made of wood dark brown in color. The cushions were hard with a sky blue mixed with light grey covering.

 I usually ate on the oblong shaped dining table that was covered with a plastic sheet.  There were six chairs surrounding the table which were placed within an open space next to the kitchen and bathroom. Not very appealing, having to eat next to the bathroom, but I slowly learned to adjust myself.

Its very difficult to get used to another type of environment when you have only seen one your whole life especially when it effects a sensitive region like your stomach. For weeks I suffered from low grade fevers, nausea, diarrhea, and many episodes of vomiting. I couldn't digest the food properly the sight of food made me vomit instantaneously. I hated the taste of boiled water. I hated the taste of the milk, I hated the taste of everything.

I used to eat three square meals every day, but here I could barely make one complete square. Because I couldn't digest anything I was always hungry, I kept my energy by drinking juice and eating fruit. One day at the dinner table I had a plate of rice and okra in front of me before I started I got up to get a glass of water from the cooler, I drank a sip. Next to the cooler was a sink with the a mirror hanging on the wall above it. I watched myself as I took more sips and said "come on man up" "man up damn you and eat your food!"
So I marched back to my chair grabbed the spoon and started to eat without thinking and got pretty far before I got queasy again so I stopped and told myself that's enough for today, a good start though. Now what to do with the rest that was left over, no one else was going to eat it so I decided to toss it in the trash.

As I was tossing it in the trash my cousin sees me and says "that rice doesn't come for free you know, you might as well not eat it in the first place." 


October 2006

Four Walls

Four walls, one door, no windows. I can only see concrete covered with white paint paint that seemed to be chipping from every corner even falling from the roof like flakes of snow. The floor is marble, wait tile or maybe granite I'm not sure all I know that it was rough and always cold. The floor was brown in color embedded in it were small pieces of rock placed in a mosaic like design.

The room was lit by one tube light.There was a cream colored metal dresser to the left of the room, a black metal table just ahead of me against the front wall and a  bed made of  wooden legs and intertwined rope as the base, a charpai, to my right. Also to my right was  a dimly lit bathroom something you see in a horror movie. As I entered the bathroom I held my breath to the putrid smell emitting from it. There was no toilet just a squatter with a sink to the side of it.
This is the room I have to live in for five years I said to myself. I turned around walked out of the bathroom and as I was leaving the room I was told that I can come upstairs anytime I liked because upstairs was a complete house my room was apart of the basement.


October 2006