I saw him today. A little boy whose face was dirty and clothes were dirty and hands and feet were dirty. He was a little shy when he approached me. His thick Spanish was too hard for me to understand and my Spanish is getting pretty good. Then again, he was a little Indian boy, so maybe he wasn’t speaking Spanish at all. But he definitely was asking for something.
His eyes were big and brown and warts covered his little hands.
I don’t know where he came from. Most of the children here in Panama don’t wander the streets. Most of the kids are clean and happy. They walk nicely with their parents in town and have clean faces. I looked around to see if I could see his family, but all I saw was a nicely dressed Indian family watching the scene unfold while they waited for a taxi. There was no one else on the street.
Lee pulled out a dollar and handed it to the boy. "Here,” he said. "Go get something to eat."
The boy took the dollar in his little wart-covered hands and ran into the foul smelling grocery store. I looked inside after him to see if I could spot an adult who might belong to this urchin.
Nothing.
The Chino behind the counter (that is what they call them here—the Chinese who own all the grocery stores in town) took the dollar and handed the boy a piece of chocolate wrapped in gold foil and handed him some change.
A moment later the boy was in the street again, this time with a half-opened piece of gold foil in his hands and chocolate in his teeth. That and a big smile on his dirty face.
In all honesty, I don’t know if the boy was hungry. I couldn’t understand what he asked of me. And I don’t know if he has a family. Just because I didn’t see them doesn’t mean they weren’t close by. But I do know this. He loved the candy.