Someone once told me that we live to create memories.

The whole plane ride over, that was all I could think about. My anxieties were visible as they sprawled out across 4 sheets of loose-leaf paper.

When I walked off the plane, he was the very first child to come up to me.The brutal sun must have felt no sympathy for his eyes, drying out their sparkle as equally as it had dried out the land. Following his eyebrows as they rose and then dipped down I came to his nose where I was abruptly stopped. His nose was so big and flat that it wouldn’t allow me to continue on to his lips. Though I persisted, pushing passed and following the indent below his nose to the middle of his top lip, only to find it slumped down.

He held out his hand that looked as if it had been dusted with flower, and was so caked with mud, that I could trace the lines in his hand with the depth of my fingernail. Though his hands were worn like leather, I carefully put my hand to his.

Someone once told me that we live to create memories.