A TRAVELER’S PALETTE: COLOR SERIES—PINK

This series titled “A Traveler’s Palette” highlights the colors that make my travels so memorable. Each post focuses on one color and contains a few special photos along with the background story of each. The world is a rainbow, and I am constantly chasing that pot of gold.

PINK: youthfulness, comfort, tenderness, fun, sweetness, innocence

Cuban Cars

The streets of Havana are a feast for the eyes. You really do wonder if you have accidentally figured out time travel and have landed in the 1950s era as you see vintage car after vintage car motoring down the roads. It’s like an endless classic car parade or a moving museum.

The Cubans have kept these classic cars shiny and running, some of them for more than 70 years. The United States was once the main provider of cars to Cuba, but once the Cuban Revolution happened in 1959, no new cars were imported into Cuba from the U.S. due to trade restrictions. The Cubans repaired and took care of their cars because they had to. The cars that existed on the island were and have been their means of transportation for multiple decades.

These old cars, painted in vivid colors, are often used as taxis in the city of Havana. While I was visiting in 2017, I never took the chance to ride in one, but I certainly took a lot of photos of them. And while all of the colors are vibrant, pink was just nothing short of FUN. With all of the hardships Cubans have faced and are still facing today, there is something in that shiny, pink paint that offers a glimmer of hope.

The Girl in the Pink Dress

During my first trip to Uganda, I was working at a small medical clinic in the village of Kyambogo. There was a bit of a lull in the line of patients, so my friend and I played jump rope with some of the village children. While spinning the rope around for the kids, I spotted a young girl in a pale pink dress standing off to the side, shyly eyeing the game. I could see that she was eager to play but was all too timid to come over and participate.

I asked one of the boys to take my end of the rope, and I softly approached the girl in pink and held out my hand to her. One side of her mouth drew up, and her lips broke apart to show a few of her white teeth. She placed her hand in mine and walked with me over to the jump rope game. Her jumps were awkward and not exactly rhythmic, but the joy erupting from her onyx eyes and her little limbs spread across the compound and coated everyone watching.

For the four days we were at the clinic, this girl showed up each day wearing her little pink dress. She clung to me and followed me from point to point. Her demeanor was so innocent, her smile so endearing—she pierced my heart in ways no child had done before. I learned that her name is Hawah, which is the Arabic name for “Eve.”

In our short time together, Hawah and I played patty-cake games, took selfies together, ate bananas and shaped the peels into animals. She knew no English, and I knew no Lugandan, but we communicated just fine through our hugs and smiles and laughter.

Before I left Uganda, I knew that I did not want to lose contact with this girl, and I wanted to make sure she received proper schooling. My husband and I have now been sponsoring her school tuition and providing her with school supplies, medical needs, and food for the past four years. She has truly enhanced the purpose of my life. Each picture I see of her now, each letter I receive in her handwriting makes my heart grow and soften. The power of a child.

I returned to Uganda two years after first meeting Hawah. Our reunion hug brought with it a surge of energy I can only describe as divine. I brought her a bag of gifts, one of which was a new pink dress.

Hot Pink Socks

There are some things so bizzare you can’t have made them up. Such was the case during a trip to Rome with my aunt, my cousin, and two friends.

On the morning of our departure from Rome, we went to the breakfast area in the hotel. Our friend, Susan, didn’t eat much and said she wasn’t feeling too well. She opted to go back to her room for a little lie-down. When the rest of us finished our meal, we found Susan standing in the hallway outside of her room.

“There’s a man in my room,” she said calmly.

“What?” we all asked.

“There’s a man in my room. I came to lie down, but when I got to the room, the door was cracked open. I went in, and there’s a man lying on the bed.”

Now, instead of calling for assistance right away, all of us were carried to the door of her room on a cloud of curiosity. Sure enough, sprawled across the beds, face down, was a man.

“Is he alive?” I said.

“Hey. Hey, sir. HEY!” My aunt crept closer to the mystery man raising her voice.

My cousin walked to the opposite side of the bed and nudged (okay, maybe kicked) the man.

“Uhhhhh.” A groan and a puff of air expelled from the man’s mouth.

“Yep. He’s alive,” said my cousin.

Using our Sherlock Holmes skills of deduction, we supposed the man had had one too many drinks—or maybe five too many. He had no shoes, but his feet were nestled into some passion pink socks which were dirty and faded on the bottoms, as if he had been wandering on the streets for a good portion of the night. Perhaps he had simply wandered into the hotel, found an open door while the housekeeper was away, and toppled haphazardly across the beds.

Once we concluded that he wasn’t hurt or in any way suffering, we couldn’t contain our laughter at the situation. Here he was, smartly dressed in a white shirt and full suit with his hair styled…and hot pink sock to complete the ensemble.

We eventually did call the hotel staff and told them about the gentleman and that he was welcome to complete his nap since we were checking out. The manager came to investigate and was horribly worried that we were going to leave a bad review about our stay there. Bad review? It was one of the most entertaining and memorable moments of our trip! The poor, pink-socked man never knew the laughs he gave us.