The Power of Hands

A small refugee orphanage at the Thailand / Burma Border

She rushed up to me, mismatched clothes and flesh caked with mud here and there, from playing outdoors in the monsoon season rains, hands in a flurry of motion seeking to overcome the language barrier to communicate what she wanted as quickly as possible. Sitting me down across from her, her hands clapped on her knees, then together, then lunged towards mine, missing them due to my delay of confusion. No, no, I wasn’t doing it right. Now she had my hands up and flailing in an attempt to meet up with hers when they came towards mine, succeeding only half of the time. Patiently, and with determination, she persevered through the flailing to the point of mastering this clapping game. Faster and faster we went until suddenly my brain and hands decided not to work together and her hand lunged towards nothing to meet it. Immediately her little face lit up in a bright and contagious smile, she threw herself with laughter into my lap, then as the laughter subsided, started the show again.

You never realize the power of hands until you live much of your life among people with whom you don’t share any semblance of a shared language with. From clapping games to asking how old they are or how many children they have – hands become our shared tongue. Amid these exchanges I am always amazed at how very much can be communicated by one’s eyes and hands; at times it seems almost more poignant of a conversation than ones we have with words. The level of intense concentration and “listening” that must be undertaken – the way you must read every eye twitch, movement of the mouth, joy or sorrow in a facial expression, the picture hands are attempting to paint or reconstruct before your eyes… so many pieces to be put together to truly understand such a simple thing as “How many children do you have?”

But there is one topic that hands seem to have no problem communicating — love. A little child grabbing your hand to simply hold it as they stand beside you, a grown woman embracing you with a full-mouthed grin, arms reaching out as they run towards you when you walk into a room. Yes, hands are masters at the language of love.

My little clapping game friend was one of the many orphaned refugee children hiding in the jungles along the border between Burma and Thailand. On the final night of our visit to this region, we shared our last moments with this collection of children with families left behind. Electricity out due to monsoon rains, we sat in the candlelight in the heart of the jungle with orphans who all shared a common story of being a stranger in a foreign land, a refugee. A young man helping to watch over these precious ones picked up the guitar and began to sing.

A simple and beautiful music filled the room. Within moments, these little hands reached up to the sky. The song they sang clearly came from the deepest parts of their souls, in a way that most children their age don’t even know that they have. They reached towards a God that meant more to them than the subject of a song or a storybook, but one that they believed had walked with them through minefields, being child soldiers, losing parents, having no place to call home, or whatever their story had brought them traveling through… the one who had walked with them, carried them.

As the song ended, one of their eyes looked up into my own with that sweet sincerity that seemed to grace them always. They formed their hand into the sign we had taught them to communicate with us when words could not. Meeting up with my own, their hand signed,

“I love you.”

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Author Nicole Watts spent fifteen years living in a community where approximately 50%+ of her neighbors were resettled through the U.S. State Department's refugee resettlement visa program, welcoming those who have been uprooted by conflict and war to start a new home for their families. Fueled by a love for culture and learning, Nicole has traveled around the nation and the globe to better understand the story of those she shares life with and her own generational heritage.