Notes from the Edge of the Map

 

The Toothbrushes That Never Arrived

Post-op, now feels like the perfect time to begin sharing these stories.

Last week, I shared something a new friend said:

 “You yearn to be helpful, to understand more deeply the mystical in the everyday.

This is where the outer journey meets the inner one.”

So yes.

I’ve started writing.

The American Toothbrushes, and the Wannabe Astronaut

A Life Lesson Learned

In 2008, I was on my way to Bolivia to meet Iván Nogales Bazán, the visionary behind Teatro Trono. But, as so often happens on the path of intuition, a quiet redirection changed everything.

Through a chance introduction, I met Washi—a former street child mentored and sponsored, along with his four brothers, by the remarkable Dr. Sharon Forest, affectionately known as Mama Sharon (yes, Winston Churchill’s great-niece).

 Washi, now a young man with a higher education and an enormous heart, had founded a soup kitchen in his native village of Ollantaytambo, in Peru’s Sacred Valley.

I felt compelled to meet him. I raised funds by selling my art and organising a community Christmas fundraiser in Spain. Each year, I carried the money—anywhere between two and five thousand euros—tucked into my bra. Part would go to Boliva.

The Universal Heart’s Restaurant

 Ollantaytambo. 

Washi’s soup kitchen.

Every day, more than 70 children came for what was often their only meal. The project was urgent and fragile. I found myself stepping into a role I hadn’t expected: fundraiser, connector, witness. What began as a brief detour turned into a calling—and a purpose that would shape the next fifteen years of my life.

During a short stay in Cusco, I met a young American dentist in a hotel. She was visiting her brother, who’d been injured in a climbing accident, and had brought three suitcases full of toothbrushes and toothpaste—on a whim—hoping to donate them somewhere meaningful.

I immediately thought of Washi’s project. She’d be passing nearby on her way to Machu Picchu and offered to bring them in person. We arranged a delivery day. Washi was thrilled—as were the children. Word spread fast.

But the suitcases never arrived.

I felt terrible.

I felt responsible.

Words can’t describe the feeling of shame.

Over seventy excited children went home empty-handed. And then, after everyone else had left, three little sisters appeared.

They had walked for hours from a remote mountain village, having heard the news on their family’s solar-powered radio. They were just three, five, and eight years old. Filthy from the road, thin and bright-eyed, they stood in the dusty courtyard, looking around expectantly.

The two kitchen cooks were heartbroken. There wasn't  even any soup left.

Quietly, they led the girls to a stone shed where an old suitcase of clean clothes was kept. Each child was given a pair of socks.

I suggested we walk to the village shop together, to buy some chocolate and a few simple provisions—rice, candles, soap, matches—to take home to their parents.

The girls beamed.

As we walked, the eldest came alive—chatty, curious, sparkling with energy. At one point, I asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She looked me square in the eyes and said, without hesitation:

“An astronaut.”

Just like that, my shame melted.

The weight of having failed to deliver was transformed by the grace of three children who expected nothing and gave life everything.

As we neared the edge of the village, the quiet five-year-old looked up at me and spoke with calm certainty:

 “It’s OK, Margarita.

The mountains will give us what we need.

They always do.”

That moment rearranged something in me.

This wasn’t about toothbrushes anymore. It wasn’t about aid or success or keeping promises. It was about being humbled by three radiant children who understood more about trust and abundance than I ever had.

It was the moment I truly arrived in Peru.

The moment I realised I hadn’t come to help—

I had come to learn.

✦ And Then Came the Call…

From then on, I followed the pull to the highlands of Peru and Bolivia—not for adventure, but because I was being drawn.

Into marketplaces full of theatre and thieves,

onto sacred paths and into stories waiting in strange corners:

into a high-security jail in Cusco,

where a friend’s prison sentence cracked something open in me.

Then , a remote stretch of the Inka Trail, where a woman in rags—Julia, mad or maybe holy—spoke Quechua words from a father I never knew,

telling me I had come to do an important job—and that he would help me.

This was not wanderlust.

This was something else.

A kind of GPS in a language I don’t fully speak—

but have always understood.