I was sitting in the the car, mind wandering as I lazily took in the swiftly passing scenes of a town not yet fully awoken.

My eyes zeroed in on this weathered looking man by the roadside. His hair was brownish-white and his face wrinkled and leathered. He looked to be in his early 60's; though he also looked like his life was just hard enough for much of it to be spent tolling under the heavy gaze of an ageless sun that he might well have been in his fifties instead.

I casually watched as he squatted down beside the road, thinking nothing of it. His next action, however, happened just as I was passing him. So surprising was it that it made me sit up straight and crane my neck as I peered out the window in desperate hope to confirm that what I saw was simple a trick of the light. It wasn't.

This old man had knelt down by a muddy puddle that had pooled on the road and started washing his hands. Further yet, on my second take of the situation, he had just mouthed a handful of the puddle and was rinsing his mouth out.